Does this sound familiar? Your department spends thousands of dollars and months of work developing a sophisticated marketing plan that leverages your company’s strengths for the year ahead. But when you check in with your sales staff six months in, you find out your plan was quickly abandoned for their “tried and true” methods, usually including one-off marketing pieces that in no way reflect your brand standards. We don’t mean to disparage sales professionals. They are a valued and necessary resource for virtually all for-profit…
Read MoreAnyone who’s gone about earning their APR accreditation will tell you that the most enduring takeaway is the emphasis the process puts on research. And with good reason. Only by having an informed understanding of both your business and customers can you develop the right communications plan. But here’s the problem – market research can be expensive, depending on what methods you use. Massive phone surveys, for example, require a call center or a significant team that is typically paid by the hour to gather the…
Read MoreFor many websites, gated content is a central piece of their content marketing program because of its one of the most effective tools to capture relevant emails for future prospecting. But how exactly do you identify which information is valuable – or even alluring – enough to seal behind a gate? What is gated content? Gated content is any content that requires completing some sort of form to access. Sometimes it's as simple as providing an e-mail address. Other times, more information is required –…
Read MoreIf you’re doing any kind of online marketing, then odds are that you understand the importance of a strong content marketing strategy. Good content is key to increasing awareness of your company and boosting traffic to your website. However, a lot of resources go into making just a single piece of content. Simply posting it to your website and moving onto the next assignment isn’t doing you or your company any favors. Instead of recreating the wheel every time, you should take a look at…
Read MoreHere it comes. We’re seeing the first of what will likely be a wave of backlash against content marketing. Specifically the concerns, some understandable, that we will begin experiencing a content “overload” of sorts. And it is no wonder given the number of companies, organizations and agencies dipping their toes – or jumping in head first – into the content pool. Here are some thoughts on how you can avoid creating “content shock” for your audiences: Do your research: If you are just sending out…
Read MoreIn my last blog post, I focused on the “earned” piece of the EOP (earned, owned, paid) public relations model, talking about the three reasons why earned media, or “media relations,” is still important. And the truth is most people still “get” media relations. It is one of the foundations that PR is built on and what most people expect PR to be. Public relations people make people famous, they get stories placed in the paper, on TV, etc. But when you start trying to…
Read MoreOn one day in late summer, Facebook reported that it hit a significant milestone – one billion people had used the social networking site on August 24. Translation: one in every seven people on the planet logged in to Facebook that day. Perhaps, I surmised, the spike was due to the Pope getting a ton of happy birthday posts (nope, he was actually born in December) or that some Kardashian (current or former) had posted a new selfie (wait, doesn’t that happen every day?)….
Read MoreEarlier this month Instagram announced that it was making its ad API (application programming interface, which allows users to access the platform’s analytics to help monitor and drive marketing campaigns) available to marketing partners. More simply, much of the same audience and campaign data that’s available on other social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn now will be accessible also on Instagram, opening the floodgates for new brands wanting to advertise on the platform. Back in spring of 2014, (yes, just a little over a year…
Read MoreConfession time. My first AOL screen name in middle school was MisterEMan83. Because…well I have no idea really. I lived a life of awkwardness then (and debatably now), not mystery. Regardless, my sweet (read: embarrassing) handle and I would spend hours hogging the phone line chatting with my friends. Now at 32, I’m well on my way to being a kids-these-days… adult, so it’s tempting to look at instant messaging apps like Snapchat as just another young adult obsession. But then I look at the…
Read MoreSo where did the first half of 2015 go? You blink and six months are gone. We’ve been busy on many levels—not only in workload but in making some fundamental changes to our agency: what we do and how we do it. These changes mirror what’s going on in the PR industry and marketing in general. Our clients count on us to stay abreast of the latest tools and technology of the trade. While we still do work that you’d expect a traditional PR firm…
Read MoreYou’ve likely heard the buzz: video is increasingly important for B2B marketers. Check out these findings from Forbes: More than 80% of senior executives said they are watching more online video today than they were a year ago. Three-quarters (75%) of executives surveyed said they watch work-related videos on business-related websites at least weekly; more than half (52%) watch work-related videos on YouTube at least weekly. Work-related video can drive senior executives to take action. Overall, 65% have visited a vendor’s website after watching a…
Read MoreWhen was the last time you had a problem and took to Google to find the answer? Given that every minute Google recieves more than 4,000,000 search queries, I bet it was fairly recent. Well, that’s what your potential customers are doing too. They’ve got a problem and they need a solution. So, give the people what they want. That’s the idea behind inbound marketing: providing informative, helpful content – blog posts, ebooks, checklists – that draws customers to your website. The first step in creating that content is…
Read More