Content Marketing | Oracle Marketing Cloud 10 Thu, 18 Jul 2019 02:55:04 +0000 FeedCreator 1.7.3 Why Videos Are Important for Your Content Marketing Strategy <p>Visual <a href="" target="_blank">content</a> is taking over the web. First it was photos and GIFs, and now it&rsquo;s video. According to some estimates, video will account for as much as 80% of all web traffic by 2019. As if that wasn&rsquo;t enough of an incentive to start producing more video content as part of your <a href="" target="_blank">content marketing strategy</a>, here are three more good reasons:</p> <strong>#1: Video Content Will Boost Your Search Results</strong> <p>The more video content you produce, the higher you are likely to appear in search results. There are actually two ways of thinking about this. The first is the most obvious &ndash; you will rank higher in Google search results if there is&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">video content</a>&nbsp;on your home page. According to&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Comscore</a>, the very act of adding a video &ndash; no matter how good or bad &ndash; to your website will increase your chances of a first page Google search result by a factor of 53. That&rsquo;s right, you&rsquo;re exponentially increasing your chances of being found online just by adding video.</p> <p>Also,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">YouTube</a>&nbsp;is now the second-largest search engine on the web. If you&rsquo;re regularly seeding YouTube with new video clips on topics that people care about, then you&rsquo;re likely to be found near the top of YouTube search results. Say, for example, you&rsquo;re a software company. Simply making a &ldquo;how to&rdquo; video about how to do something very simple with this software&nbsp; &ndash; like getting your photos off your iPhone and freeing up storage space &ndash; can be the secret to racking up tens of thousands of views (if not more).</p> <strong>#2: Video Content Leads to Higher Engagement and Conversion Rates</strong> <p>You&rsquo;re not just getting more visibility with video content; you&rsquo;re also getting higher engagement rates from your fans. In layman&rsquo;s terms, people are much more likely to share, like, or re-post video content than any other type of content. And it isn&rsquo;t even close.</p> <p>The good news is that it&rsquo;s becoming easier and easier to measure all the metrics that matter for video &ndash; like click-through rates, drop-off points, total views, partial views, and conversion rates. Right now,<strong>&nbsp;71% of marketers say that video conversion rates outperform those of any other type of content.</strong>&nbsp;Simply stated, people are more likely to buy from you if they watch a video about your products.</p> <strong>#3: Video Makes It Easier to Adopt a Mobile-First Marketing Strategy</strong> <p>Today&rsquo;s <a href="" target="_blank">digital reality</a> is that people are consuming more and more content on their phones, and the lion&rsquo;s share of that content is video. If you want to be seen by people, you need to have the type of content that&rsquo;s going to show up on their phones.<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;Facebook&rsquo;s</a>&nbsp;embrace of video has only accelerated that trend, because Facebook&rsquo;s algorithm makes it more likely that video content will pop up in someone&rsquo;s news feed.</p> <p>Thus, if someone is walking around, head down, scrolling through their Facebook updates, it&rsquo;s much more likely that you&rsquo;ll capture their attention if your videos are popping up in their news feed. And so it goes with just about every other <a href="" target="_blank">social media</a> platform &ndash; whether it&rsquo;s Twitter, Instagram or <a href="" target="_blank">Snapchat</a>, all of the action and innovation is happening around video.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s an old adage in the marketing industry: &ldquo;Go where the customers are.&rdquo; Right now, the customers are on <a href="" target="_blank">mobile</a>, and they&rsquo;re consuming mobile video content at a prodigious rate. If you want to be relevant, you simply need to make videos part of your content marketing strategy.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</u>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Content is the lifeblood of a marketing campaign. Videos are one way to get capture eyeballs, but you also need to have a blog to build your reputation as a thought leader. Have you considered video blogs and what more you can do to make your blog a destination for your audience? See how to &ldquo;Do More with B2B Blogging.&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">Read the guide.</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Mon, 15 Jul 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Chris Zilles What Marketers Can Learn from Netflix’s Bandersnatch <p>Two warnings on this post. First, if you haven&rsquo;t seen Bandersnatch and you&rsquo;re a marketer, do it (I&rsquo;ll do my best to avoid any real spoilers in this post). Second, as a marketer, I tend to search for the marketing lesson in just about everything.</p> <p>For those who haven&rsquo;t watched Bandersnatch or think it&rsquo;s some sort of new Band-Aid or chocolate bar, let me fill you in quickly. Earlier this year, Netflix released a new installment in its Black Mirror franchise, and this one is interactive. Connecting that word <em>interactive</em> with my reference to <em>marketing</em>, you might already see where this is going. The term <em>interactive</em> is likely one of many buzzwords among your marketing team as we look for ways to make content experiences more engaging. We may struggle to figure this out day-to-day, but Netflix nails it with Bandersnatch. It is truly a different viewing experience; as the audience, you get to determine what will happen next. The film embodies the childhood format of controlling the path in a Choose Your Own Adventure book (remember those?!).</p> <p>I won&rsquo;t ruin the story, although to be honest, the plot is less impressive than the interactive element. But I&rsquo;ll give you an example of a choice the film presents us early on to warm us up to this new way of experiencing content. The main character, Stefan Butler, is given a choice by his dad for breakfast: Sugar Puffs or Frosties. In this moment, the screen freezes and an overlay pops up that displays our options. If we choose Sugar Puffs, so does Stefan, and vice versa. I promise you, this choice doesn&rsquo;t really impact the movie, but in the moment after I selected Frosties, I started to wonder what would have happened if I had chosen differently.</p> <p><img alt="" src="" style="width: 1140px; height: 700px;" /></p> <p>As the film continues, the choices become more interesting and, to warn you, a bit too gruesome at times for my liking. Although the genre wasn&rsquo;t something I&rsquo;d typically watch, I was hooked. Why? Because I felt like I was in control. I was discovering content in a manner that felt tailored to my interests and preferences. It was rewarding. As the movie continued, more choices started to feel more important and I started to feel powerful. I&rsquo;ll come back to some interesting elements in the movie, but first&hellip;</p> What Does This Have to Do with Marketing? <p>Why was it that, as kids, Choose Your Own Adventure books never made it far beyond the book? Well, back then our Betamax or VHS player (you can Google &ldquo;Betamax&rdquo; if you were born after 1987) was impressive if it could record. So as marketers, other than telling compelling stories, we couldn&rsquo;t rely on video or other forms of content to adapt. But with many recent technological advancements of our phones, smart TVs, and the web, so much more has become possible.</p> <p>As these advancements make their way into our consumer lives, it&rsquo;s only natural for buyers to start to expect similar experiences in every aspect of what they do. Netflix first destroyed Blockbuster, and next to fall is likely&mdash;if not already&mdash;cable television. Spotify challenged Apple&rsquo;s previous reign over the brick-and-mortar music store by delivering recommended playlists based on what we listened to last. Many of us stand back and say: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a consumer product; marketing can&rsquo;t be that dynamic!&rdquo; Why not? In fact, I would argue that consumers are starting to expect choice and personalization more than ever, whether it&rsquo;s a retail purchase or a B2B content path.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> Ensuring Every Path Has a Story <p>Back to Bandersnatch. As mentioned, the cereal choice is just the first of many you&rsquo;ll make. Most choices have a unique twist that keeps the story going, but at one point, I must have chosen a path the director thought was boring. After I made my selection, I hit a brick wall. Well, not an actual wall, but the movie just ended&mdash;it felt premature and I was disappointed. The movie gave me another choice though: Do you want to end now, or do you want to go back and try a different path?</p> <p>This brought me back to marketing and how we deliver content. It reminded me of all the times we link someone to a great asset. We have them hooked, and then, well, they hit a brick wall. We don&rsquo;t allow them to continue down a path of engagement and discovery. Yes, we hope like in the movie they will jump back a few steps to our home page, resource page, or the email we just sent, looking for another link, but how often do they actually get there without that <em>squirrel </em>moment of distraction that sends them down a different path?</p> <p>Most of the choices in Bandersnatch lead you down one of two intriguing directions where another scene&mdash;or more content, if you will&mdash;awaits. I&rsquo;m not sure if the team just didn&rsquo;t like the way some of the paths ended, or if they wanted us to appreciate the importance of a meaningful next step.</p> <p>As a marketer, it reinforced to me how essential it is that no asset we deliver leads to a dead end. I wrote a <a href="" target="_blank">post</a> on this back in 2016. But now in 2019, this is more important than ever. When we deliver an online ad and someone clicks through to a content asset, we shouldn&rsquo;t high-five. Okay, we can pat ourselves on the back, but the real success is when we line someone up to continue to purchase from us. That is when it&rsquo;s time to high-five, pour some champagne, or do whatever it is your marketing team does to celebrate success.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>The example above is just one of many of how we link to content today. Our marketing emails link to content, our social posts take us to content, and even our sales reps are embedding content in their follow-ups. As you watch Bandersnatch, consider whether you are enticing your audience with a couple of choices that get them to click &ldquo;next.&rdquo;</p> <p>As I said, the plot wasn&rsquo;t for me so I&rsquo;m not going to lie to you and say I watched 10 different versions of the movie. But I was curious, so I searched and found the following flow chart of Bandersnatch&rsquo;s different paths (warning: spoiler alert here if you dig in).</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><img alt="" src="" style="width: 650px; height: 2132px;" /></p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-650c0092-7fff-c656-63cf-1855d635d3bf">I laughed </span>at the similarity between this movie plot and our marketing automation canvases. Both look complicated to the untrained eye, but it&rsquo;s really simple &ldquo;if this, then that&rdquo; logic. Most of us marketers have trained ourselves to anticipate what to do next when it comes to sending emails, but how many of us do the same with our blogs, videos, and white papers? We often simply link to a page filled with content sorted by format, or worse, chronological dates. We are living in a world where our audience expects us to keep them at the edge of their seats, like Bandersnatch did. Are you living up to those expectations? Click through your content and see if you&rsquo;re hooked to go past the first or second post. <a href="" target="_blank">IDG reports</a> that buyers need an average of seven assets before they&rsquo;re ready to buy. Why wait to send seven emails when we can create a more engaging path and accelerate our buyer&rsquo;s journey? Let&rsquo;s take a cue from Bandersnatch and start creating <em>even more</em> personalized content experiences.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</u></p> <p>Looking to do content marketing with more of a spark? You&rsquo;ll want to lay out a strong strategy and have the right KPIs mapped out to measure your success. Find out how to &ldquo;Do More with Content Marketing.&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">Check out the blog</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Fri, 05 Jul 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Randy Frisch Content Marketing Plus Email Marketing: Synergies, Optimizations, and Trends <p>As a 13-year veteran of <a href="" target="_blank">content marketing</a>, I&rsquo;m biased, but I think it&rsquo;s fair to say that content marketing is a powerful way to:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Demonstrate that your company is composed of experts in their field</p> </li> <li> <p>Start, shape, and contribute to valuable and important industry conversations</p> </li> <li> <p>Help your customers maximize their positive outcomes and avoid negative ones</p> </li> <li> <p>Attract and engage prospects and familiarize them with your brand</p> </li> </ul> <p>As great as <a href="" target="_blank">content marketing</a> is, a &ldquo;build it and they will come&rdquo; philosophy only gets you so far nowadays...and that&rsquo;s where <a href="" target="_blank">email marketing</a> comes in.</p> <p>Email marketing helps get your content in front of more people&mdash;specifically, your most loyal customers and most interested prospects. But email is about so much more than just content amplification. Here are some ways that email marketing makes your content marketing work harder for you:</p> <strong>Identify the Consumers of Your Content</strong> <p>So many of the people that consume brand content are anonymous. You can see the traffic and the views, but you don&rsquo;t know who they are, which means you can&rsquo;t connect them to other activities and really start to understand them. Email gives you a way to identify these people.</p> <p>&ldquo;Consider podcast listeners,&rdquo; says Otilia Antipa, Principal B2B Consultant at Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting. &ldquo;These subscribers can be die-hard fans, but they still fall in that bucket of &lsquo;unknown&rsquo; contacts. Driving them to sign up for newsletters and engage through email allows you to get to know them and build a higher level of trust and personalized experiences.&rdquo;</p> <p>But email is not just about identifying people. It&rsquo;s about what that allows you to do next.</p> <strong>Get the Right Content in Front of the Right People...</strong> <p>Chances are that your company produces or has created a lot of content. Not everyone is going to be interested in every piece of content that you create. That&rsquo;s a problem that email is well suited to fix in three ways:</p> <ul> <li> <p>First, preference-driven dynamic content. When people subscribe, consider giving them the opportunity to tell you the content topics they&rsquo;re most interested in. Then you can dynamically populate the emails sent to them with that content.</p> </li> <li> <p>Second, AI-driven dynamic content. A more adaptive solution, using AI allows your dynamic content strategy to adjust to your individual subscribers&rsquo; changing interests.</p> </li> <li> <p>And third&mdash;and probably most common approach&mdash;creating different newsletters or email streams that cater to particular interests. For example, <em>The New York Times</em> offers 67 newsletters on everything from parenting to breaking news, and book reviews to news about California.</p> </li> </ul> <p>&ldquo;Themed or targeted newsletters is big right now,&rdquo; says Kim Roman, Senior Principal B2B Consultant at Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting. &ldquo;Sending a generic newsletter about company updates to your entire email list is not going to provide the best results. Categorize your content&mdash;whether that be by product or service, industry or market&mdash;and offer your subscribers the opportunity to pick and choose what they receive.<strong>&rdquo;</strong></p> <p>In talking about the <em>Times</em>&rsquo; newsletter strategy, <a href="" target="_blank">Contently&rsquo;s Jordan Teicher said in a blog post</a>, &ldquo;When it comes to newsletters, email has essentially become the new homepage.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s a great way to think about what a tailored or focused newsletter can do for your audience. Email helps your content find the ideal audience rather than forcing your audience to search for the right content for themselves.</p> <p>But content marketing can do more than engage. It can inform and educate at the moments when it&rsquo;s needed most.</p> <strong>...At the Right Time in the Journey</strong> <p>Many <a href="" target="_blank">B2B</a> and <a href="" target="_blank">B2C</a> brands have amazing opportunities to align content not only with personas but with buyer journeys.</p> <p>&ldquo;Our clients who are finding the most success with content marketing and email are taking a holistic approach,&rdquo; says Roman, who adds that these brands are trying to answer the following three questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>What are my various customer personas?</p> </li> <li> <p>What is the journey I want each persona to take?</p> </li> <li> <p>What content should I be providing along each journey for each persona?</p> </li> </ol> <p>&ldquo;They are looking at email marketing not just from a messaging/timing perspective and throwing in content where it fits,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;but they&rsquo;re driving a <a href="" target="_blank">content strategy</a> to ensure that they have content at every possible point. Content mapping and journey mapping are both part of the process and these best-in-class clients are focusing on aligning the two.&rdquo;</p> <p>&ldquo;To accomplish this, brands are taking a cross-channel, cross-departmental approach,&rdquo; says Otilia Antipa, Principal B2B Consultant at Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting. &ldquo;The clients that are the most successful bring everyone to the table and break down internal silos so they can provide a seamless experience across web, mobile, social, and email.&rdquo;</p> <p>Mack Trucks is a great example of a client that aligns <a href="" target="_blank">cross-channel marketing</a> strategies with consumer behaviour, says Antipa. &ldquo;They plan a strategy around the user journey,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;and optimize the various customer touchpoints based on behavioral data. This means taking a cue from the data you already have and the data you acquire in real time.&rdquo;</p> <p>For example, for the awareness stage of their Electric LR campaign, Mack Trucks created a video about how their Electric LR truck is helping New York City achieve its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. They have that <a href="" target="_blank">video on YouTube</a> and on the <a href="" target="_blank"> landing page for the Electric LR</a>, and they used social media and email drive traffic to that video. Visitors who sign up for email updates about the Electric LR and subscribers who click through content about it are then advanced to the consideration stage and presented with that content.</p> <p>&ldquo;Executing on this alignment is much easier if you have content marketing tools that integrate with your marketing automation platform,&rdquo; says Cristal Foster, Senior Cloud Consultant at Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting.</p> <p>&ldquo;For example, <a href="" target="_blank">Oracle Content Marketing</a> is a collaborative content marketing tool that empowers content marketers to build content by persona,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It not only empowers the content marketer to push content across multiple channels, but Oracle Content Marketing also allows users to push their content directly into <a href="" target="_blank">Oracle Eloqua</a> or <a href="" target="_blank">Oracle Responsys</a>, seamlessly giving them the ability to have consistent content across channels.</p> <strong>Current Trends in Email-Powered Content Marketing</strong> <p>In addition to those ways to get the most of this powerful combo, we&rsquo;re seeing a few trends in how brands are leveraging content marketing and email marketing:</p> <p><strong>1. Clearer email permissions on content download pages.</strong></p> <p>Because of hidden, obscured, and vague email opt-in consents and requests on report download form and webinar registration pages, subscribers who join email lists through these sources have traditionally been surprisingly high risk. That&rsquo;s because they just wanted the content, not the emails.</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)</a> has changed this dynamic in Europe, causing brands to at least modify their content gating strategies.</p> <p>&ldquo;While we always recommend consulting with your legal team on how to best approach your GDPR processes,&rdquo; says Roman, &ldquo;I have seen clients starting to enact very clear and succinct opt-in language on content downloads and invoking strict double opt-in processes to ensure compliance.&rdquo;</p> <p>While for most brands this will mean slower list growth, it also means more engaged subscribers and therefore better deliverability. &ldquo;Some of my clients have noticed higher engagement since implementing GDPR practices,&rdquo; says Foster. &ldquo;This should not come as a surprise since <a href="" target="_blank">GDPR</a> ensures that those that opted-in to hear from you, really want to hear from you.&rdquo;</p> <p><strong>2. More ungated content.</strong></p> <p>Instead of modifying their gating strategies, some brands have abandoned them altogether. For instance, instead of doing traditional webinars, Oracle&rsquo;s European operations now record many of them as videos and post them ungated.</p> <p>Many global brands have started adopting a GDPR approach to get ahead of the changes in privacy and permission laws in the US that have been churning since GDPR passed, such as <a href="" target="_blank">the California Consumer Privacy Act</a>. For instance, Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting is following the lead of our European business units in adopting an <a href="" target="_blank">on-demand video format for our webinars</a>.</p> <p>When doing content marketing in this manner, it&rsquo;s paramount that the content be aligned with your brand and its offerings. It&rsquo;s also important to provide next steps for your content consumers, including letting them know how to contact you, sign up for your newsletter, or to purchase your products or services.</p> <p><strong>3. More interactive email content.</strong></p> <p>Content on the web is often dynamic, animated, and interactive. More brands are bringing those same elements to their emails that contain or are promoting their content marketing.</p> <p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re seeing newsletters becoming more interactive and even gamified to elicit customer engagement,&rdquo; says Antipa. &ldquo;Newsletters are primarily informative or awareness-building content pieces, so adding elements to be more functional and customer-driven translates into a better experience. We&rsquo;ve seen clients embed countdown timers, gifs, and even real-time content pieces to further drive a primary call-to-action.&rdquo;</p> <p>Content marketing is powerful, and email marketing makes it even more powerful. Use email to get your content in front of the right prospects and customers at the right time. And leverage these latest trends to keep your edge.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</u></p> <p><strong>Need help with your content marketing and B2B email marketing strategy?</strong> Oracle Marketing Cloud Consulting has more than 500 of the leading marketing minds ready to help you to achieve more with the leading marketing cloud, including <strong>B2B strategists</strong> within our Expert Services Group.</p> <p><a href="" target="_blank">Learn more &rarr;</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Email Marketing Tue, 25 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Chad S. White What the Rise of the Robot Content Writer Means for Digital Marketers <p>In an effort to stay competitive, many media companies and news organizations are employing teams of robot reporters to crank out stories using very basic templates created by human editors. It started in the financial services industry, where churning out thousands of stories about quarterly earnings reports could be simplified by having&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">bots</a>&nbsp;write the stories instead of humans. And now these robot content writers are starting to show up in other areas as well, raising questions about what impact all this machine-generated content is going to have for the future of <a href="" target="_blank">digital content</a>.</p> <strong>The Pros of Robot Content Writers</strong> <p>Of course, the same media organizations that are laying off human reporters and journalists by the thousands are quick to say that the new techno-journalism is only going to improve the quality of&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">journalism</a>&nbsp;out there. Why have a star financial reporter, for example, focus on cranking out quarterly earnings reports, when that same reporter can be digging into stories, investigating the facts, and coming up with some truly sensational reporting?</p> <p>Moreover, it is true that some<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;AI-powered tools</a>&nbsp;could be very helpful at pointing out anomalies and patterns in the data, thereby alerting journalists to possible stories (or story angles) they might have missed. Plus, for news organizations trying to maintain their coverage of local community events, having robot reporters cover events like high school football or minor league baseball (as they are already doing now) could be an easy way to provide the type of local content that readers want to read.</p> <strong>The Cons of Robot Content Writers</strong> <p>That being said, there is certainly something to be said for these robot content writers further eroding the trust that people have in media organizations. The reason why some people are still willing to shell out monthly subscription rates to newspapers and magazines is because they are under the perception that the best human reporters and writers in the world are employed by those organizations.</p> <p>What if they find out, instead, that all the<a href="" target="_blank">&nbsp;political coverage</a>&nbsp;of a certain local campaign was auto-generated by robots? Or what if a non-standard press release fools robot financial reporters, thereby sending the stock price of a company crashing through the floor as investors rush to sell off their shares after a negative earnings article?</p> <strong>Lessons for Digital Marketers</strong> <p>In many ways, the problems being faced by journalists and news organizations are the same problems being faced by <a href="" target="_blank">digital marketers</a>. In short, how do you <a href="" target="_blank">make sense of all the data and information</a> out there, and then produce your own content that is actually going to attract eyeballs? The answer to that question now appears to be simple: &ldquo;bots.&rdquo; Automate as much as you can with your own bots, and whatever you can&rsquo;t automate, make sure that other bots can take what you&rsquo;ve written and run with it.</p> <p>Going forward, it&rsquo;s clear that AI technology is going to further blur the line between &ldquo;real news&rdquo; and &ldquo;<a href="" target="_blank">fake news</a>.&rdquo; If bots can generate the same types of stories as humans, then you can be sure that some people will figure out how to game the system. So, the next time you open up your social media news feed, just be aware that fake bot accounts generating fake bot stories (as well as &ldquo;deep fakes&rdquo;) are now very much part of the current digital landscape.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</u>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Blogs are a vital part of content marketing. How do you write blogs that attract attention and build your brand? Take a look at how you can &ldquo;<a href="" target="_blank">Do More with B2B Blogging</a>.&rdquo;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Mon, 17 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Chris Zilles Content Masterclass: Create Experiences that Wow and Convert <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span style="text-align: justify;">Think about your favorite cake. What makes it special? Maybe it&rsquo;s the icing or tasty filling. Maybe it&rsquo;s the chocolaty layers or extra moist texture. To you, this special cake tastes better than an average cake. It stands out because it has all the right elements. It&rsquo;s different. What if you could give this feeling to your customers? Luckily, with the right content and an amazing experience, you can.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Content makes the experience, so here is my recipe to make content that&rsquo;s irresistible: &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <strong>Step 1: Think Beyond Email</strong> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">In the traditional marketing funnel email reigns supreme. It&rsquo;s inexpensive, professional, and effective. But the game has changed, and we don&rsquo;t live in an email-only world. Our marketing content should reflect that. Content should live seamlessly across email, social media, search, direct mail, events, digital ads, web properties, mobile applications, and more. It&rsquo;s up to you to learn your customers&rsquo; tastes and where they like to consume content, then meet them there with the right experience. When catering your content across channels it&rsquo;s important to focus on context. If I provide a birthday cake to a couple at their wedding or a princess-themed cake to a teenage boy, the experience won&rsquo;t be good. It misses the mark and is not memorable in a positive way.&nbsp;</p> <p><img alt="" src="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; width: 275px; height: 193px; float: right;" /></p> <strong>Step 2: Exceptional Across Devices</strong> <p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">Just like channels have multiplied, the devices people use to consume content have multiplied. The principle here is to focus on not just what you deliver, but how you deliver it. Marketing content should be delicious wherever it is consumed, whether it be on a mobile device, a tablet, or desktop. The customer state of mind and intent can vary greatly depending on where content is being viewed. Between 50-60% of emails are now opened on a mobile device, yet not every email is designed with a mobile-first attitude. To make content exceptional across devices you can set a strategy of what is important to you and what is important to your customers. Customizing content by device can include wrapping it to fit the screen, swapping out images, hiding or showing certain elements, and even adapting the copy or call to action.&nbsp;</p> <strong>Step 3: Make It Personal</strong> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">Think of what happens when I take a generic cake and pipe your name on it. Is that personal? Does that evoke the same feeling as that special cake we talked about earlier? It doesn&rsquo;t. Just like a simple name doesn&rsquo;t make a generic cake any more special, adding a first name or company to content doesn&rsquo;t make it more relevant. Have I correctly interpreted your unique business challenge? Have I shared how my product or service solves that business challenge? <a href="" target="_blank">According to Gartner, companies that excel at personalization will outsell companies that don&rsquo;t by 20%</a>. True personalization is content that changes in the context of the customer profile, the unique problem and use case, the industry, and the customer maturity.&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;"><a href="" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="" style="width: 753px; height: 234px;" /></a></p> <strong>Step 4: Use Data</strong> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">To make content delicious and special, you need to know the passions, priorities, and preferences of your customers. This comes from having the right data. Because how can you make irresistible content if you don&rsquo;t know what people want, where they are, or who they are? Data isn&rsquo;t just about knowing customers, but also measuring content success in more meaningful ways. Most marketers still only use opens and clicks to measure the success of content. But if I bake you a cake and you just look at it or poke it, does that mean you consumed it, or enjoyed it? Not really. Better metrics for success are conversion to a desired action, the quality of engagement across multiple content touchpoints, and the impact content has on the bottom line.&nbsp;</p> <strong>Step 5:&nbsp; Get Creative!</strong> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">It turns out the &ldquo;B&rdquo; in <a href="" target="_blank">B2B</a> and<a href="" target="_blank"> B2C</a> doesn&rsquo;t stand for boring. Content stands out when it is exceptional and creative. This can come from vibrant and engaging copy, eye-popping images, emojis, gifs, carousels, interactivity, videos, and much, much more. The point here is to push your own limits and get beyond your comfort zone. Content can absolutely be brand-compliant while being engaging and memorable. We as people don&rsquo;t remember boring, abstract things very well. What we do remember are compelling visuals, novel and intriguing details, and a cohesive story. This is a higher standard, especially in B2B, but customers can tell the difference. Don&rsquo;t be a boring box of cake mix. Because we&rsquo;re not just marketers. We&rsquo;re artists creating experiences.&nbsp;</p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">So, what does this all mean? Creating compelling experiences is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. You have the power to make content special and delicious. It doesn&rsquo;t have to happen overnight, and you don&rsquo;t have to do everything at once. Elevating how you think about content is a great place to begin. Start small and apply a couple of&nbsp;the principles outlined above. As you do this, you will truly be creating special moments for your customers, not just campaigns.</p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Learn more about mastering content with the replay of our Modern Customer Experience 2019 session Content Masterclass.</p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px 240px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="" style="width: 200px; height: 113px;" /></a></p> <p style="margin: 0px 0px 9.5px; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">To learn more about Oracle Eloqua so you can create more compelling content and campaigns that convert, <a href="" target="_blank">contact us.</a></p> Content Marketing Oracle Marketing Cloud Product News Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:20:00 +0000 Wren Ludlow Emotion and Empathy: The Storytelling Keys to Content Marketing <p>People, of course, love storytelling. It holds them their interest and makes learning easier and more intuitive.&nbsp;</p> <p>How does this relate to marketing. Well, storytelling is the very essence of <a href="" target="_blank">content marketing</a>. You are telling the story of your brand and what it can do for customers.&nbsp;</p> <strong>Strategic Storytelling</strong> <p>Storytelling helps content marketers:</p> <ul> <li>Sell or market</li> <li>Share customer successes</li> <li>Create a sense of urgency</li> <li>Educate, coach, and mentor</li> <li>Entertain and amuse</li> <li>Energize, inspire, and spur to action</li> </ul> <p>What matters in storytelling and marketing is how you make people feel and what impression you leave them with. It can shape their image of your brand in people&#39;s minds and have your audience associate it with strong emotions that provoke them to action.&nbsp;</p> <p>Great storytelling relies upon emotion. It can make something that should be dull sing or make what sounds trivial seem epic and important. Empathy is the key. We all connect and feel for each other. By using content marketing to forge an <a href="" target="_blank">emotional bond with your customers</a>, you become more likely to earn their brand loyalty.</p> <p>Marketing is a conversation, and conversations almost always include storytelling. Look at it strategically.&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li>What emotions are you looking to stir with your content?</li> <li>Are you looking to educate your audience?</li> <li>Inspire or energize them?</li> <li>Are you informing them about the latest industry trends or software updates?</li> </ul> <p>Storytelling can help with all of that.&nbsp;</p> <p>Put together a strategy of what you want to achieve and how your content marketing can accomplish that.</p> <p>How do you know how well you are doing?</p> <p>Some customers might give you direct feedback, but you can always rely on your <a href="" target="_blank">metrics and data</a> to see if you have properly gauged what works with your customers.</p> <strong>Important Things to Remember about Storytelling</strong> <p>When it comes to <a href="" target="_blank">content marketing</a> and storytelling, it does not always have to come down to just written content. You have a variety of mediums to use and see which better suits your audience. You might try videos, podcasts, songs, demos, and more. And, written content can come in many forms:&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li><a href="" target="_blank">Emails</a></li> <li><a href="" target="_blank">Landing pages</a></li> <li>Ebooks</li> <li>White papers</li> <li><a href="" target="_blank">Text messages</a></li> <li><a href="" target="_blank">Social media posts</a></li> <li>Newsletters</li> <li>Scripts</li> <li>And more</li> </ul> <p>Do not limit your imagination and thinking. Let your metrics, instincts, and strategy guide you toward the content forms that will work best for your audience and business needs.</p> <p>As such, don&#39;t think that you need to be doing<a href="" target="_blank"> B2C</a> to harness the power of emotion and it isn&#39;t right for<a href="" target="_blank"> B2B.</a> Sometimes, you might be dealing with a mix of B2C and B2B, especially with the line between them blurring all the time. Besides, there is room for emotion in B2B, even if you are only pointing out how your brand can help make someone&#39;s life and job easier and aid them in achieving success. Ambition, having goals, wanting to do better at your endeavors, and relieving stress are all emotional things. Feel free to tell a story about them.&nbsp;</p> <p>Also of importance, remember that you can have the best content in the world, but it will mean nothing if its presentation is bad. So, your content, regardless of its form, needs to be easy to read, understand, listen to, see, and engage with.</p> <strong>What Goes into Every Story</strong> <p>Empathy makes us care for others and the people in stories. We understand and sympathize with them. We see ourselves in them. That allows emotions to stir us up and makes us understand the lesson or message you want to impart and causes us to take the action you wish us to.</p> <p>Thus, empathy and emotion must go into every story. They make good stories great and more memorable, and make content marketing more effective and powerful.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</u></p> <p>Find out more about the usefulness of storytelling and emotion in content creation and how they create a softer sell with <a href="" target="_blank">&ldquo;The Art of the Soft Sell in Content Creation and Inbound Marketing.&rdquo;</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Fri, 31 May 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Michael McNichols Why It’s Important to Start Podcasting for Your Business or Personal Brand <p>Podcasting has emerged as one of the most popular ways for brands to engage with their customers on a regular basis. While most people think of huge media companies &ndash; such as the&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">New York Times</a> or&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">NPR</a>&nbsp;&ndash; when it comes to podcasting, the reality is that any business or brand can very easily set up a podcast and make it possible for fans and consumers to download this content to their smartphones. With that in mind, here are four great reasons why it&rsquo;s important to start podcasting for your business or personal brand.</p> <strong>#1: Reach Fans, Followers, and Potential Customers 24/7</strong> <p>What makes podcasting so fundamentally different from other forms of <a href="">digital content</a> is that most people consume this content when they are away from their computers. Once you&rsquo;ve downloaded a <a href="" target="_blank">podcast</a>&nbsp;to your smartphone, you can listen to it as you work out, as you commute to work in the morning, or as you&rsquo;re walking around town doing errands. That gives brands a great way to engage with customers on a 24/7 basis.</p> <strong>#2: Develop Your Overall Brand Personality</strong> <p>In many ways, podcasts are just like talk radio back in the old days. For that reason, the most popular podcasts are almost always headed up by a popular personality. So, if your business or&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">personal brand</a>&nbsp;is thinking of getting into the podcast game, you&rsquo;ll definitely want to find one or more people within your company who can help to develop your overall brand personality.</p> <p>The good news is that this personality doesn&rsquo;t necessarily have to be a mega celebrity or top industry influencer. For example,&nbsp;<a href="" target="_blank">Barstool Sports</a>&nbsp;now has more podcast listeners than ESPN, thanks in large part to its unique (and often irreverent) approach to sports. In January 2019, the company had a cumulative reach of 7.9 million unique listeners, up from 4.3 million a year ago. Moreover, the company&rsquo;s podcasts were downloaded 37.9 million times in January 2019, up from 19.9 million a year ago.</p> <strong>#3: Bring in Advertising Dollars</strong> <p>Just like you can monetize your YouTube video content, you can also monetize your podcast content. Podcast content is free, so the way that you monetize it is with ads. In 2018, total podcast revenue was $514.5 million.&nbsp;<strong>At Barstool Sports, for example, 50% of the company&rsquo;s advertising revenue comes from podcasting. In 2018, the company brought in $15 million in podcasting revenue from 25 different shows.</strong></p> <strong>#4: Go Deep in Different Verticals</strong> <p>While the most popular podcasts are general interest shows designed to appeal to large audiences, the reality is that the ease and convenience of creating podcast content makes it possible to go very deep in very specific niches or verticals. Barstool Sports, for example, has 25 different shows, while The Ringer has 28 shows and Vox Media has 75 shows.</p> <strong>Final Thoughts</strong> <p>If done right, podcasting can be more than a corporate vanity project &ndash; it can be a way to reach new customers; develop your overall brand personality, bring in new advertising revenue; and super-serve your best customers by going <a href="">very deep in content areas</a> that matter the most to them.</p> <p>&nbsp;<u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Podcasts are only one touchpoint in which you can engage customers. What other channels and platforms might you utilize? How do you intertwine them into one marketing strategy? Learn more about <a href="" target="_blank">&ldquo;Cross-Channel Fundamentals&rdquo;</a> in order to keep up with customers no matter what channel or platform they prefer.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Wed, 29 May 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Chris Zilles How to Craft a Winning Content Strategy <p>A <a href="">content strategy</a> acts as your roadmap. It tells you where you are with your content, where you want to be, and how you intend to get there. To understand what your content needs to be, you have to understand your audience. This means looking at what worked before, what didn&rsquo;t, and the lessons you learned from it.</p> <p>What do <a href="">your metrics say</a>? What feedback have you heard from your prospects and customers?</p> <p>What data do you have on your audience? What it does it say about them?</p> <p>Who are they? What do they want? What are their backgrounds and jobs? What business problems can you solve for them, and how can you let them know?</p> <p>There is no standard way to create a content strategy. Businesses use whatever works best for them. Some will write a strategy out in a word document, a ppt, or software designed for that purpose. Also, different businesses have different needs and audiences and ways to reach them. Therefore, their content strategies are going to differ. However, most content strategies need to include several main components.</p> <strong>Mission Statement</strong> <p>Who are you? What are your goals? Who is your audience? What are you trying to convey to them and why? You have to know who you and who you are seeking to connect and communicate to in order to get started Everything builds up on that foundation.</p> <p>For example, a mission statement might go something like, &ldquo;The Detective Software Marketing Team markets to fellow marketers. They offer a marketing automation solution that makes marketers&rsquo; lives and jobs easier. It also allows them to keep up with the competition.</p> <strong>Your Audience</strong> <p>Who is your audience? The general public? Fellow marketers? Higher education institutes? Financial institutions? Know whom you are trying to have a conversation with, and compile the necessary data to have a good idea of who they are and what they want. Marketers find that crafting marketing personas to represent different segments of their audience helps them better understand what business problems their prospects and customers have and how you are able to help them and to let them know that.</p> <strong>Types of Content</strong> <p>There are more types of content than almost anyone could name. Examples include websites, emails, podcasts, blogs, webinars, videos, demos, how-to guides, case studies, white papers, social media posts, infographics, surveys, questionnaires, and more.</p> <p>What content do you work best with? And what does your audience respond better to? Are they more visual learners where an infographic or video would be better suited? Or do they like reading and storytelling, where then a written piece might work better? Where are they in the sales cycle? Are you putting out enough thought leadership and building up your brand? Do you have emails and landing pages that catch the eye and intrigue? What about case studies that help nudge an interested buyer into wanting to make a purchase?</p> <p>You might want to audit our content to see what you have, what was working, what is missing, and what you might need more or less of.</p> <p>Also put some thought into the channels you will be using. In this day and age, everyone has to take advantage of digital media, but maybe you could make use of print media as well. What social media platforms do you think would work best for you? What about radio and TV? Physical mail? Text messaging?</p> <strong>Goals</strong> <p>Define the specific milestones and goals you want to reach.</p> <strong>Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)</strong> <p>Decide what metrics and numbers will define your success. While overall the revenue your marketing helps generate will be the most important statistic, do not overlook other metrics that might give you insights into how you are doing. These might include:</p> <ul> <li>Number of newsletter subscribers</li> <li>Email opens</li> <li>Clickthrough rates</li> <li>Social media followers, shares, and retweets</li> <li>Unique and returning visitors</li> <li>Conversion rates</li> <li>Page views</li> <li>Search engine traffic</li> <li>Pipeline growth</li> </ul> <p>You must also think about in what time frame are you measuring your success. By month? Quarter? Campaign by campaign? It depends upon you.</p> <strong>Identify Gaps</strong> <p>To get to where you want to go be with your content, what do you need to do and what are you missing? Perhaps you might need to identity a list of subject matter experts to interview and utilize for blog posts and thought leadership articles. You might need more interactive content to catch prospects&rsquo; eyes or a stronger focus on SEO. Your needs will dictate what you have to do.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <strong>The Content Process</strong> <p>You have to decide who is in charge of what. Who writes the copy? Who edits it? Who does the design? Who publishes it? Everyone on your team needs to take a role and own responsibility for it. Clearly-defined roles will go a long way toward building better communication and collaboration. It will you create a process for crafting and distributing content that is both efficient and effective. Everybody needs to know how a project starts and each step that you take from there. Set aside the time to do so for everyone&rsquo;s benefit</p> <strong>Content Calendar</strong> <p>Keep track of all your projects and who is responsible for what with a calendar. It helps to keep everybody on schedule and to see where you are at with your different projects and what they might need.</p> <p>Ultimately, successful content is relevant and useful. It offers information your audience needs and solutions to problems that they encounter. The process in creating that content and distributing needs a framework to get your messaging aligned and everyone on board and in sync with your team&rsquo;s goals.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</u></p> <p>Find out &ldquo;<a href="">Two SMB Content Marketing Strategies the Fortune 500s Can&rsquo;t Afford to Ignore in 2019</a>.&rdquo;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Oracle Marketing Cloud Tue, 21 May 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Michael McNichols At the Crossroads: Where Content Marketing and Social Media Come Together <p><a href="">Digital marketing efforts</a> are connected in many ways, aligning across audience segments, messaging, and intended results. However, some marketing tactics cross paths in different ways, leading to synergies that can be leveraged to advance a brand&rsquo;s overall marketing efforts.</p> <p>One important intersection straddles both <a href="">content marketing</a> and <a href="">social media.</a> Two seemingly disparate areas, these efforts both involve using stories and personality to engage consumers and get them invested in a brand. Using them in tandem &mdash; and building one off the other &mdash; can result in big wins in terms of both cost savings and audience impact.</p> <strong>The</strong> <strong>Content Marketing Path</strong> <p>Let&rsquo;s start on the first pathway to marketing success: <a href="">content marketing</a>. This strategy involves developing and sharing the <a href="">most relevant information</a> in a way that&rsquo;s designed to engage with a specific audience. Rather than &ldquo;sell&rdquo; customers, content marketing aims to inform them, pushing them down the sales funnel in an organic and conversational way.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s a process that involves more than just creating content &mdash; the development and sharing components require careful planning, research, and execution. Plus, content marketing requires distributing content <a href="">across multiple channels</a> and using different formats. While brand elements like tone and viewpoint may stay consistent, the forms the content takes on &mdash; from blog posts to white papers &mdash; can change significantly. &nbsp;</p> <strong>Social Media Routes</strong> <p>There are other ways to marketing success, and one is <a href="">social media</a>. Within this category of marketing tactics, you&rsquo;ll find a number of channels from which to engage followers, prospects, and customers. In bite-sized increments, companies can provide imagery, text, or insights that pull people in while just giving them a taste of the fuller story. Social also provides shareable platforms, meaning consumers can bring their own network into the fold.</p> <p><a href="">Social media efforts</a> require studying which audience members use which social media channels, as well as when and why. Brands also have to pinpoint what interests them in terms of information and formats on each of those channels. What works on one &mdash; time of day to post, a joking style or a more serious tone &mdash; won&rsquo;t necessarily work on another.</p> <strong>Meeting at the Corner of Content Marketing and Social Media</strong> <p>While content marketing and social media offer parallel paths, there are points where they can intersect and produce additional value.</p> <strong>Align Objectives</strong> <p>Because content and social media have similar functions within marketing, this intersection can be addressed through marketing objectives. Both efforts aim to engage and entertain, illustrate differentiation and thought leadership, provide value, and inspire purchases.</p> <p>Both content and social media should also help achieve the bigger-picture objectives found in your overall business strategy. This includes building awareness and brand equity, attracting and retaining customers, and growing sales. Look for areas where there are inconsistencies in the approach your company is taking toward its business objectives <em>and</em> its marketing objectives.</p> <strong>Create Matching Personas</strong> <p>Regardless of which tactics you deploy via your marketing, it&rsquo;s critical to know your audience segments&nbsp;&mdash; including what they look like, how they behave online, what their biggest concerns and issues are, and what motivates their purchases.</p> <p>Having this <a href="">detailed information</a> about each audience segment will guide content creation and dictate when, where, and what you post on social media. It also ensures that your distribution matches your personas &mdash; too many brands find themselves creating content for one audience, like moms, and publishing it at an outlet frequented by another audience, such as technology executives.</p> <strong>Define Value Proposition and Messaging</strong> <p>In understanding your buyer personas, you&rsquo;ll be able to understand how to shape the content around their desires. It will also spur accompanying content that addresses those desires, which could be monetary (discount-specific), rational or emotional (editorial-specific or product-/service-specific), or emotional (event-specific).</p> <p>Your content plan should address both short-term and long-term audience needs. For example, an audience may be focused on more efficient processes overall, which will lead to cost savings and environmentally friendly practices. In the short term, that audience segment may want to first find a SaaS product that can simplify and streamline its processes. You can build content to address both that short-term need and the long-term goal.</p> <strong>Develop an Editorial Strategy</strong> <p>From there, you&rsquo;ll develop topics and content ideas that match your objectives and audience personas. It&rsquo;s important to build variety into your editorial strategy. Customers will lose interest after a month of only &nbsp;listicles or video interviews after all.</p> <p>But mixed together &mdash; along with blog posts, op-eds, visual ads, and more &mdash; audiences will get a bigger sense of your brand&rsquo;s goals and perspective. Better yet, maintaining interest over a longer period will ingrain your brand in customers&rsquo; minds, keeping it top of mind at opportune moments.</p> <strong>Further Fuel Intersections and Actions</strong> <p>There are other ways that content marketing and social media intersect. A prime example is using engagement and feedback from social media to direct content development. This includes looking at customer questions and feedback from social media channels, as well as what these customers post on their own social media channels, who they follow, and what they like and share.</p> <p>Although you may have a <a href="">content calendar and a social media calendar</a>, consider a merged version of the two calendars so you can see how social messaging and overall content messaging can be aligned for greater amplification.</p> <p>Because you also likely have separate content and social media teams, find ways to enable them to collaborate and share what they&rsquo;re working on. They&rsquo;ll see how projects can be leveraged to achieve their objectives together.</p> <p>Also, create and manage a content hub. This is where ideas, existing evergreen and campaign content, and calendars reside. This allows everyone to see what&rsquo;s been done and tap into these resources when it makes strategic sense.</p> <strong>Developing Social Media Content from the Intersection</strong> <p>There are many approaches to content writing for social media that have proven to be engaging for a wide range of audience segments. Writing in a human way that transmits authenticity, connection, and empathy provides a way to immediately start building trust with an audience and further solidifying that bond over time. For example, in <a href="">B2B</a> environments, an entrepreneur can share her own experiences with her entrepreneurial audience. This approach includes offering tips and information to solve common issues directly related to questions or comments raised.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Next, provide uplifting content about success and winning. These feel-good moments are important to audiences seeking positive information that can motivate and inspire them to achieve the same success. For an organization, this can be content that involves any <a href="">social good efforts</a> or community assistance. It can capture inspirational quotes that align with your brand&rsquo;s values.</p> <p>Try open-ended content that leaves the door open to continue an ongoing conversation with your audience &mdash; or to encourage one. It&rsquo;s an approach that serves as a testing ground for what works with an audience and what doesn&rsquo;t.</p> <p>Examples include Q&amp;A sessions and surveys where you can come back later and present content bolstered by those previous content interactions. Another example is a contest, where part of the open-ended content comes from the audience.</p> <p>When you&rsquo;re in a car at an intersection, there&rsquo;s a lot of negotiation and a need to proceed cautiously. While that&rsquo;s somewhat true of the intersection of content marketing and social media, there&rsquo;s also more to be leveraged by bringing them together.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p>Content is the life&rsquo;s blood of any marketing campaign. Find out how to<a href=""> &ldquo;Do More with &ldquo;Content Marketing&rdquo; </a>to ensure that you creating content that speaks more directly to your audience and better connects with them.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Social Marketing Mon, 20 May 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Peter Daisyme The Importance of Content Marketing <p>Each year, marketing trends lists tout the ongoing trend of content marketing. It can be written content, visual content, or video content. But, it&rsquo;s all about providing the audience with the most relevant, valuable content for them.</p> <p>Besides winning and keeping customers, however, there are other reasons why content marketing should be a critical component of your long-term marketing strategy and <u><a href="">mobile marketing</a></u> approach:</p> <strong>Drives SEO Strategy</strong> <p>Like most other types of marketing tactics, content marketing influences how other aspects of your marketing strategy do. SEO is a prime example of how content marketing impacts other tactics.</p> <p>After all, it&rsquo;s in the content that you can place keywords and phrases that are designed to develop and grow your organic visibility through long tail searches and through secondary search components like product or service pages.</p> <p>To get noticed on search engines, you will need to create <u><a href="">specific types of content</a></u>, such as landing pages, blog posts, and social media content that targets and delivers niche information viewed as valuable to your audience. Using key phrases that relate to this niche information can enhance your SEO efforts and result in higher search ranking and greater conversions.</p> <strong>Raises Credibility </strong> <p>If one of your marketing objectives is to enhance your brand reputation and establish a thought leadership in your industry, it&rsquo;s content marketing that can help you achieve it. Particularly now, with so much content available on the Internet and the concern over &ldquo;fake news&rdquo; and &ldquo;unreliable information,&rdquo; a brand can truly stand out by providing consistent thought leadership on various topics that their audience is interested in.</p> <p>Although some people may look to reviews and testimonials to raise credibility -- and these are tactics that provide some brand reputation traction -- even better is to focus on creating and publishing content on various topics where your expertise aligns with what you are selling as a service or product.</p> <p>To achieve this content marketing benefit, write articles or blog posts or deliver a keynote conference address on trends that impact your audience. Or, you could deliver content that offers tips, use cases, or customer stories that illustrate how to solve an audience&rsquo;s issue.</p> <strong>Educates the Audience</strong> <p>Content has the dual benefit of making you as the brand smart while also increasing your audience&rsquo;s knowledge. Whether your audience are consumers or other businesses, both want to make more educated decisions. That requires greater information often across numerous sites to collect everything they need before purchasing from a particular brand. However, if you can give them the greatest amount of valuable information, they will stay with you rather than looking elsewhere, and that&rsquo;s half the battle to converting them. Otherwise, you may be losing them to the last place they look for information.</p> <p>Content marketing can also be valuable for helping to educate an audience about a product or service that may be more complex or technical in nature. To break it down for them and illustrate the value they could get from using it, you can deliver <u><a href="">video content </a></u>that shows how to use it, which often resonates the most with the audience&rsquo;s preference for visual content. &nbsp;</p> <strong>Generates Interest Over Time</strong> <p>Not every customer or audience member is ready to make their purchase at the same time. You can leverage content marketing to develop information that appeals to each stage in the buying process rather than relying on straight &ldquo;sales talk.&rdquo; In this way, your audience doesn&rsquo;t have to feel like they are being sold to when they are not ready to buy.</p> <p>Instead, your <u><a href="">content marketing</a></u> can provide layers of information for those doing research, comparison shopping, narrowing their selection, and buying. This requires creating service or product pages that offer a wide range of information directed at each stage of the buying process.</p> <p>Information can be customized to address what is on the audience member&rsquo;s mind during that particular stage. Without content marketing, you could not deliver for each audience member at different buying stages. Create buying guides, which provide wide-ranging appeal for those researching, comparison shopping, and even buying. &nbsp;</p> <strong>Fulfills a Need Across Industries and Audience Segments</strong> <p>Although some marketing tactics are very specialized and work for a specific industry or business segment more so than others or that attract a certain audience, content marketing has universal application and appeal.</p> <p>That means it works just as effectively for B2C audiences as it does for those in the B2B segments. Every vertical within an industry also can realize a greater return in utilizing some type of content marketing to inform and engage. No matter where in the world your audience is, they want information and enjoy the convenience of using their mobile devices or computers to easily locate it. If you can get them what they need before the competition with your content marketing strategy, then you win.</p> <strong>Goes the Distance</strong> <p>So much about marketing is temporary in terms of its impact, such as an ad campaign, but the majority of content marketing tactics can be used in an <u><a href="">evergreen fashion</a></u> or repurposed to extend their life long after their initial publishing. This means you get more return for the initial investment, potentially drawing in new interest and conversions through <u><a href="">passive marketing activity</a></u>. &nbsp;</p> <p>Examples include guides on a particular subject, resource content for customer and technical support, numerous blogs and articles, and repurposed content that is added to other channels like social media or turned into video segments. Or, you can take previously published trends articles and update them or revisit changes in statistics one or two years on. In all cases, you are extending the value for everyone. And, it achieves the additional benefit of making your site and channels a destination that audience members will return to, again and again, and perhaps even refer others in their circle to visit.</p> <strong>Building Relationships Through Content Marketing</strong> <p>In executing on a thoughtful <u><a href="">content marketing strategy</a></u>, you do more than market and sell to an audience. The content and its meaning create connections and an understanding on numerous levels that engages your audiences. It also builds trust in your brand as well as develops and nurtures the relationships you need to sustain your business over time.</p> <p>Find out more about how to create successful content marketing with &ldquo;<a href="">Writing and Winning in the Attention Economy</a>.&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="">Read the blog</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Wed, 15 May 2019 07:00:00 +0000 John Rampton Modern Marketing Influencer Blog Series: 5 Key Q&As About Influencer Marketing Success <p><em>The Modern Marketing Influencer Blog Series&nbsp;asked top influencers from across the marketing spectrum what&rsquo;s on their minds and what topics and pressing issues in their fields they feel are begging for more insight. </em></p> <p><em>The Oracle Marketing Cloud (OMC) marketing team recently sat down with </em><a href=""><em>Michael Krigsman</em></a><em>, founder and host of </em><a href=""><em>CXOTalk</em></a><em>, to discuss influencer marketing. Michael is an influencer and industry analysts and also regularly interviews influencers for CXOTalk.</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>When Does an Influencer Program Work, and When Doesn&rsquo;t It?</strong></p> <p>First and foremost, it depends on whether your goal is raising awareness or <a href=";SC=:ex:of:::InfluencerMarketingOMC&amp;pcode=">generating leads</a>. Influencer marketing is not the same thing as demand generation. There are blurred distinctions, but most of the time, people use influencer marketing for building awareness as opposed to posting a gated white paper or hosting a webinar to collect a bunch of leads.</p> <p>Second, for an influencer program to work, you as a marketer have to be able to give up some control, so think carefully about this. Influencers have their own audiences and stakeholders, as well as rules of engagement for those groups. You can make requests or suggestions regarding what influencers do and say, but you aren&rsquo;t in complete control, even if they are being paid directly or indirectly. Think of influencers as having their own brand separate from yours, and your relationship is an area of overlap where you collaborate to benefit from more awareness about your separate-but-aligned messages.</p> <p>So naturally, you need to make sure you are clear on what your message is and how it aligns with the influencer&rsquo;s message. And be sure that your <a href=";SC=:ex:of:::InfluencerMarketingOMCKrigsman&amp;pcode=#analyst-report">marketing strategy</a> includes opportunities to include influencer participation, whether for blogging, quotes in longer-form content, social awareness, or events participation.</p> <p><strong>Can You Provide Some Tips for Finding the Right Influencers?</strong></p> <p>The first hurdle is, do they have an audience that is an audience you want to reach? You are looking for someone who can spread your message by expanding your existing audience or reaching a different, adjacent audience.</p> <p>Next, for <a href=";SC=:ex:of:::InfluencerMarketingOMCKrigsman&amp;pcode=">B2B marketing</a>, make sure the influencer has subject matter expertise &mdash; that is, a deep understanding of the products or services. This isn&rsquo;t always important for <a href=";SC=:ex:of:::OMCInfluencerMarketingKrigsman&amp;pcode=">B2C marketing</a>, but it is especially important for B2B because these purchases tend to be much larger dollar-wise and are more technical.</p> <p>And third, make sure you are on board with how the influencer will engage people. Part of that is, do you feel comfortable with the influencer? Do you like that person? You are going to collaborate together, so chemistry is important.</p> <p><strong>What&rsquo;s a Good Way to Approach an Influencer to Ask Them to Collaborate?</strong></p> <p>You can ask the influencer how you, as a brand, can get them engaged. I think that&#39;s a reasonable thing to ask. Rather than just send a cold email saying, <em>&ldquo;Hey, would you come to our event?&rdquo; </em>Why not send an email that says, <em>&ldquo;Dear Influencer, We love what you do, and think that you&#39;re a great fit to work with us. How do you prefer to work with our brands? We&rsquo;d like to have a conversation with you.&rdquo;</em></p> <p><strong>How Do Influencers Differ?</strong></p> <p>Different influencers work in different ways. For example, the more prominent the influencer, the more stringent their demands will be. This is because in a particular niche or subject domain, the more prominent the influencer, the more opportunities are constantly being presented to them, and these can be small, high-value niches. For example, I&rsquo;m very focused on senior-level executives. That&rsquo;s a pretty small niche, but it&rsquo;s a very high-value niche.</p> <p>So the more in-demand the influencer, the more often they are invited to events, to dinners, having attention thrown at them, lavished on them, things like that. Can you give them what they want? That needs to be considered.</p> <p>Another difference comes in distinguishing between broad influencers and <a href="">micro-influencers</a>. A broader influencer is someone who might have a million followers on Twitter. A micro-influencer is somebody who has 3,000 followers on Twitter, but those followers are engaged and part of a very focused group that&rsquo;s of interest to the marketer. Both of these types of influencers work well. Just remember that someone with a million followers is going to have a much more heterogeneous audience.</p> <p>Influencers also vary by where they are in building their own brand, and this will affect how they want to engage with you. For example, an influencer who&rsquo;s just starting out will be more than happy to attend your event for three or four days if you pay for travel. But somebody who&#39;s more prominent is not likely to want to do that. They&#39;ve done that lots of times, and they receive many of those invitations, so they&rsquo;ll want to do something different. Be clear on what that is, and if that fits your goal.</p> <p><strong>How Do You Define Success of an Influencer Program? </strong></p> <p>That&#39;s simple. When you&#39;re done, you look back and you say, <em>&ldquo;We are happy with what we got out of it, and the influencer is happy with what they got out of it, and everybody wants to do it again.&rdquo;</em></p> <p>Like you, the top priority for influencers is to build and engage with their audience &mdash; people who like what they do and like to hear what they have to say. If you align on the other things we&rsquo;ve discussed, it should be the start of a great relationship.</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</u></p> <p>Influencers marketing can pay great dividends, but for any marketing campaign to achieve success you need the right tools to accomplish your goals. Find out how Oracle Marketing Cloud (OMC)&nbsp;can help you <a href=";SC=:ex:of:::OMCInfluencerMarketingKrigsman&amp;pcode=">upgrade your marketing game</a>.</p> Content Marketing Influencer Series Oracle Marketing Cloud Wed, 24 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Michael Krigsman Are You Doing Demand Generation Right...or Are You Just Wasting Money? <p><a href="">Demand generation</a> is focused on driving awareness and interest in your products or services once a prospect has shown interest. It&rsquo;s about driving a lead into the pipeline.</p> <p>In other words, demand generation is a marriage of marketing programs with a structured sales process that&rsquo;s deployed after the lead has been captured.</p> <p>At Uberflip, our content team works closely with the demand generation team to understand what content is needed to fuel our campaigns. The days of high-fiving everyone after earning a whole bunch of clicks to a link in an email are gone.</p> <p>As marketers, our job is to drive people to revenue. That&rsquo;s the ultimate goal of demand generation&mdash;building trust by continuing to drive your target buyers through the funnel, with <a href="">content as a driving force</a>. After all, we know people are far more likely to make a purchase decision after they&rsquo;ve seen at least seven pieces of content. The question is, how do we <a href="">deliver a content experience</a> that propels prospects to self-nurture?</p> <p>This isn&rsquo;t accomplished in just one move. Demand generation involves a series of moves to convert and nurture prospects, then continue to support them through the buyer journey. In order to understand how to get personalization right in demand generation, we first need to look at what it looks like when it&rsquo;s done wrong<em>.</em></p> <p><strong>Nurture Like You Mean It</strong></p> <p>One common type of personalization fail comes in the form of the email nurtures marketers often send off. To be sure, marketers&rsquo; <a href="">email nurture game</a> has improved over the years, but we can do better. Many marketers have already moved away from the email-as-newsletter format, where leads would have to read the email, embrace the call-to-action, and then click a link to engage with some content.</p> <p>These days, the more popular approach is a simpler one&mdash;use email to direct the prospect to a single asset that lives in a native feed or news stream.</p> <p>The problem becomes how to get that prospect to move on to the next personalized asset. If we just drop them into our news feed, they&rsquo;ll simply see the next most-recent post. The problem is that a chronological approach rarely produces relevant results for the customer. It&rsquo;s not mapped out to their needs or buyer&rsquo;s journey.</p> <p>To put personalization at the center of your demand generation efforts, send the person to a collection of assets all geared around that same campaign that you are speaking to. That way, if the customer wants to self-nurture out of interest, they are able to do it.</p> <p>Blackbaud, a cloud software company that powers social good, does this very well. At Blackbaud, one of their lead marketers, Lisa Kenney, carefully curates specific content collections designed to flow all the way through from beginning to end.</p> <p>This is a smart approach for a company like Blackbaud. &ldquo;Social good&rdquo; is a broad category, meaning their team has to serve a variety of markets across the globe, all segmented by product and use. However, because of Lisa and her team&rsquo;s efforts, each email they send out feels personalized, with a specific call-to-action that links to a dedicated stream centered on a specific persona and segment.</p> <p>None of this is organized by content type; sometimes the first asset is a blog, and sometimes it&rsquo;s a video. Whatever the case, once in the stream, the prospect will have plenty of other relevant content to choose from.</p> <p>Remember, at the end of the day, it&rsquo;s also about providing consistent experiences. By designing your demand generation efforts around dedicated content streams, you&rsquo;re creating controlled environments that drive conversations.</p> <p><strong>The Landing Page Minefield</strong></p> <p>Demand generation marketers also run into trouble when it comes to keywords and paid searches. Depending on your keywords, paying for clicks can get pretty expensive.</p> <p>This puts the onus on us as marketers to keep our prospects engaged and clicking through once they get to our landing page, otherwise we&rsquo;re just creating a dead-end experience and wasting money in the process. This is a big challenge for marketers, as the<a href=""> average conversion rate</a> of a landing page is only 2.35%. That means 97.65% of visitors aren&rsquo;t engaged enough to continue forward on their buyer&rsquo;s journey.</p> <p>Marketers debate about the reasons for this. A lot of it centers on whether we should send prospects to dead-end landing pages or allow visitors to continue their journey organically if they don&rsquo;t want to convert on that asset.</p> <p>I think as long as you provide structure to the experience, give your prospects the chance to navigate to other relevant content. After all, it helps build trust.</p> <p>Again, the key here is personalization. If you let your visitors explore, surround them with assets that are relevant to them and that encourage them to continue their journey, which means thinking more about engagement than conversion. There&rsquo;s nothing wrong with making an offer in order to capture valuable information from your prospects.</p> <p>However, instead of trying to push a free demo, offer something with less commitment and more top-of-funnel value, like a blog post or something along those lines.</p> <p>Not everyone agrees with me on this, and that&rsquo;s OK. Some of you are committed to your <a href="">landing pages</a>, and you only want to attract people who are ready to convert before you let them browse. Still, let&rsquo;s be clear on what needs to happen post-conversion.</p> <p>After they get that ebook or that free demo, they still might not be ready to make a purchase. In that case, how do you keep moving them through the buyer&rsquo;s journey?</p> <p>Whatever you decide on, make sure you decide on something. It would be a shame if, after getting your prospects to convert on your landing page, you&rsquo;re stuck waiting for your prospect to opt back into the funnel on their own.</p> <p>To that end, here&rsquo;s a tip: optimize your thank-you page. Keep the engagement going.</p> <p>Don&rsquo;t stop at &ldquo;Thanks for giving us your information. Here&rsquo;s a link to that report.&rdquo;</p> <p>Follow that report up with six other pieces of content centered on that topic. Make sure that you design every element of the paid ad/landing page/lead capture process to continue seamlessly into the email nurture you&rsquo;re sure to drop them into afterward.</p> <p><strong>Track Everything</strong></p> <p>To make personalization work in your demand generation strategy, it&rsquo;s important you track engagement. This way, you know what assets lead someone to purchase, which in turn allows you to better personalize similar experiences down the road.</p> <p>Advanced tracking requires analytical tools like Google Analytics. As you scale, you&rsquo;ll want to track more of those activities back to your marketing automation platform.&nbsp;</p> <p>A focus on tracking data not only allows you to demonstrate the real value of your demand programs and fueling pipeline, but also to better understand how your customers consume content to self-nurture them through the journey faster.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p><u>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</u></p> <p>Content fuels not only your demand generation but all of your marketing efforts. Find out how to <a href="">&ldquo;Do More with Content Marketing&rdquo;</a> and use it to impact sales.</p> <p><a href="">Take a look</a></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> Content Marketing Thu, 11 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Randy Frisch Creating a Marketing Persona: Influencers Matter <p>Every marketer should take a moment and consider who their audience is. Who are they trying to reach? How? And why? You might have a huge and diverse consumer base to look at, but you can break them down into segments. Then based upon the characteristics of each segment, you can create a sketch, or a persona, that stands in for that segment. They act as their representative and avatar when you draw up your&nbsp;<a href="">content marketing</a> plans and strategies.</p> <p>By creating a marketing persona, you can view that whole segment as a person and put yourself in their shoes. You can ask what keeps them up at night and what pain points do they experience as a part of their job. By breaking a whole segment down into a persona, you can see them more as a person, whom who deserves your empathy and help, rather a huge, disparate group. You have the product and services they need, and you can focus on properly reaching them with that message and connecting with them.</p> <p>Essentially, a marketing persona allows you to create content that is both relevant and useful to that segment.</p> <p>What, however, goes into crafting a marketing persona?</p> <strong>&nbsp;Data, Data, Everywhere</strong> <p>As with almost everything that is marketing related, it comes down to <a href="">data</a>. The more you know about your audience the better you can craft marketing personas that represent them and can help you create content that can solve their business problems.</p> <p>Parse through the data you have collected on your prospects and customers.&nbsp; What are their:</p> <ul> <li>Preferences and interests</li> <li>Job titles and responsibilities</li> <li>Age, gender, salary</li> <li>Education, family, and other background information</li> </ul> <p>That is all more general information. If you have any data on your customers&rsquo; hobbies, the blogs they read, the news sources they prefer, the types of content that better engage them, how good they are with certain types of software, and the social media channels they use, it can all create a stronger persona.</p> <p>Once you have put all that information together into a sketch of a person, ask yourself:</p> <ul> <li>What challenges do they face at their jobs and what must their goals be?</li> <li>What values do they hold?</li> <li>What fears do they possess? What annoys and irks them?</li> <li>What do they not like about the sales process and what might they be worried about if they are seeking a new solution? What would stand out to them and impress them?</li> <li>Most importantly of all, how can your services help with all of that?</li> </ul> <p>The answers to those questions can all mix and stir together into what your marketing message to that persona is. Quite simply, your message should tell them what you can do for them, how it solves their problems, and how they benefit.</p> <p>The next step then involves you making your pitch to them. What is the best way you can convey your message to a persona? How can you reach, connect, and engage them? Each persona is going to be slightly different, but the data will indicate the best way to go about marketing to each.</p> <strong>How Many Personas? And When to Market to Each?</strong> <p>You might wonder just how many personas you should create. Most generally consider three to five personas to work well, as they would cover your whole audience but also allow you to dive deeper into specificities about each segment via their persona.</p> <p>Here are two persona examples: Mary the Marketer and Chad the CMO.</p> <p>They both work together. Chad is Mary&rsquo;s boss, and he is the one who signs off on any invoice and makes the final decision on what the company involves itself with and what software, solutions, and services it will invest in.</p> <p>Mary, though, works with marketing software every day. She&rsquo;s down in the trenches, crafting content strategies and organizing campaigns. She knows what software works best for her and her team. She knows the problems they encounter every day, and a solution that helps with that speaks to her.</p> <p>Chad trusts Mary and values her opinion. If she tells him about a solution that would do a world of good for her and her team, Chad is going to listen. Mary then is an influencer. She influences decisions, because of her knowledge and experience.</p> <p>Of course, Chad might be interested in solutions too, but might not have the time with his responsibilities to look at solutions. On occasion he may. In fact, he might actually bring a solution to Mary to garner her opinion on it.</p> <p>Still, certain marketing campaigns might be better served focusing on Mary more than Chad, she being an influencer&nbsp; they may have a better chance of reaching and engaging. A marketing campaign shouldn&rsquo;t shut the door on any marketing persona, but they need to know where to properly and more wisely invest their time. In this instance, it would be mostly with Mary the Marketer and influencer but not always.</p> <p>If there is a way to reach Chad as well, however, go for it. Keep all your options open, but bear in mind that he will have a different perspective and different concerns than Mary, so content should be better geared toward that end.</p> <p>Learn how Eloqua can step up your content creation efforts with &ldquo;<a href="">A Brave New World &ndash; Create Beautiful, Responsive Content with Eloqua.</a>&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="">Read the blog</a></p> Content Marketing Oracle Marketing Cloud Mon, 08 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Michael McNichols Modern Marketing Influencer Series: Key Ingredients of a Great Content Marketing Strategy for 2019 <p><em>&ldquo;The Modern Marketing Influencer Blog Series&nbsp;asked top influencers from across the marketing spectrum what&rsquo;s on their minds and what topics and pressing issues in their fields they feel are begging for more insight. Here they share their thoughts on creating a content strategy, the ever-changing field of marketing, and how it all comes together.</em><em>&rdquo;</em></p> <p>If you&rsquo;re still struggling with establishing your <a href="">content marketing</a> strategy for 2019, you&rsquo;re not alone. Only 12% of respondents to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute felt successful at their current efforts to strategically manage content. What&rsquo;s particularly striking about this is that the vast majority of organizations surveyed &ndash; 91% &ndash; <a href="">used content marketing to sell their products</a>. Where&rsquo;s the disconnect?</p> <p>We could talk about the talent gap or the technology gap, but I believe that success really comes down to five basic ingredients:</p> <ol> <li>Goals</li> <li>Operations</li> <li>Insights</li> <li>Architecture</li> <li>Measurement</li> </ol> <p>With a clear grasp of these five elements, you&rsquo;re well on your way to producing content that will get results. Here&rsquo;s a closer look at each to understand how:</p> 1. Strategy &amp; Goals <p>Let&rsquo;s face it: You can&rsquo;t have a successful <a href="">marketing strategy</a> &ndash; content or otherwise &ndash; without knowing what you hope to achieve. You can define your goals using declarative statements that bring together descriptive and proscriptive aims. For example, a medical equipment manufacturer might want to increase revenue by 5% by raising awareness of its innovations among regional hospital chains that match buyer profiles of their best customers.</p> 2. Operational Considerations <p>Operational considerations boil down to your capabilities: those you have, and those you want to have. What internal or external resources do you need to achieve your marketing goals? Do you have the talent in-house to create and promote content, and analyze the results, or do you have to look outside your organization? What type of software will you need? Are you fully utilizing the technology you already have? Answers to these questions will narrow down what is possible to achieve within your strategy and what additional resources you&rsquo;ll need to bring on.</p> 3. Customer Insights <p>Here we get to the heart of the matter. To create the best possible content experience, it&rsquo;s essential that you understand who your customers are, and what they are looking for to drive ideation for content types, topics, and promotion. Crucial to this process is to work within an empathetic framework: &nbsp;What&rsquo;s important to customers in their information journey?</p> <p>This journey can be further broken down into discovery, experience, and action:</p> <p><strong>Discovery:</strong> How do your customers discover the information they need to make purchasing decisions? What search terms are they using? What forums or special interest groups do they belong to? What publications or newsletters do they subscribe to? What events do they go to? The goal is to uncover the language of the customer: What&rsquo;s in demand relative to what you&rsquo;re promoting. Keyword research is a great place to start, but you can expand on it by utilizing question research tools, such as StoryBase, SerpStat, and BuzzSumo. Successful content will answer these customer questions and lead them to the next step in their journey.</p> <p><strong>Experience:</strong> The next consideration is how your customer prefers to consume the information you provide &ndash; not just the topics they&rsquo;re interested in, but the formats they prefer, the level of interaction they expect, and the devices they&rsquo;ll be using. In the past few years, content has been trending away from two-dimensional text to the more visual and experiential. I believe this trend will pick up steam in 2019 with the addition of virtual and augmented reality. In fact, the intersection of influencers and interactive has gained substantial momentum for many B2B companies we work with. Doing so actually satisfies two objectives. First, it&#39;s a better experience for end users, because they see trusted people in an informative and entertaining format. Secondly, the influencers are inspired to share visually engaging and interactive content because it makes them look good.</p> <p><strong>Action:</strong> Finally, what are the triggers that motivate your customers to action? What do you want them to do after consuming your content? Here again, I&rsquo;ve seen some recent shifts. Where B2B content marketers once used fear, uncertainty, or doubt to drive home their message, I&rsquo;m seeing a lot more humor and creativity. B2B doesn&#39;t have to stand for boring to boring. Try connecting with people on an emotional level, especially through something that can be a little bit uplifting.</p> 4. Campaign Architecture <p>Campaign architecture &ndash; or as I call it, story planning &ndash; is about identifying the topics your customer is interested in and then reconciling them with what you&rsquo;re trying to promote. Think about what narrative (thought leadership, practical information, decision-making information) will guide the buyer to where you want them to go? To help tell the brand story, we&rsquo;ve been taking a more collaborative approach by engaging with industry influencers who can provide credibility and distribution. We&rsquo;ve also expanded the concept of who is an influencer by looking at internal experts, niche industry experts, and even prospects as subject matter experts.</p> 5. Measures of Success <p>Finally, of course, you must be able to measure the results of your campaign. For this, I recommend an attract/engage/convert model:</p> <ul> <li>To what degree are you attracting the right audience?</li> <li>How successful are you at engaging them in the right way and creating a great experience?</li> <li>What are the conversion metrics &ndash; newsletter subscriptions, downloads, trials, demos, or purchase &ndash; that will define success?</li> </ul> <p>In the end, it&rsquo;s essential to understand who your customers are, what they care about, and what their goals are relative to your products and solutions. Technology can help here, especially when it comes to analysis and surfacing insights that will drive content ideation. Best-in-class AI-supported systems can even help you make sense of all that information and surface new topics. Most importantly, customer insight is not a project. It is an ongoing effort.</p> <p>Find out more about how to make your content relevant for your customers and how to catch their attention with &ldquo;<a href="">Writing and Winning in the Attention Economy.&rdquo;</a></p> <p><a href="">Read the blog</a></p> Content Marketing Influencer Series Oracle Marketing Cloud Wed, 03 Apr 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Lee Odden Modern Marketing Blog Influencer Series: Bullseye: How to Personalize Your Content Marketing at ... <p><em>&ldquo;The Modern Marketing Influencer Blog Series&nbsp;asked top influencers from across the marketing spectrum what&rsquo;s on their minds and what topics and pressing issues in their fields they feel are begging for more insight. Here they share their thoughts on content marketing, personalization, and how they both come together.</em><em>&rdquo;</em></p> <p>The essence of successful marketing is getting the right message to the right person at the right time. The problem, of course, is that those are three very elusive variables, and locking them all down has traditionally required a great deal of manual effort. But sophisticated automation built into best-in-class marketing platforms can reduce this manual effort, making large-scale personalization possible.</p> <p>Over the years, marketers have devised ways to balance specificity and effort to scale their personalization efforts. <strong><a href="">Account-based marketing</a></strong>, for example, focuses on a small segment of high-value prospects with targeted messaging, but it is limited to enterprise-size prospects, which are not necessarily your best prospects. <strong>Progressive profiling</strong> is another way to learn who your audience is and what they&rsquo;re looking for, but it takes a long time and requires a great deal of input from your audience. What if your best prospects never come to your website to fill out a profile?</p> <strong>The Role of Automation</strong> <p>When you can personalize <em>at scale</em>, you can reach smaller organizations with highly targeted messaging. That requires powerful tools that allow you to:</p> <ol> <li>Aggregate offline and online data from a variety of sources, including public channels, such as social media or blog posts</li> <li>Derive insights based on the data</li> <li>Then deliver a personalized experience to smaller and smaller audience segments</li> </ol> <strong>Insights, Triggers, and Plays</strong> <p>Raw data on its own isn&rsquo;t of much use unless you understand what it means and what to do with it. You must identify these insights by gleaning the data and then set triggers to perform marketing plays when the data meets certain criteria.</p> <p><strong>Insights</strong> tell you what you want to know about the nature of the account; that is, what&rsquo;s going on with them? One familiar approach to this is <a href="">lead scoring</a>, in which certain actions are assigned a value: a newsletter signup is worth 5 points, for example, while downloading content is worth 10. But this is something of a blunt instrument that fails to tell the full story. By drawing in external information, you can find far more refined insights that don&rsquo;t depend on a prospect&rsquo;s interactions with your brand at all. And you can consider the sequence of a prospect&rsquo;s actions, adding an entirely new trend dimension to your analysis. Are they growing or shrinking? Are they making money or not? What industry are they in? What are their priorities? What do they need to meet these objectives?</p> <p>You can also glean insights into individuals within those accounts: who they are, what role they have, what they&#39;re working on, and what tools they&#39;re using. Best-in-class marketing platforms (such as <a href="">Oracle Eloqua</a>) can provide AI and machine learning to assist in this process.</p> <p><strong>Triggers</strong> are thresholds for action. They represent a collection of data, or even a sequence of activities, that indicate an account or individual message you&rsquo;ve crafted to suit that set of circumstances. Like insights, these can be at the account or individual level.</p> <p><strong>Marketing plays</strong> are the actions that follow a trigger to get individuals or accounts engaged. They might include targeted messaging, offers, or calls from sales reps.</p> <strong>Technology Does Not Equal Strategy</strong> <p>While technology can assist in this process, it can&rsquo;t do everything. Even sophisticated technology is a tool to implement strategy, not replace it. You still must start with a fundamental understanding of who your customer is. Two ways of going about this include asking:</p> <ol> <li><strong>Who is our target account?</strong> What do our target accounts look like and why? If you&#39;re selling into healthcare, your target account list is not just the biggest healthcare companies. What are the attributes and characteristics of accounts that make them more likely to be good matches for your company? How do you build that filtered list of prospects to begin with? What tools can you use to help you identify other healthcare companies that meet (or on a trajectory to meet) those criteria as well?</li> <li><strong>Who are the decision-makers within those organizations</strong>? Buildings do not write checks. You must identify the people who will decide whether they will do business with you or not. You can break these down even further along roles, both formal and informal: decision-makers, influencers, detractors, and users. If you can understand who those people are, what they care about, and what they&#39;re thinking at various stages of the buying journey, you can target them with the right message at the right time.</li> </ol> <p>Now we have a basis for creating powerful, engaging content. We&rsquo;ve set up a system that helps us manage and bring value to those individuals throughout that buying process. Not only does that build trust, rapport, and differentiation, but it also helps to increase velocity and conversion.</p> <p>Learn more about leveling up your content marketing with personalization by reading &ldquo;<a href="">Interactive Content Marketing: Taking Personalized Marketing to the Next Level</a>.&rdquo;</p> <p><a href="">Read the blog</a></p> Content Marketing Influencer Series Marketing Automation Oracle Marketing Cloud Wed, 27 Mar 2019 07:00:00 +0000 Matt Heinz