Did you know that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, and Bain & Company says it’s 6 to 7 times more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to retain one? So, if it’s really 6 to 7 times costlier to acquire a new customer [...]
Recently I was talking with my pal, Robert Scoble, about startups, content, leaving 2014 and going into 2015, so it got me to thinking, what can startups do now to help them create wins for 2015? This list of 5 Wins for Startups to Achieve Growth in 2015 will get you moving in a direction [...]
To many people, Labor Day signifies the end of summer. To me, the changing season, such as the weather cooling down or leaves changing color, football and baseball playoffs signify the end of summer. Baseball playoffs start on September 30th this year. In baseball, the "utility" player, by definition, is one who can play many [...]
There are many opinions about content gating these days. There have been LinkedIn Group discussions about it as well as blog posts debating or trying to visualize it. I recently asked marketers on a LinkedIn Group discussion about content gating. I posed three questions - (1) Are you gating content? (2) What content types do you [...]
I love the excerpted video (below) of Kevin Spacey's keynote at the 2013 Edinburgh International Television Festival. In it, he discusses the House of Cards genesis as well as how powerful content is. There are some important takeaways. First, Spacey notes that "the audience wants the control" to view the content they want when they [...]
You've read about the benefits of content marketing. You've even read case studies of companies who have achieved amazing success using content marketing in their overall marketing strategy. But, are you convinced content marketing will help your small business? Did you know that Content Marketing is the number #1 strategy used by marketers? It's not [...]
I have a cube on my desk that reads "the purpose of life is a life of purpose," which to me translates as "we should be doing everything toward a greater good." I have always been a fan of Dr. Stephen Covey and his phrase "begin with the end in mind." It has had a [...]
There's a lot of content out there. In fact, the amount of online content seems to double every couple of years. With the plethora of content already available, more businesses continue to jump on the content marketing bandwagon. For some clarity on the situation, check out these stats. According to a joint 2014 B2B study [...]
By Nicole Yuen We seem to go through peaks and valleys with information overload in our society. And the one who picks the short straw is the content consumer. They end up having to sift through a lot of bad content to get to the good stuff. And, combined with the fact that an average [...]
One thing I like about engaging with my social networks is being able to ask questions and get people’s thoughts on issues, problems, and trends. Recently, I asked on Twitter, “Do marketing and sales still have trouble working together?” The answer was particularly telling: “No. They just do it badly.” In many organizations, the challenge [...]
I've been reading a lot of articles and posts lately that content marketing's role is to generate sales. That is one of the myths of content marketing - if we create it, we'll get sales. If you make generating sales the goal of your content, your content will appear trite and your voice comes off [...]
A few weeks ago I read an interesting article by Barry Feldman about whether content curation is news or noise. He made some good points. As he notes, "In the end, the acid test is to ascertain whether or not people like what you’re doing." That provides some of the backdrop of this article. When [...]
In addition to my role at M4 Communications, I am also a math and science tutor. Lately, I've been doing a lot of chemistry tutoring and one periodic table, Mendeleev's, is usually all I can handle. Dmitri Mendeleev, a russian chemist, found that if he put elements in their correct places in the table, which [...]
I recently read an article in which the author suggested focusing on reviews instead of case studies. The author cited research that indicated that 73% of marketers use case studies, and 65% feel they are an effective tactic. He also cited Demand Gen Report's 2013 B2B Content Preferences Survey that stated 92.6% of the respondents [...]
Will Content Marketing earn you business?To this, I say it depends. To this, I say it depends. Let me give you some background to frame this post. I participate in a variety of Twitter chats. Not only do I enjoy the engagement, but I can learn and disseminate information, and give my creativity a workout. [...]
A positioning statement in its basic form answers who you are, what you do and why people should care about you. A well-worded positioning statement is the theme to all of your content, what ties your content together and is the “logline” of your brand story. And, of course, it must include your value proposition. [...]
In a previous post entitled Are You Over-Gating Your Content, we wrote that marketers need to be careful with over-gating content. Gating content is perfectly appropriate within reason. However, you need to have an objective for doing so. Otherwise, you could end up fueling the fire by defeating your purpose and driving potential leads away. [...]
Gating your content means that for someone to receive your content, they have to give you their email address and other particulars to obtain the content. But, is over-gating your content a good tactic? If you gate everything and someone registers, do you immediately conclude that individual is a hot lead? Perhaps they are. Perhaps [...]
I was on Linked In recently reading and responding to an inquiry a nonprofit manager was asking in one of the groups I belong to on how to get the word out about their nonprofit. As you would guess, many gave a laundry list of "do this, do that" answers. While there were some great [...]
I used to think that the entertainment and technology industries were on opposite sides of the industry spectrum - they couldn’t be the furthest from each other. I felt that way about marketing within these two industries, too. Since I have been a marketer in both these arenas – I consider myself living at the [...]
