Amplify Your Content-Marketing Results by Using These 4 Simple Tips

Content marketing is an important component of every digital-marketing strategy. It serves several purposes, such as:

• Building brand awareness
• Assisting in lead generation
• Providing answers to common questions, giving the prospect the information he or she needs to make a purchase decision
• Pushing “on the fence” prospects to convert
• Attracting inbound links for search-engine optimization purposes
• Expanding your reach via social sharing

While most businesses know they need to do content marketing, many don't gain much traction. In an effort to help you improve your content-marketing efforts, here are some tips that will greatly improve your results.

1. Map out your entire strategy. Be as detailed as possible.

You need a very detailed plan if you want to experience success with your content marketing. Many businesses just throw up blog posts without a plan. There is no research behind them and there aren’t any benchmarks or goals established. The purpose of content marketing is to generate revenue. Yes, there are short-term goals in between, but when it comes down to it your content needs to produce a return.

You need to brainstorm topics based on campaign goals: do you want to generate leads, push prospects directly to a purchase offer or accomplish another conversion goal such as a phone call or location visit? You then need to optimize your content properly, plan a promotion push and set conversion goals. Map out your content-marketing strategy so you can easily answer this question: “Is this working?” 

2. Determine what content assets are currently producing results.

If you have been posting fresh content to your blog for some time, use Google Analytics to see what content your visitors have engaged with the most. What posts have received the most visits? What blog posts kept your visitors on your website the longest? What content did your visitors engage with before they converted? Also take a look at the social shares and comments each post has received.

This gives you a good idea of the topics and content styles that your audience responds the best to. Use this information to plan future topics and continue to monitor your results. Don’t be afraid to test different topics and styles -- just analyze your data and you will take your content marketing in the right direction. 

3. Focus on quality over quantity.

Content assets that truly deliver results aren’t cheap to produce. Not every business can afford a full-time in-house content writer or a freelancer. This isn’t an excuse to sacrifice quality. If you can only afford to publish one high-quality blog post per month in the beginning, do that. 

Some of the most popular forms of content include ebooks, webinars, videos, blog posts, case studies and infographics -- these all cost money to produce. Don’t opt for several lower quality pieces. If your content assets are limited, focus your energy on promotion and increase your publishing schedule as your revenue increases.

4. Use paid outlets to expand your content reach.

You could create the most amazing piece of content, but it’s not going to be effective unless your target audience engages with it. If your website doesn’t receive a lot of organic traffic, then you are going to need to seek additional traffic sources to get eyes on your content. Sending your new blog posts to your email list and sharing them on your social-media profiles are great ways to attract some traffic for free, but if you really want to get the most out of your content you need to utilize some paid channels.

• Paid social-media promotion: Organic social reach is limited, especially on Facebook, so if you want to attract traffic, boost your Facebook posts, promote your tweets on Twitter and run sponsored updates on LinkedIn. Start small, even just $10 a day, and scale up your social promotion as your revenue increases. 
• Content distribution networks: There are two main players, Outbrain and Taboola, that help place your content on major websites in front of an audience that their algorithms determine might be interested in reading your content. You only pay when someone clicks and is brought to your website. Both companies operate on a cost-per-click bidding model. To see an example, scroll to the bottom of this ESPN article and look at the “Sponsored Headlines” -- those are from the Outbrain network

  Source : http://entm.ag/29WRpfk

10 companies with outstanding social media presences

Some can discount the importance of online marketing, especially when brand managers' efforts on social platforms become stale. Model your campaigns after these organizations instead.

There's been endless debate over the last few years as to whether or not social media marketing is dead.

Recently, the Content Marketing Institute finally put the debate to rest—or tried to—with a podcast arguing that social media isn't actually dead, we're just using it wrong. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are still plenty of companies that are rocking social media marketing and can inspire the masses to follow suit with their perfected strategies.

Here are 10 to start following today:

1. Old Spice

When Isaiah Mustafa stepped into the role of the ultimate Old Spice guy, the drugstore cologne-turned-viral sensation attracted a legion of followers across multiple social media channels.

The brand's managers keep exploring unexpected ideas, like having Mustafa answer tweets on YouTube. What Old Spice really gets right is the emotional element of marketing, making followers wish their man was as suave as that cologne guy.

2. TEDx

It’s not easy to take informational lectures and turn them into sensational content that everyone is talking about.

TEDx doesn’t just nail its medium, it also manages to turn authentic storytelling videos into bite-size, shareable content across social media. Check out the organization's Twitter page and you'll see everything from how asteroid mining can help us live in space to how loneliness scrambles our thinking.

All this is sandwiched in between awesome food pics from TEDx events around the world.

3. Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle pioneered self-aware advertising in a quest for "no bullocks" messaging, and got it right.

For starters, the brand took the genius concept of not having enough cash to put together a Super Bowl ad, and produced one anyway. Without the funds to broadcast it to millions, Newcastle instead spread the ad around social media to poke fun at itself, its budget and the Super Bowl.

Essentially, Newcastle called bollocks on the idea of needing millions to effectively earn global recognition.

4. Starbucks

Unlike Newcastle, Starbucks probably has the budget for Super Bowl-worthy ads. However, the coffee company's stand-out feature on social media is how it has taken the idea of engagement to a whole new level.

For a while, Starbucks even gave customers the option to manage and reload their coffee cards on social media. The company also makes it easy to find nearby locations, look up international Starbucks spots and apply for jobs at its stores.

5. Denny’s

This dining franchise has quickly earned the reputation of being deliciously weird on social media.

Denny’s has mostly ditched the idea of traditional promotional specials and asking diners how they like their burgers and omelets. Instead, Denny's has worked to stand out from its competitors and attract a younger crowd.

6. Staples

The office-supply juggernaut gets plenty right, like educating and informing its audience and offering gift card giveaways and product promotions. Staples also thrills followers by making fun of office culture and the doldrums of cubicle life.

The chain recognizes that its followers are into more than just paper clips and office furniture. Staples engages that audience by asking questions like, “Who is your favorite “Star Wars” character?” alongside offering quirky videos on office party etiquette.

7. NASA

It’s not just geeky space talk and shuttle news on NASA’s social media channels. The organization's Mars Curiosity channel on Twitter wows followers with the latest mission to explore that planet's surface.

Its Rover takes photos of everything from two-story Martian dunes to silica deposits. It also turns out that those nerds at NASA also have a great sense of humor. One of their recent Tweets simply said, "I'm on a road trip to Mars' Bagnold Dunes. What's new with you?"

8. Pampers

Pampers knows its target audience well and embraces that nurturing parent vibe accordingly.

The company regularly hosts photo contests to encourage moms to upload photos of their babies and offer information on their rewards program. Pampers' #BetterForBaby campaign tugged on heartstrings by showing struggling families trying to make their babies’ lives better.

By the time we see how Pampers transforms their lives, social media followers are wiping away tears in secret.

9. GoPro

YouTube turned GoPro into a viral sensation with its extraordinary videos created by users wearing the tiny camera. GoPro understood that user-generated videos and the value they created wasn't just a trend. Scores of GoPro converts are creating amazing videos, from pelicans flying to skydivers taking their first jump. The videos are contagious and widely shared.

GoPro videos have become more than just people watching shaky adventure footage on YouTube. There’s even a GoPro channel on Virgin America Airlines and a streaming option right from Xbox.

10. XBox

XBox’s Twitter page resembles a buttoned-up corporation sending out news, promotions and slick advertising photos. Meanwhile, over at its @XboxSupport handle, gamers can get near-instantaneous answers to their issues.

That may be their most powerful strategy in social media marketing. In between tweets assuring users that it's working hard to answer everyone's questions, Xbox also offers resources such as phone numbers and common topics addressed online.

What are your favorite companies that are still rocking social media marketing? 

Source : http://bit.ly/1P5QSnO

Simply Fresh !

The Secret to Predicting Startup Success in 2016

When it comes to investing in startups, one thing is clear ... nobody knows the outcome. This can change that.

What's the best way to measure a startup?

Profit is non-existent for most startups. Even revenue can be elusive at the early stages. And what's the magic number for users or customers? 100? 10,000? 100,000?

In the book Startup Wealth: How the Best Angel Investors Make Money in Startups, Josh Maher interviews many legendary investors including Brad Feld, Mark Suster, Catherine Mott, Christopher Mirabile, Allan May, Joanne Wilson, and more. What heuristics did they use to know whether or not to invest in a startup?

Right now the answer is all over the board. There are no standards. Some people invest purely based on their relationship with the founders and do little to no due diligence. Others spend months or even years tracking a startup before taking the plunge.

I'd argue that Net Promoter Score (NPS) should be a required foundational metric behind measuring startups of every size. If you are a startup founder, it should be used as a KPI. If you are an angel investor, you should request it for due diligence. And if you are a venture capitalist, you should be requesting your entire portfolio to be reporting NPS figures to you.

Here's why:

Universal Applicability

Whether you are running a consulting company or a high tech mobile app... whether you have just one customer or tens of thousands ... whether you have no revenue or millions in profit ... you can still run NPS campaigns.

That's because fundamentally all businesses have customers. Even if you don't have revenue yet (maybe you are still building out your user base) you still have users. And with users you can have an NPS score.

With NPS, you ask just one question: How likely (from 0 to 10) are you to recommend my product or service to a friend or colleague? As long as you have some kind of product or service, you can measure NPS.

This makes NPS an ideal key performance indicator if you are trying to evaluate a startup.

TIP #1: Don't fret about the exact score.

If your potential investment is running an NPS campaign for the first time, the chances are that their score is not going to be that great. Many products find that their first score is not what they expect. That's what makes NPS such a powerful survey technique. It gives you an honest assessment of how well you are turning users into fans.

You might be hoping that they are in the high +70's like Apple. But as long as they are positive (and not net-negative), it should not be raising any big red flags at this point.

(After all, the real power of NPS is in the follow-up process)

The score is just a starting point on a journey.

So if you aren't overly concerned with the NPS score, how do you use NPS as a metric for evaluating a startup? Good question! That brings us to our second point.

Honest Customer Feedback

Most investors ask for customer references as part of the diligence process before investing. But this has always confused me. Whenever you ask for a reference, the people given as references are intrinsically likely to tell you good things, since they are often friends with the person in the first place.

But ideally, you would want a way to get a more critical eye for some honest customer feedback rather than just talking to the one or two best references that a startup can provide you.

If you have an NPS campaign as part of due diligence, spend most of your time evaluating the individual responses rather than obsessing about the overall score. And if you are not given all the individual responses, insist on seeing them.

The second question in a NPS survey is: What was the biggest reason for having given that score?

This open-ended question lets customers praise and vent about what they care about most. Reading through these responses will give you the most independent and honest feedback you can get when evaluating a startup.

Often, these responses will include the best and worst of a startup. People who love the service will tell you why they love it. People who are having trouble with the service will tell you why they are having trouble. Those problem areas can then be used as starting points for further diligence.

Many people underestimate how powerful NPS is, especially because it is so simple to implement with just two quick questions. But done correctly, these two questions really are the only two questions that need to be asked.

Implicit Accountability

Although I've already said that the first NPS score doesn't matter, I don't want you to come away with the impression that none of the NPS scores matter.

In fact, tracking NPS scores over time is a fantastic way to audit that progress is being made to improve the product or service.

After the first NPS campaign, you will know the top three biggest problem areas. The next time an NPS campaign is sent, if the same problems come up again in the same frequency (or worse), then it is a sign that something is deeply wrong.

Ideally, as an investor in startups, you should be able to keep track of all your portfolio's NPS scores over time. Comparing them to each other is a possible way to keep an eye on the investments that might need more of your attention. However, a better indicator is to make sure that all of your portfolio's NPS scores are steadily improving over time.

No other score that I know of can provide this kind of warning system no matter the underlying business model or source of revenue. NPS gives you a tool that uniquely can predict breakout success or imminent failure for venture capitalists.

 

Implementing NPS as a key performance indicator can easily be done whether you are a startup founder, an angel investor or a venture capitalist. And done properly, the results can be amazing. For example, after we implemented just one sales technique into our NPS process at Promoter.io, we were able to increase MRR by 32%. You can even use NPS to drive a marketing campaign. So add this tool to your diligence worksheet and ensure that all the startups you work with start tracking it today.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OCrAt6

4 Simple but Effective Ways To Harness Creativity

We always can use some more creativity in our lives. Whether you’re running a massive company or just looking to take on some do it yourself projects at home, being creative is a form of self-expression and is the backbone behind productivity and success.

To me, creativity goes hand in hand with productivity and we all have our different ways to show it. Creativity is not limited to those in the arts, but it is the driving force behind your best work no matter what form it may be. For some people, creativity comes more naturally than it does for others, but there are ways to help give your creativity a little nudge in the right direction.

Here are 4 ways  to help harness your creativity

1. Get up and move around

Motion creates emotion. And emotion is critical in your creative process. No matter if you’re a writer, musician or putting together a new budget proposal, to get the best out of your work you need that bit of emotion and passion to put everything you have into it. Since a majority of our time is spent sitting down this is a good time to get up and move. It might just be a quick walk or jumping jacks, the point is when you do get up and move that motion will translate into a better energy that you can put towards your work.

2. Read or watch something inspirational

This can work a few ways. Firstly, it is beneficial whenever you hit a rut and feel you’re drained on a creative level. Having things to turn to that inspire and motivate you are a great way to get back on track. It can be as simple as putting a playlist of inspiring music together or a collection of youtube videos that you find motivating.

Watching, reading or listening to inspirational things first thing each day can also be a good way to set up your creative process for the day. It starts the day on that creative note which can lead you down a more productive path as the day goes on.

“If you can dream it you can do it.” – Walt Disney

3. Get more exercise

This will be different to the first point which is about trying to break out of little ruts by generating quick emotion. Consistent exercise can lead to more consistent creativity. Research from the Leiden University in the Netherlands, found that those who exercised four times a week were able to think more creatively than those who were sedentary.

This has a double-pronged effect as when you do need those little short term bursts as shown in the first point your body is more able to adapt to a creative place. The exercise has the ability to help strengthen that creative muscle along with your actual ones!

4. Refer back to your best work

You may have dozens of examples of your own creativity at it’s best or even just a handful. The point is you know you can be creative and have no doubt fired on all cylinders at some point. When you feel you are lacking in creativity go back to some of your best stuff to get a reminder that, not only can you be creative, but you know you will be again.

In whatever work you do sometimes the best inspiration can come from yourself. It’s something I’ve been doing lately by going back to some of my best writing and blog posts as it gets me back into that creative mindset that was really working at the time.

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” – Albert Einstein

You are going to hit creative ruts from time to time, that’s just a fact. The best thing to take away here is to simply realize that. When you can come to terms in realizing periods of non-creativity are not the end of the world, and that you will break through them, it sets you up for future success.

Like athletes who do the same pre-game ritual day in and day out so it goes with the person who depends on creativity in order to be productive. Creating a routine, and some things to fall back on during those dry spells, helps to create a dynamic where you are more easily able to snap out of it and get back on the track to real creativity and progress.

Source : http://bit.ly/1Y2XHN4

10 Things Every Online Business Owner Should Know For 2016

Tick… tick… tick… 2015 is winding down faster every day. Very soon, we will be welcoming 2016 and it’s now that time of the year when businesses start to revise their strategy and map out a way to conquer the New Year. 2015 was a great year for online businesses, with a total of $349.1 billion projected in total U.S. ecommerce sales (for perspective, that’s more than the entire GPD of Denmark in 2014).

If you want to succeed in online business in 2016, here are 10 factors you absolutely must take note of:

Prepare a Mobile Strategy

Mobile is quickly becoming one of the biggest forces we’ve seen since the internet, and its importance keeps growing on a daily basis. Research shows tha tmobile is expected to influence ecommerce sales to the tune of $76.79 billion in 2015, and that a quarter of all US retail sales, or a whopping $1 trillion+ in ecommerce sales, are influenced by mobile in 2015 alone.

Whether it is in form of direct sales, or the influence it has on potential customers’ research before doing business with you, mobile strategy can no longer be pushed back in 2016; it is getting to a stage where you either have a mobile strategy or see your sales slowly evaporate.

In an attempt to emphasize the importance of being mobile-optimized in 2015, Google updated it’s algorithm to start penalizing sites that are not mobile friendly;research shows that a massive 46.6% of non-mobile friendly pages were affected by the update.

Start Blogging

If you did not blog in 2015, you’re already way behind; research shows that a massive 77 percent of internet users read blogs and that small businesses that blog generate 126% more leads and have 97% more inbound links than businesses that do not blog.

It’s important to note that blogging does not just mean having a blog installed; you actually have to keep your blog updated. My next point addresses this.

Blog Frequently

Exactly how often should you blog in 2016? For a long time it’s been difficult to establish the right blogging frequency, but not anymore; the kind folks at Hubspot went ahead to survey 13,500+ of their users and came to the conclusion that more is better. Essentially, the Hubspot research established the following:

• Companies that published 16+ blog posts monthly got almost 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published between 0 – 4 blog posts monthly.
• Companies that published 16+ blog posts monthly got about 4.5 times more leads than companies that published less than 4 blog posts monthly.

It’s been established, and from a credible source, that publishing 16 or more articles monthly on your blog is the sweet spot. Now, develop a content schedule and start blogging!

Document Your Content Marketing Strategy

Everybody keeps raving about content strategy, but research shows that a good number of companies utilizing content marketing aren’t recording any gains due to their content marketing use. Does this mean that content marketing doesn’t work? No, but the answer lies in something more subtle; a documented strategy.

Research by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs found that the success of your content marketing can be determined by the type of documentation you have; the CMI and MarketingProfs study found that 60 percent of companies that document their strategy get results from content marketing, compared to a minuscule 7 percent of companies without a strategy. In other words, having no content marketing strategy increases your chances of failure by 94 percent while having a documented strategy increases your chances of success by 60 percent.

Upgrade Your Website Speed

According to Aliesha from Umbrellar, “47 percent of consumers expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds, and 40 percent will abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds”.

Take that! A whopping 47 percentof potential customers expect your website to load within 2 seconds, and as high as 40 percent of people will reconsider doing business with you if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load. While that might seem surprising, don’t be too surprised because our attention spans keep getting shorter, and recent research from Microsoft shows that our attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish.

If your website is slow in 2016, you’ll lose a lot of business. Fix things by getting a good web host; for comparison, this article on Hosting Facts reviews dozens of web hosts by their average page load time and their data can serve as a benchmark when deciding on what web host to use.

Position Your Content Front and Center

After a recent leak of their “Quality Guidelines” document (a document handed to “Quality Raters” to help Google evaluate search results, the outcome of which eventually influences Google’s algorithm changes), Google decided to publicly release the document. One of the key factors Google uses to rank content is how prominent the content is on the site that hosts the content; essentially, content that is front and center at the top of your page will get ranked more than content that is hidden behind a scroll or ads.

By positioning your content front and center, you can actually guarantee that you’ll get more results from your content marketing efforts.

Speed Will Increasingly Drive Online Sales

We’ve examined the importance of website speed earlier, but it’s important to also examine the importance of product delivery speed; research projected same-day delivery revenue to increase to more than $620 million in 2015, a 6X increase from 2014, and available data shows that this will only keep increasing.

As our attention span keeps decreasing, and new technology keeps serving our short attention spans, we expect to get things faster; if possible, we want it “now and here”. Some of the biggest ecommerce giants, like Amazon, are cashing in on this by emphasizing same-day and faster delivery.

Focus on delivering your customer’s orders faster and you’ll be able to capture a lot more sales.

Indentify and Capitalize on Big Shopping Days

Black Friday, Super Saturday, Cyber Monday, etc, are big days that can result in a huge revenue boost from businesses that learn to capitalize on them. Data from Adobe’s Digital Index reveals that total online sales from Cyber Monday in 2015 rose to $3.07 billion, a 16 percent increase from the previous year; this beat expert forecast of a 12 percent increase in sales. This was dwarfed by a similar event in China, known as “Single’s Day”, in which a single company, Alibaba, generated a massive $14.3 billion in a single day in 2015.

Whether it is in China or in the U.S., available data points to the fact that big sales day are big sales day, and are often major revenue drivers for some of the world’s biggest companies. Grow your business by identifying these big sales days, preparing for and capitalizing on them.

The Customer is the King

With the advent of the internet, it is becoming increasingly clear that the customer owns the real power. Research shows that 78 percent of consumers have bailed on a transaction due to poor customer support, and that a typical business will only hear from 4 percent of its dissatisfied customers. In other words, if you suck at customer support it’ll cost you a lot of sales in 2016, and a very insignificant portion of your customers will reach out to complain.

Invest more resources and time into customer support and reap the rewards.

Embrace Personalized Marketing

Long done are the days when companies get away with being out of touch with the realities of their customers; whether it is with your email or marketing strategy, you can get more bangs for your bucks by developing a personalized marketing plan. Research shows that you can get up to a 208 percent increase in conversion rate from your emails by sending targeted emails over batch-and-blast emails. The same goes for every area of your marketing.

Focus on delivering a personalized experience for your users and watch your sales go through the roof.

Conclusion

How prepared are you for 2015? What strategies do you have for increasing your online sales? Kindly share your thoughts in the comments below.

Source : http://bit.ly/1Y1ncOZ

4 Steps to Identify Your Target Market

 If you are getting ready to launch a startup, or you are preparing to add a new product or service to your list of offerings, you must have a target customer profile mapped out and clearly defined. Unless you prefer sending your marketing dollars straight to the trashcan, of course.

A lot of startups fail – that’s not news. But, a lot of them fail because they did not define their target market and failed to learn the in and outs of it.

So if you don’t want to end up in the same boat, try applying these 4 steps.

Develop a Profile of People Who Will Purchase Your Product or Service

Begin with creating a simple list of the people who would want or need what you wish to sell the most. Once you have your list, you can begin dividing the people into categories. The categories you use will depend on a number of factors. For example:

• Are you B2B or B2C?
• Do you sell a luxury service, or something that is a necessity?
• You could divide by gender, geographic location, market (retailers, distributors, consumers, wholesalers), income, or any number of categories.

Once you have your categories, you can begin collecting data for each one. Are the people in a particular category married or unmarried? Do they have disposable income? What are their politics? Do they travel? If you don’t feel comfortable making these assumptions yourself, you could do a little market research by using surveys and polls to collect data. Ultimately, you should have a few different customer profiles.

Identify the Customer Profile Who Wants or Needs What You Sell The Most

Once you have your list of profiles you can sort them in priority order. Essentially, you want to identify the profile that is most likely to have the problem that your product or service solves, and is most likely to have the ability to purchase your product or service. Then categorize your other profiles in order after that.

“When considering who is most likely to have the problem your products or services can solve, don’t just think in terms of physical need. Stress, comfort, reputation, and vanity are also things you should consider as needs when identifying your target customer. Remember that luxury and entertainment products solve problems as well” – says Harsha Kiran, CEO of BargainFox.

Another thing to take into consideration is which customer profile has the most to lose if they do not find a solution to their problem. This is very important, because it can be used as a sales and marketing angle when you target that particular group.

Look at Your Customer Profiles and Determine Which Ones Aren’t Having Their Needs Met

Here is what you have identified so far. You know which customer profiles have the most to lose if they do not find a solution to their problem. You know which customer profiles are most likely to have the problem that you solve and also have the ability to buy your product. You also know their interests, values, hobbies, etc.. The next thing to determine is which customers aren’t being reached by your competition.

The best way to deal with competition is to avoid it altogether. This means identifying untapped markets, so you don’t have to fight for your space. Take a look at your competitors marketing efforts. Who are they going after in their ads? If they blog or are active on social media, who are their posts trying to connect with? What about their branding? Who is it designed to impress? If you see a customer profile on your list that is being largely ignored by your competition that could be your sweet spot.

Pick Your Primary Target Customer Profile

Ultimately, the group that you target with your marketing efforts should fall into as many of the following categories as possible:

• Most likely to have the problem that you solve;
• Able to afford your solution;
• Has the most to lose if they do not find a solution to their problem; and
• Not being targeted by your competition.

Once you’ve made this identification, you can use the information you have gathered to tailor your marketing to reach that audience.

Source :  http://bit.ly/1NdzJXd