Online forms have been receiving a bad reputation lately , but online forms are still the best way to collect information and create premium content.

Every website uses forms in some way. Form design is crucial because it can be the difference between generating new sales leads and making visitors bounce.

Interstitial forms asking for personal information can frustrate prospects who visit your website. Interstitial forms that ask for personal information can sometimes frustrate prospects who visit your website.

Online forms are a great tool for Lead generationspan styling=”font-weight 400 ;”>. You can use them in many ways.

Online forms simplify everything. Online forms allow prospects to leave messages that they can reply to at their convenience. While it is important to respond quickly to messages, most companies don't have the resources or time to support live communication 24/7.

Here are some online forms that you can use to build your website. Also, there are some tips and tricks you should be aware of.

Types Of Online Forms

1. 
   Sign up for the newsletter
   
   

Signing up for the newsletter is very easy. Users only need to fill in a few fields. A user signing up for your newsletter is indicating a desire to read your content on a regular schedule. This creates a channel for marketing communications.

Newsletters are a great way to build loyalty and encourage advocacy. Users are more likely to stay in touch with brands when they make a purchase decision.

2. 
   Sales Contact
   
   

Sometimes a prospect is ready to sell once they have passed the consideration stage. Without having to break a sweat, you can gather their information and direct them to your sales team.

Remember that a sales contact page is not the same thing as one on your “contact us” page. This form asks for specific sales information and connects the user directly to the sales department.

3. 
   Event Registration
   
   

Organising an event can seem daunting. However, an online form that allows you to manage your attendees lets you quickly and easily provide event-specific details such as time, venue and event schedule.

4. 
   Customer Feedback
   
   

These surveys/forms are sent after the customer has received the product. These forms/surveys can be used to ask questions such as:

• 
  How satisfied are you with the product/service.
  
• 
  How satisfied are you with the sales process?
  
• 
  Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?
  
• 
  How did they tell you about us?
  

These data will help you determine the next steps for your business' performance evaluation.

5. 
   Online Orders and Payments
   
   

Prospects should have the ability to buy at their own pace, regardless of whether you are selling a product/service. It's a smart idea to offer an online ordering and payment option on your website in order to convert sales immediately.

It seems counter-intuitive for customers to wait until they can pay you.

6. 
   Sign up for an account
   
   

Account signup forms are used by social media sites to collect registration data and allow users to access exclusive content. Consider Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook as examples. These platforms require users to create an account before they can engage with them.

This form can be used if your business requires membership. This form doesn't force customers to sign up immediately. To encourage them to make a purchase, you can send them future marketing communications.

7. 
   Website Visitor Comments
   
   

This form is designed for businesses who want to segment their online audience. These people can't be assumed to be the same as your customers, since they are just website visitors.

The feedback you receive from the form can help you identify areas where you can make improvements to your website. This feedback form is great for testing different layouts and UX best practice.

8. 
   Contest Registration
   
   

This form allows users to sign up for contest entries. Brand awareness can be increased by using contests.

While users submit the form primarily for the chance to win a prize, it is important that you follow up with them after they have finished the contest with the goal to convert them from contestants into sales leads.

9. 
   Donation
   
   

A donation form makes it much easier to support causes. Your customer's information, just like order or payment forms, should be safe stored in an organized database.

You can use your customer information to offer them additional opportunities, such as invitations to events and donations.

10. 
    Free Audit/Audit
    
    

Free assessments are a great way to generate leads, especially for SaaS companiesspan styling=”font-weight 400 ;”>. It takes a certain form to get users to sign up.

The free assessment forms are short and contain only the most basic information, such as name and email address. A free assessment will show prospects how valuable your service is. Make sure to make it as simple as possible.

Signup Forms Best Practices

Now you're familiar with your signup options, what do you need to create a high converting landing page ?

• 
  Keep it Simple
  
  

Complex online forms can overwhelm your customers and make them feel lost. It is a good rule of thumb to only ask for information that you are actually required for the next stage of the sales/marketing process.

• 
  Optimized for Mobile
  
  

Mobile devices account for more traffic than computers. It's strongly recommended that you make your form mobile-friendly

Mobile is all about accessibility and speed. Mobile conversions will be hampered if the font is too small or the buttons too difficult to use.

• 
  Point and Guide
  
  

Your customers will appreciate it if you highlight the field they are currently typing in or allow prefilled data. You should also implement an input validation system that will notify your customers if there are any errors. This will allow them to immediately correct them before they hit the submit button.

• 
  Minimize Typing
  
  

Typing on mobile devices can be just as difficult as typing on a computer. It's therefore a smart idea to reduce the amount of typing by using dropdown boxes or other selectable fields.

Key Takeaway

It's easier to generate leads than to ask prospects for their consent and information. Keep in mind that not all forms are the same. These tips will help you make sure that the right form is used when it comes.

PureB2B's first post was 10 Types of Online forms (and how to use them)

You can't grow your business without brand awareness. Your company won't grow if you don't have any leads.

There are many ways to build your reputation and get your name out there.

One of these solutions is to publish consistent, strategy-driven content on your website. This is what we do for our clients and ourselves.

What if we said that you could create a company-wide strategy and not spend a penny on marketing?

We will show you how easy it is to create a LinkedIn employee advocacy strategy that keeps everyone involved.

Quick Takeaways

• 
  Engaging your employees and sharing company content (aKA employee advocacy) on LinkedIn can help you save valuable time and money.
  
• 
  LinkedIn can be an effective tool for recruiting talent and organic leads for your company.
  
• 
  Your employees and you don't need to be social media wizards in order to make this happen.
  

LinkedIn is the best social media platform for sharing

Trust is something we all desire in our relationships. Business relationships are no different. We hope you are already sharing useful, informative content on your website. Even if you don't have any creative ideas, why not share them with your LinkedIn community?

While anyone can post short pieces of advice and tips, not everyone can be trusted as much.

This report was recently discovered on the use of LinkedIn by marketers.

LinkedIn is the best place to go for content marketing. Here are some more examples:

70% of the buyer journey is completed before a buyer even touches sales.

Translation: There is no time to waste. To expand your reach, position yourself as a thought leader.

97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to market their content.

Translated: They are exactly where they should be (in the most professional marketing manner).

All the decision-makers, industry leaders, and people like you are in one place. So? They are just waiting for the right solution. Offer a helping hand!

The likelihood of employees sharing content from their employers is 14x higher than any other type on LinkedIn.

Translated: They will come if you build it.

Let's take a look at the steps that you can follow to activate a LinkedIn share strategy for your company.

1. Tell your employees the facts

Your first step in your LinkedIn employee advocacy plan should be to share the facts and information with your team. We are all here to consume content and wish we could be the talk of the town.

We often overlook the fact that far fewer people are creating content in this space that is being pushed to the top of Google's algorithm.

You'll be able to offer a variety of speakers and real-life examples to answer the questions of potential clients.

These are just a few of the many benefits you might be interested in.

• Employees are recognized as thought leaders in their industry and authority figures
• Relevant audiences reach company content
• Increased brand awareness
• Followers of LinkedIn pages for companies grow
• Lead acquisition costs decrease
• LinkedIn is a great way to promote your evergreen content.

These efforts will not only benefit the organization as a whole but also your team's professional and personal networks.

These will be visible to more people and make you more accessible to those who might not have come across your company profile or your personal information.

YOU will be talking the talk, even as all those decision-makers are praying to a god who won't listen. You already know that you can walk the talk!

2. Expect some resistance from your employees

If you are fortunate enough to have a highly motivated, high-achieving team you should expect hesitation from many of them. Even more so if they aren't already on the platform.

Each of them has a lot of projects and unexpected fires to put out during the day.

You might think that social media is counterproductive. They might see it as a job for someone else. This isn't a job for Social Media Team. Marketing?

As they say, “not mine monkey, not my circus.” However, LinkedIn has plenty of room for creative thinkers.

It requires far less talent and effort than trying to do a headstand on the elephant's back while holding a glass bottle at your feet. It's also safer!

Here's what they are thinking realistically:

• “I don’t have the time to create LinkedIn content.”
• “I don't know what LinkedIn's algorithm looks like or how to optimize a blog post.”
• “I am not social media savvy.”
• “I don’t know how I can find content relevant to my job”
• “Nobody uses LinkedIn except to search for jobs”
• “I have a million things to do today.”
• This sounds great in theory but it is not sustainable.
• “I'm just too busy, stressed, and strapped.”

It's because I am in the same boat as them! Meet them where they are!

This article is secretly being used to ignite a flame under me to be more intentional on LinkedIn. Not because someone is forcing me to, but because I believe strongly in the power and importance of consistently publishing on LinkedIn and other platforms.

While you don't need to be their guide, we can help you navigate the way.

3. Clear avenues to allow employees to implement the LinkedIn strategy easily

Option 1: You have a lot of automation tools you can use to automate social media sharing.

SocialPilot did my job and created a list with 13 social media automation tools. A list of competitors is a great way to compare, with both pros and cons.

Hootsuite is used by us and a few of our clients.

The LinkedIn post is not spammy, filled with junk, nor is it long or intimidating. Hootsuite offers customization options that you can adjust based on your preferences.

If you decide to go automated and invest in a platform you will find one that works seamlessly with your workflow and makes LinkedIn activity easy for you and your staff.

Option 2: You can also post manually.

There is a lot of discussion about how to post on LinkedIn. This research can be done individually in no time.

We recommend that you start somewhere. Start posting on LinkedIn and respond to comments. Tag other thought leaders to start a conversation.

You and your employees will eventually begin to see the real value in taking the time to do things for yourself while still contributing to the company's bottom line (in small but significant ways).

Our weekly content marketing service can help you get more visitors to your website by providing quality content that is published regularly. We'll send you a PDF copy of Michael's books for free if you set up a consultation. Get started today and generate more leads and traffic for your business.

Ten years ago, the role of content market manager was not even known. However, it is one of the fastest-growing marketing roles and one that companies of all sizes are seeking to fill.

It can look very different depending on what company you work for. It is why job descriptions for content marketing managers are so important.

According to Indeed, more than half of job seekers believe that job descriptions have a significant influence on whether they apply or not. Companies that want the best content marketers need to create descriptions that grab their attention and make them want work for you.

Source: Image Source

This article will discuss why content marketing is so important to companies and what you should consider when you create your job description. We also provide a template to get you started.

Quick Take-Aways

• Content marketing managers ensure that all aspects of content strategies are running smoothly.
• Over the past decade, search popularity for content marketing jobs has tripled.
• Before posting, it is helpful to share your job description with the relevant team members.
• An opening statement that is compelling and clear demonstrates your company's culture.

The Content Marketing Manager role is on the rise

Focused management is key to content marketing

If brands want to be seen by their target audience, they need a content strategy.

Why?

Search engine rankings are driven by content marketing, which is why 93% of online experiences today start with a search. Google is the most popular search engine for customers looking for answers, information about your niche, and brand research to make a purchase.

Content marketing is complex. A content marketing strategy should include the following:

• Multiple channels — your website and blog, social media platforms (email, video, etc.
• Consistent content creation requires writers, designers and a content calendar.
• Brands that publish between 11-16 blog posts per calendar month have 3x the success rate than those that don't.
• SEO knowledge — Google ranking factors go beyond keywords
• Performance reporting — Data-driven strategy to hold teams accountable and improve ROI

Active management is required to ensure that content marketing strategies run smoothly. This means that a company will need a designated person to manage it.

This role is often called Content Marketing Manager.

Most popular job is Content Marketing Manager

Companies are increasingly embracing content marketing as a key part of their overall marketing strategy. This is why they are hiring more content marketing managers to manage it. Search trends reflect the growing popularity of this role. Recent research has shown that search terms for “content marketing jobs”, which have been steadily increasing over the past decade, have increased by 3x since 2010.

Image Source

It was also discovered that the job titles “Content Management Manager” and “Content manager” were the most popular, accounting for 40% each of all content marketing jobs.

Source: Image Source

There are many job listings for content marketing managers on LinkedIn and other online job sites. You might wonder how to make yours stand apart. How do you write a description that attracts the attention of top-potential candidates and makes sure the person you hire has the right skills?

We'll be sharing tips and a template that will inspire you as we walk through the preparation of your Content Marketing Manager job description in the next section.

Tips to create a job description for a Content Marketing Manager

You want your new hires in every position, Content Marketing Manager included, to be great fits for their roles and to add as much value to your company as possible. It is important to know that the job description you create can have a significant impact on whether or not this happens.

Potential applicants can use job descriptions to determine if a job is right for them. Job descriptions are essential for companies to understand the role of the job within their organization and what responsibilities and roles it will have.

It is especially important to be thorough when creating job descriptions for newly created positions. These tips will help.

Evaluate your current team

When creating a job description, one of the most important things to think about is how this position will fit into your existing organization. Take this example:

• Are you currently a member of a content marketing team?
• Will this be the new role?
• If not, can this position be assigned to your existing marketing team?
• Small companies might have a content marketing manager who is a single person. If this is the case, who will they report back to and communicate regularly with?
• What if the content marketing manager is required to take on responsibilities not currently assigned?
• They will be able to take on new responsibilities and project management.

These questions, along with others, can help you to envision the new position.

Know your priorities

Content marketing is complex, as we all know. However, not all components are equal for every company. Content marketing may not be as important to one company as it is for another.

If a company has a strong following and is well-known, they may need to hire someone who has experience managing social media. Startup companies may allow someone to learn a bit more on the spot, provided they can create great blog content that is SEO-optimized.

Companies that produce design-heavy materials may need graphic designers. Others may not have the skills or outsource design.

It all depends on the company. The key is to identify your priorities and create your job description around these.

Define your desired experience

Your company will determine the level of experience that your content marketing manager requires. This is where your company's organizational structure and size play a major role.

If your content marketing manager will report to an established marketing manager, then it may be OK to hire someone fresh out of college or someone with some experience, as they will be receiving guidance from the team. They can also grow in their job. Content marketing managers who manage a small team or need to manage multiple people will likely need more experience.

However, content marketing managers must have a bachelor's degree to be eligible for a salary of on average $70,000

It can be shared with the relevant team members

Did you ever assess your team? It's a good idea for you to give feedback once you have completed your job description.

Every member of your company has a unique perspective based on their experiences within the company. Your team's input makes your job description better. It is important to consider the role from every angle in order to design it in a way that will benefit everyone, including the Content Marketing Manager.

Remember that just because you get feedback, doesn't necessarily mean you have to use it. Asking for feedback is a great way to get buy-in and provides valuable insight into the reception of your new role.

An example template to inspire you

Job Description for Content Marketing Manager

XYZ Company is looking for a creative thinker who has experience in content marketing and is willing to assume the exciting role of Content Marketing manager. Our company is small and has a great team environment. We are looking for someone who is excited by fast-paced, exciting work.

The Chief Marketing Officer at XYZ Company is the Content Marketing Manager. He or she will manage a team consisting of two content creators. The role requires excellent interpersonal and communication skills, as well as experience in creating and editing content.

[Note] This example is only an opening statement. Include details about your company in this section. Include a brief description of the job and the type of candidates you are looking for.

These are the roles and responsibilities.

• Responsible for all content marketing activities across all channels.

• Collaboration across silos and functions to produce an effective content marketing strategy.

• This role requires a publisher mindset. You need to create the content your audience wants and optimize the conversion path.

• Basic SEO knowledge, content structure and categorization, content development, distribution, and measurement are all essential editorial requirements. Editorial governance is necessary to ensure that content is consistent with the brand's voice, style, and tone.

• Manage and develop editorial calendars and organizational workflows.

• Responsible for managing digital content hubs, all social channels, and email/newsletter distribution. This person should be able to understand the fundamental best practices for the major social media channels, as well as which content and approaches work best on each.

• Regularly and continuously measure and optimize your program.

• All creative resources, including writers and designers, are managed by the agency.

• Brand campaigns can be integrated with content programs to drive brand demand.

• Regular executive presentations about program results and approaches.

Skills and experience required:

• Bachelor's/BS degree or equivalent work experience
• Create content for the internet and grow a social following
• A mindset of editorial excellence that is able to understand what audiences want and how to make it happen
• Ability to analyse and present content as well as social performance
• Slideshare, Google Analytics, Slideshare and other top social media channels.
• Experience in project management and the ability to manage multiple stakeholders in complex environments.

What do you think? What other job duties would you add to a Content Marketing Manager position description? Leave a comment below!

Boost your content strategy today

You're already well on your way to improving your content marketing strategy if you hire a content manager. Marketing Insider Group can assist you by providing SEO-optimized content that is ready to be published every week for a year or more.

To learn more, visit our SEO Blog Writing Service or to schedule a consultation with me to get going.

Marketing has been complex, but it was never easy. The way businesses and consumers interact with each other has changed dramatically thanks to modern technology. Social media platforms and smartphones enable customers and brands to communicate more than ever. Furthermore, technology has revolutionized marketing strategies by turning every decision data-driven.

All of these changes have made it imperative for brands to implement a multichannel digital strategy. A brand must have at least thirteen interactions before a potential lead can be identified. Businesses should make the most of every marketing opportunity to increase their reach with consumers.

But, it is not the best way to market. Digital marketing campaigns can be expensive, so businesses need to be strategic and wise when using multichannel strategies.

Consumers today expect more from brands they interact with. This higher expectation is both the result and the reason content marketing succeeds. You can focus your marketing efforts on the channels that are most customer-centric and prioritize them. This gives you a clear goal for your marketing strategy – the ultimate brand destinations.

How can companies create a multichannel digital marketing strategy that is smart?

Quick Takeaways

• 
  Do not join any digital media platform simply because it is popular. To find out if there are ROI, dig deeper.
  
• 
  Find the solutions and tools that can help you automate and set up digital processes.
  
• 
  Do not spread yourself too thin. Learn one thing first, then move on to the next.
  
• 
  Keep an eye on your KPI dashboard.
  

Multichannel marketing is important.

Because your customers search for information everywhere, and you must be there to help them find it.

Our customers increasingly use multiple channels to get the information they require. Your website is less important to them than the relationship they have with you, their sales representative. They are also finding the information they need to make business decisions more easily .

Is there a gap between the two? Yes! Mary Meeker says there is a gap of $20 billion in digital channel spending. This gap can be seen by the ratio of advertising dollars spent online and on mobile channels to the time that digital consumers spend in these channels.

This means that businesses aren't spending enough money on channels where people spend increasing amounts of their time.

Forrester calls their report “The Multichannel Maturity Mandat.”

The customer today has more control than the marketer. The Web and social media have become part of almost everyone's everyday life. This means that buyers have more options (more outlets, more sources, and more opinions) to choose from.

Multi-channel marketing is the future of how businesses can better serve customers through the many choices and content they have.

Multi-channel marketing, to me, is the 2nd core component of content strategy. It seeks to provide the content audiences are looking for at all places they search.

Study concluded that multi-channel marketing maturity can lead to significant business benefits. This is mainly due to the increased reach of an optimized marketing mix.

This is in line with the best content marketing practices, which show how to get more engagement early in the buying process by creating targeted content that targets the buying stage.

The study showed higher customer satisfaction from companies that were more mature. Multi-channel marketing is a great way to engage more people and increase customer satisfaction.

These are the five main findings

• Multichannel marketing is a popular area for marketers. 40% of respondents regarded themselves as experienced practitioners of multichannel marketing.
• It is not a matter if you have the will to do it, but rather if you have the skills. The main barrier to integrated marketing that is more efficient was the skill gap.
• Marketers who identify themselves as mature have shown significant business benefits in campaign performance and ROI.
• Mature multichannel marketers were more likely than younger ones to adopt innovative technology early, to have good relationships with IT colleagues and to align with sales.
• Even multi-channel marketers with years of experience considered that their marketing programs were not fully integrated and believed further optimization was possible.

The Company Website can be Elevated

A brand website can be more than just a digital face for a company. With a strategically chosen selection of content on the website, such as blog posts, case studies and videos, it can be a way to create an experience. Brand websites are rated as the best channel to market products by 44 percent of consumers.

However, this channel is essential if your website wants to be noticed. It should provide a destination that consumers want to return to time and again, not just for the content.

Organizations with more advanced content marketing strategies are better equipped to master the content hub. This can be used on-site or separately. This is a step beyond a simple website that contains content. This creates a space for your best content, which makes it easy for visitors to find what they are interested in. You can also show them more of your content, keeping them interested and hooking them with a “what's in the for me” that exceeds their expectations.

This is the look of Equinox's hub, Furthermore. This luxury fitness company is more than just information. They offer a lifestyle that inspires their customers.

image source

Apart from creating a hub, you can also create a learning resource portal that will help your company's niche. You can also offer educational tracks and courses that will give your visitors something to aim for, in addition to the well-organized content found on a hub. You can guide them on a specific learning path instead of bombarding them with endless content. A video series or set of eBooks could be combined to create a complete learning module for potential buyers.

HubSpot Academy is an excellent example of this extremely useful educational website experience.

It's easy to feel like there is endless information available. It's all completely free. This is a compelling reason to join HubSpot's online world of brands.

These techniques of using the company website to create extraordinary value are not only practical for lead generation but also establish thought leadership. These methods are part of building a brand world that wants to be a part. It's a stage that goes beyond utility and quality. It inspires a lifestyle that B2C buyers aspire to, and the level of efficiency and success that B2B buyers seek.

Identify your Audience and Determine Their Preferences

Businesses make the biggest mistake in digital marketing by thinking they must use every platform to reach customers. There are many marketing channels that may not be appropriate for all businesses. Some businesses don't need to market on LinkedIn and Snapchat. While some businesses would be successful with blog content, others will do better with audio or video content such as vlogs and podcasts.

To ensure your digital efforts have the greatest impact, it is important to identify and understand your audience. Audience preferences are influenced by demographic factors. Consider social media usage as an example. According to Pew Research, younger consumers prefer platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, while older generations use Facebook and YouTube more frequently.

Snapchat is not the best channel for marketing if your audience consists primarily of people over 40 years old.

Look at the demographics of your audience to see where they consume most content and advertising. This will help you determine where your brand can best meet them. Pay attention to the content they consume. Are they more likely to read blogs than they are to watch YouTube tutorials? Do they prefer visual content or informational content such as case studies?

To get this information, you may need to do your own market research with your target audience. You might also need to survey a few focus groups. You can also look at benchmark studies and industry reports to get a better understanding of the consumer behavior within your niche.

Strengthen Your Martech Stack

The right tools are necessary to establish a presence and track results. You also need to keep track of key metrics and customer accounts. It takes a lot to create a supportive martech environment that supports your efforts.

When you are developing your multichannel strategy, be sure to pay attention to which areas will most benefit from technology. There are many tools available for digital marketing. However, there may be a benefit to using tool “suites”, or solutions that can be used across multiple channels and industries.

Marketo has a variety of products, including Engage (for brand building), Bizible for revenue attribution, and Adobe Experience Cloud (for improving CX). These products enable organizations to automate email marketing and mobile marketing, manage leads and implement ABM practices. They also allow them to create and distribute content using predictive analytics.

Start with a Pilot, and Expand

A lack of focus is one of the biggest pitfalls in multichannel marketing strategies. It can become overwhelming to introduce multiple channels and it can have a negative effect on the quality of your team’s efforts.

Too many changes are a common mistake made by many digital marketing teams. This can lead teams to make costly mistakes by trying to implement too many changes at once.

You don't have to overload your marketing team by trying too many strategies at once. Start small with simple, but effective marketing strategies like building an email list and creating an email trigger-based system. Next, focus on SEO-focused content like blog posts and videos. You can also expand into paid sources such as social ads, PPC or televised commercials.

The order in which the most effective methods are used will depend on the audience of your business. Therefore, it is important to research the preferences and behaviors of your target audience to determine which methods will have the greatest payoffs.

Keep an eye on things, but give them time

Marketing strategies that work are not easy to implement can take time. Marketing is a nurturing process that moves customers through the sales funnel by providing relevant content. Don't give up if you don't see immediate results with these digital channels. These marketing strategies can take some time to bring about conversions.

It is essential that your team has real-time access to tracking programs in order to monitor KPIs. These strategies should be allowed to develop over time. However, it is important to look for signs of growth and stagnation over long periods of times to determine where adjustments are required. If the method does not produce results after a few weeks, you can look for ways to improve it rather than abandoning it.

For each channel, here are the questions that you should ask:

• What consumer segments are you going to target?
• What position will you take for your product?
• Are you willing to set sales goals? What happens if you fail to meet your sales targets?
• What amount will you spend advertising?
• How can you retain customers that you have acquired through this channel?

Connect with Buyers through Live Experiences

Event and experiential marketing are another marketing channel with the most potential to influence your customers. 41% of consumers rank live experiences as the number one way to help them understand a product's purpose. This makes events an essential part of a marketing strategy that delivers real value. Events are essential if you want to generate substantial revenue and provide brand-boosting benefits.

image source

Event and experiential marketing can have the most impact if it is integrated with other content marketing strategies.

• For your podcasts, blogs, or videos, interview event speakers before or after the event.
• Use your social media platforms to live stream the event and engage attendees
• Event tools can help you measure the value of your event, and ensure that your brand is providing exceptional customer service.
• You can use surveys to gather data for future white paper development if you have enough participants
• Align your tone, messaging and goals for your experiential campaigns and live events to the rest of the content marketing strategy

Events and other experiences offer more than just value. Events and other experiences can also be used as a foil for digital content. They put a face on your brand, giving it a more authentic feel than digital content. Even for those who were not directly involved, this is true. People who are exposed to photos and videos of the experience indirectly still benefit from it. It shows that there are real people behind the brand, with real passions and real ideas.

Get Your Tentacles In

Bottom line: If you want your products and services to resonate with your audience, ensure that you connect with them through the channels that they are most comfortable with.

Businesses have an opportunity to connect with customers at every turn digitally, as the world has become more connected than ever before. If done properly, a strong multichannel marketing strategy will be the best way to build relationships and convert customers.

To get things off to a good start, you must:

1. Learn about your audience and how you can best reach them.
2. To determine where your focus should be, look at all the data sources that you can find to collect demographical and behavioral information.
3. Find the most lucrative channels and find the technology and tools that will benefit your team.

Don't rush to get into multichannel marketing. Instead, make use of your data to identify the areas that have the greatest impact. This could be targeted email marketing or stronger social media presence. You can slowly start to integrate other channels and methods while still monitoring your revenue.

Our Content Builder Service can help you get more visitors to your website by providing quality content that is consistently published. Contact me to set up a consultation and I will send you a PDF copy of my books. Get started today and generate more leads and traffic for your business.

Each year, Semruush publishes their state of content market report. After downloading the copy, I was happy to report that content marketing is strong.

A proof point is that 47% of companies intend to increase their content team by 2022. The main point is that it serves as the foundation of our firm's existence.

According to the report, the key to a successful content marketing program is “avoiding ad-hoc content creation and case by case analysis and instead building strategies and mapping clear processes.”

This report gives a snapshot of top content marketing trends as well as tips for how to create a content strategy that is successful in 2022. It was an honor to be included in one of the top trends in content marketing. I look forward to sharing it with you.

First, some highlights

• 78% of content marketing companies succeed document their content marketing strategies
• Content audits are a common practice in content marketing. 65% of those companies who succeeded conduct them.
• 22% more people were interested in the question “What is Content Marketing?”
• The most talked about topic in content marketing is content marketing tools
• The most searched term related to content marketing is “Content marketing plan”.

My Content Marketing Trend

Marketing should produce tangible results. This is what I believe since childhood. We use the Semrush Viability Tracker to show results to all of our clients.

Here are some examples:

Healthcare Technology Company

Marketing Technology Company

Through a weekly blog article and an annual content plan, we help clients achieve these results.

But updating old content is one of our most important trends. Here is an example of one our oldest clients, and the results they get from a combination new and updated weekly content.

We look for pages with declining search traffic or that have been ranked previously. We give them a content refresh, an updated publish date, as well as a social boost.

This is how we have grown from zero to nearly 1,000,000 page views per month and ranking for almost 100,000 keywords.

Our weekly content publication schedule includes both new and updated content. Each week we publish two original articles that are keyword-focused. Then, we publish 2 fresh articles from our over 1,500 articles library.

Prediction for 2022: Content Marketing

Here is my 2022 content marketing trend prediction with Semrush's permission.

Content marketing leaders will be focusing their efforts on getting the most out of existing content marketing efforts in 2022. Some will argue that Voice, AR, VR and Voice are the most important trends in content marketing.

Real content marketers are searching for the 20% that will bring a 80% return on their investment. We are doing more content updates, pruning, and reuse.

It is important to look for content that has been successful in the past. It might have had high page-one rankings, high traffic, high conversions or high page authority. If a page loses those rankings, it's time to prune or update.

This will make updating content less of a side-project and more of a main project for content marketers. Update quality pages and re-directing non-performing content has proven to be a great way to increase traffic and improve rankings.

This and other information can be found in the Semrush State of Content Marketing Report. Click here.

Content Marketing Trends for 2022

Last year, I wrote 12 content marketing trends that every business should follow. These are the three main ones that I covered:

1. Content Marketing is Back in Style

In the past, business-to-business SaaS marketers and founders of new companies would first think about buying social media ads to help grow their businesses. They would say, “We must be on Tiktok.” Or “we need to employ a social media intern.”

After realizing that social media is not a good platform for selling anything, we're seeing them return to content marketing. Google even stated that content is the best way for buyers to search for. Industry research shows that content marketing spending is expected to increase by twice as much in 2022.

2. AI-Generated Content

Although we believe there are many efficient ways to automate content promotion, AI-generated content is still far away. For clients, we do have access to some AI-driven content marketing strategies as well as AI-driven content promotion. We believe that AI will force us to rethink what we create in the future.

We tested several AI-generated content services, and were disappointed in their ability create quality blog content and long-form articles.

We will now have to confront what I call “The Paradox of AI”: The more robots tell us what we should do, the more we need people (employees or customers) to create that content and share it. This brings me to my last big prediction for content marketing in 2022.

3. Employee activation. Brands will continue to turn to employees, customers, experts and executives to produce more content that aids buyers.

My friends help me get by. You can check out my top post from a few decades back about content marketing predictions by 20 industry experts.

• Scaling content marketing technology
• Trends in video marketing
• Podcasting is the next big thing
• Backlash and resistance to content marketing
• Acceptance of content marketing
• How content marketing scales
• Moving from content to experiences
• Content marketing that aligns better with sales
• cross-enterprise content marketing coordination
• Brand storytelling
• Content distribution and amplification
• personalization
• Buyer alignment and customer journeys
• Content merging with data and media
• Content is more effective than ads

Although these predictions for content marketing are only a few years old, it is still very interesting to see how they have performed over the years.

Do you want to convert new customers and engage them using the most important trend in digital marketing: consistent, quality content? Get our weekly blog content service. Get started now to generate more leads and traffic for your business.

Marketing automation makes it easier to generate leads, build customer relationships, and drive conversions. It is the foundation of any efficient and lean marketing department. This frees up time and resources for repetitive tasks that are essential to campaign success.

Marketing automation software can be used to improve customer experience and target customers with different needs.

Are you ready to automate your marketing department Continue reading!

What is Marketing Automation Software?

Marketing automation software automates segmentation and marketing workflows to nurture leads and prepare them to be sold by companies. These tasks are often handled manually by teams, which can quickly drain department resources. These tasks can be automated seamlessly, which saves time and effort for B2B businesses.

Marketing automation software is a great tool for B2B companies. Segmentation allows you to easily group prospects into mailing lists based upon their demographics, interests and preferences. These platforms offer lead nurturing functionality that allows you to send emails to leads who are most interested in your product. The software platform will provide campaign analytics once the campaign is over. This allows you to see how effective your marketing campaign was.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a well-known name in marketing. HubSpot's inbound software makes it easy to automate dozens of tasks. The software features a visual editor, which allows you to create custom workflows. It also provides pre-set customer actions and triggers. This makes it easy to automate emails, and create drip campaigns.

HubSpot's pricing can be expensive for smaller companies, but you get access to much more than the software. HubSpot's customer service team is renowned for being among the best in business. They can help you get up to speed and answer any platform-related queries you may have.

Salesforce

Another popular platform for marketing automation is Salesforce. Salesforce also offers automated email marketing and social media. Salesforce allows you to create customized emails and customer journeys that can be used across multiple communication channels.

Every Salesforce customer interacts with Salesforce generates data that can be used to improve segmentation. Segmenting campaigns ensures that the right content is reaching the right audience at the right moment. Salesforce offers A/B testing which can be used to help improve businesses' marketing content.

Salesforce, like HubSpot also provides campaign insights and data that allow you to tweak and adjust marketing strategies and messaging according to your needs. Salesforce also allows you to automate social listening reporting, which will allow you to keep track of company mentions as well as what people are saying about you.

Salesforce is ideal for SMBs, large companies, enterprise businesses, and businesses that need email marketing capabilities, audience segmentation and lead management, as well as businesses seeking social media marketing and email marketing.

Pardot

Pardot, another popular B2B platform for marketing automation, is also available. Pardot, a Salesforce product, helps businesses to streamline their marketing and sales activities across multiple channels. Pardot can be used to engage leads and help them move down the sales funnel. It can also be used to retarget leads who have gone cold.

Pardot offers a visual editor that can be used to simplify complex workflows. Pardot uses AI to automate marketing tasks. Salesforce's professional product Pardot focuses on improving customer experience and ROI, which are two crucial goals for any B2B business.

Pardot offers a variety of pricing options, so you're sure to find the right one for your marketing and automation needs.

Marketo

Marketo Engage (Marketo), a leading platform for account-based marketing (ABM), is also available from Adobe. This marketing automation platform allows companies the ability to coordinate sales and marketing by collaborating. This platform allows for automation and adjustment of even the smallest processes. Marketo is a great place to start, whether you need to make adjustments or just use pre-made templates.

Do you need to clone an entire campaign? Done. Do you want to work with a member of the sales team in the Platform's Center of Excellence. It's possible. You want to segment and personalize a marketing campaign for greater engagement? Marketo makes it easy to do this and much more.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact, a marketing platform that specializes on email marketing automation, is one of the best. This platform is great for lead nurturing. It makes it easy to warm up cold leads, get them ready to talk with your sales team, and make it simple to set up automated welcome emails. Constant Contact allows you to set up automatic welcome emails that trigger when someone opts in to your email list.

You can also create separate sequences for cold leads and local leads. Constant Contact can help you target and segment your leads in any way you wish.

You can set up welcome sequences to create drip campaigns. This will allow you to continue segmenting your audience while also tweaking messages and timing in order increase open rates. Constant Contact allows you to manage multiple campaigns at once, so it doesn't matter if you are focusing on one or 100. This allows for accurate targeting and personalization.

The number of contacts that you choose to use Constant Contact determines the pricing. This means that Constant Contact is likely to fit any budget.

The Right Marketing Automation Software

It's easy to simplify your campaigns with marketing automation software for B2B businesses. Automation makes it easier for employees to work, and gives them greater visibility and reach. All this while requiring less manual labor. Smart automation allows marketers to concentrate on what is most important: creating amazing content and providing exceptional customer experiences.

Are you looking to improve or streamline your marketing strategy. Sagefrog is your best choice. We can help!

Recently, there has been some concern that blogging may be dying. HubSpot, a blogging brand that is renowned for its expertise, found that 40% of respondents reported not reading blogs at any point in their research. Yikes!

Is this a sign that we are losing the core component of our content marketing strategies, blogging? Are blogging and content marketing strategies going extinct?

Let me assure you that blogging is not going anywhere. Not at all soon. According to the same HubSpot research, 40% of people don’t read blogs. However, 60% do. Brands face a problem engaging their blog audience. It's not that people don't want blogs to read. They came to your site in the first place.

Problem is, to create blog content that people love and keeps them coming back for more, you need to understand why they read your blog posts. Particularly, your blogs. What brought them to your brand? What are they trying achieve by reading your blog?

In other words, you need to write content that is valuable from your customer's point of view. Blog posts about company events and product features These posts are fine to be included in your larger content collection, but they don't drive organic traffic to the site.

This article will discuss why people read blogs, and how to use this information to increase your blog audience.

Quick Take-Aways

• Brands can increase their blog audience by writing from the customer’s perspective.

• The majority of blog content is found at the top of a buyer's journey, the awareness stage.

• Because they solve problems and help people accomplish tasks, how-to guides and checklists have become very popular.

• Brands can come up with creative ways to make posts look professional and fun.

• Smart companies use data to understand their readers and adjust content accordingly.

Learn more about the customer's view

Let's first discuss the reasons why your blog audience is reading your content. Next, let's look at the customer's perspective.

Let me start by asking you a question. When brainstorming ideas for your blog do you discuss what customers might find valuable or interesting?

They are not the same thing, trust me. It takes time and research to truly understand value from the customer's perspective. Without it, you are just guessing.

My most important piece of advice is: You must understand your customer's goals in order to create valuable content that they will enjoy reading. This is why blog articles such as how-to guides, checklists and listicles for top strategies or tools are so popular. They help people solve problems or accomplish important tasks.

Your buyer journey can be used to guide you in thinking from the perspective of your customer. Almost all buyer journeys look like this.

Source: Image Source

The awareness stage is where most of your blog content will fall. A user is aware of a problem or need and seeks information online. It is important to rank high on the SERPs for the problems your customers are facing. This will help you establish your company's expertise, and increase your blog audience.

9 reasons people read blog posts

HubSpot's survey found that people read blogs for three main reasons: to learn, to entertain, and to find out about industry trends and news. This is a good high-level overview of what motivates people to read blogs.

Source: Hubspot

It's also quite general. Let's dive deeper into the specific reasons each umbrella covers.

Learn something new

Achieve a task

You can search online for the best way to find the information you need, even if you don't know how to do it. Blogs are a great resource for step-by, detailed instructions, tutorials, how-to videos, and checklists that will help you accomplish the tasks in your daily life and at work.

These types of posts are actually the most popular.

Source: Image Source

Find a solution to a problem

This is why most brand research online starts. Professionals and companies today look online for solutions to problems they face. More than half of all age groups use search engines to find solutions, according to research.

Source: Image Source

Here's the problem: You shouldn't dive into your company or its solutions. We already discussed how blogs tend to be dominated by top-of the-funnel content. This is where it becomes clear.

People search for blog content that will help them solve their problem. They start by looking for content that can help them understand the problem and direct them in the right direction. If you create blog content that educates and gives valuable information to users, you will see more people return to your brand when it's time to make a purchase.

Find hobbies and interests that you enjoy

Blogs aren't all about business. Not for readers anyway. Many blogs are built around hobbies and niche interests. Even though users may read your blog content for entertainment, their ultimate goal is to learn something new. It is important to create content that informs and instructs users.

Be more educated

Blogs can be used by people to learn for many reasons. Perhaps they are simply interested in learning more about a topic they like (e.g. a science blog or museum blog). Perhaps they want to be more knowledgeable about practical subjects that they will use in their daily lives, such as finances and childcare. Maybe they are conducting research for a work project. An informative blog can help you grow your blog audience. Similar to the how-to guides, educational blog posts can help you establish your brand expertise and position yourself as the solution for potential customers.

To entertain

Traditional entertainment content should be enjoyed

Blogs are the best way to entertain people. There are many types of blogs, including those that cover TV, movies and sports. This type of content is often covered by blogs that do a good job and have high-revenue readers.

However, these blogs are not as SEO- and keyword-driven as business blogs. They are driven by current events. Entertainment blogs are often established as authorities in their field and consumers look for their content.

Enjoy your work

People still enjoy professional content. This is where creativity comes in! How can professional content be entertaining and fun?

Engaging content can be published on blogs. Infographics can make complicated information more easily understood and understandable. To make it easier for your readers to connect with you on specific topics, create videos. Think about how creative you can make relevant brand content more interesting!

This piece, written by Haley, our Marketing Director, on the lessons The Bachelor has taught her about content marketing, is a great read. Although her article is centered around a reality television show, it has tons of great tips for creating better content.

Content marketing isn't supposed to be fun. !

Get involved in hobbies and other interests

This one is being included again as it drives readership in different manners. People read blog posts that relate to their interests and hobbies to learn new things. They also read them for entertainment (e.g., an artist reading blog posts about museum exhibits).

To find out the latest and most relevant information in my industry

Keep up-to-date

Professionals are kept informed by blog posts on news and trends. It is crucial to understand your industry and the trends that will affect its future. This knowledge can help you make smart business decisions. This is where professional bloggers come in handy.

Source content

You can think of this in two ways when creating content. The first is that you can create highly shareable content about news and trends within your industry. This allows professionals to share it (and make comments) on it on their own platforms. This is what people look for in blog posts.

People look for news sources and trends to cite. If you create an infographic that shows the trend of a particular industry, it is more likely that people will read your content and link to other content. This establishes your brand's thought leadership.

Data can be used to increase your blog audience

When it comes to growing your blog audience, understanding why people read blogs doesn't mean you have to stop there. Without data, you can't measure the content marketing ROI. You need data-driven metrics to track your users' behavior and create quality content.

Google Analytics and your website's CMS system are two great places to find this information. You can identify the motivations of your users' readers by looking at metrics such as page views or search volume and then create more content to satisfy them.

With great content, you can grow your blog audience

The best blogs post multiple posts each week. This takes a lot of time, time that you may not have if your business is small. Marketing Insider Group's SEO and writers can provide optimized content that is ready to publish every week for up to a year.

To learn more, visit our SEO Blog Writing Service or to schedule a consultation with me to get going!

LinkedIn is the leader in B2B lead generation via social media.

LinkedIn is the only social network that brings together as many professionals, executives, and business owners on one platform like it does. LinkedIn is the most popular social platform for professional networking, with over 810,000,000 active members.

LinkedIn has a variety of marketing tools you can use to increase traffic to your site and generate leads for your company.

LinkedIn allows you to conduct research on your prospects' problems, interests, and motivations. This can help you assess your prospects' suitability for your business, or create your sales pitches based upon what you already know.

LinkedIn is a great tool for prospect research and inbound lead generation. Here's how LinkedIn can help you increase your lead generation strategies.

The Key Takeaways

• 
  LinkedIn lets you create multiple pages and optimize each one in a different way. This allows you to have more control while still being specific.
  
• 
  LinkedIn offers easy ways to activate employees and share information in order to grow your company.
  
• 
  CTAs can be added to the platform, as well as advanced search settings. This is something that many social media sites do not allow.
  

As a lead generation page, use your company page

LinkedIn's company page can bring leads to your website. Make sure that you maximize the use of every element on your LinkedIn page.

You can, for example, craft your company or business description so that it distinguishes and differentiates you from your target audience, your value proposition, and the service you offer. This will help you filter out unqualified leads, and tailor your message to appeal to the best prospects. Mission accomplished.

Make your Showcase Page

LinkedIn allows you to create a “showcase” page for brands that are part of your company. Multiple showcase pages can be created, especially for the units that are most successful in driving sales for your company.

A showcase page can be used to target specific leads from a large customer segment and drive them to your LinkedIn Page. Your company page should be distinguished from your showcase page by using a larger header and posting news updates above it.

Last but not least, your homepage should include a link back to your site.

Encourage your employees and coworkers to link to your profile

To maximize your reach among LinkedIn users, you can't rely only on your connections. Your coworkers, colleagues, and employees are brand ambassadors. They can help you spread the word about your company to others in their networks and help you find new connections to nurture over time.

Promoting your content is one way to do it. As soon as your blog posts are published, link to them. Hootsuite, a platform that allows you to automate posts for employees, can also be used to streamline your workflow.

Another story is employee activation. You can make your company more real by encouraging your employees to talk about what they are doing.

Don't underestimate the power and influence of your internal connections. Employees can be brand advocates (being part of the same company as all), so you only need to ask.

Add CTAs in Your Content

LinkedIn has a lot to offer B2B companies. It provides them with a content-publishing platform that will make their buyer's journeys a success.

LinkedIn allows you to add a CTA to any of your content. This is a nice feature that makes it different from other third-party publications. You can also generate sales leads by engaging your readers.

Every post can be a sales opportunity if you optimize your CTAs.

For groups

Another useful tool in B2B marketing is to create your own LinkedIn group. This strategy is simple: you create a group on LinkedIn to target potential customers that could benefit from connecting with your company.

This establishes you as an industry expert who can help businesses solve their problems, needs, or pain points.

To find out what is happening in a specific customer segment, you can start discussions or post content to your group. This will allow you to gain insight into how your brand can be best presented to them. If you find new segments of customers with different needs and problems, you can branch out to form other groups.

Search for people and groups

You can search LinkedIn in two ways: group search or advanced search. The first allows you to find people you should connect with based on your demographic data, such as location, industry, or job title. You can also use more advanced filters, such as common connections, past affiliations and non-profit interests.

Group search can help you identify the ones that are relevant to your market. Focus your search on groups with high activity levels, which means that they spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. This means that there will be more opportunities for you to interact with them on the platform.

Keep track of who is following you

LinkedIn tools allow you to see details about who has visited your profile. This is a great way of finding sales prospects and gathering information. LinkedIn will show you the type of work that your lead does, what device they used, where they worked, and the date they accessed your profile.

Now it is your turn to learn more about your prospects, such as their common interests and connections. You can then connect the dots and send a customized marketing message to your prospects.

LinkedIn's tracking analytics are a powerful tool for monitoring prospects in this age of personalized marketing.

Don't Underestimate LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most professional platform for B2B companies. LinkedIn can help you find leads and assess how they fit into your business model. This is almost all you need in order to justify an outreach effort.

LinkedIn allows you to be recognized as an industry leader and makes it easier to close more sales for your team. Don't overlook the power of this B2B lead generation channel. To get the best results, promote your brand, monitor and engage your target audience.

Do you need more content for your LinkedIn profile? You can check out our SEO Blog Writing Services, or book a consultation to discuss your content marketing strategy.

One of the biggest questions I hear from clients who are just starting their journey with content marketing and those who want me to help create an effective content marketing strategy for them is, “Where do you find the time?”

The simple answer is that everything you do with content marketing doesn’t have to be a manual process or done by you and your team.

Maybe when we use the term “automated content marketing” you might be thinking of AI-produced articles or robot-narrated explainer videos, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.

Quick Takeaways:

• Automation helps brands improve their content marketing effectiveness.
• The right workflow applications can help automate and distribute content effectively.
• Use paid promotion to increase the visibility and reach of your content.
• Track how many visits, leads, and conversions you're getting as a result of content automation.

What is Content Marketing Automation?

Content marketing automation is the approach of identifying repetitive content marketing tasks and then out-sourcing or automating those tasks through tools and applications.

The goal is to help marketers and brands to improve their overall content marketing strategy effectiveness.

Content marketing automation can be applied to really just about any phase of the content marketing process from strategy and planning, through creation, distribution and measurement.

A 7-Step Process to Automate Your Content Marketing

1. Decide what you want to automate

You can use Google Alerts to identify what other content is being created on your target keywords. I find it especially useful when it comes to curating visual content like infographics and video. You can also setup content alerts in paid tools like Buzzsumo.

2. Use a content workflow process

My team and I use DivvyHQ to automate the stage, status and process of the content we create for this blog and for our clients. These tools are called workflow applications or calendar tools and they allow us to identify content that needs to be created and updated and it alerts us to the tasks when they are due. They also help to schedule publishing your content out to your social channels as well as your WordPress website.

3. Share your content across social media

We use Hootsuite to automatically share content from my website’s RSS feed to LinkedIn and Facebook and share content from other top marketing and business publications. If you want to compare social media management tools, you can also check out Buffer and Sprout Social.

4. Pay to promote your content

Part of my marketing automation process includes using content promotion tools such as Zemanta for digital advertising — it gives me the best opportunities for my content to appear on well-known publisher sites. SimpleReach tells you which content is performing well on social media, helping you to decide whether to use paid promotion or extra boosts on Facebook, Twitter, QuuuPromote and/or Google Ads.

5. Automate your email newsletter

We use MailChimp to send our daily newsletter once a blog post has published. MailChimp also lets you automate personalization and email nurturing of your leads. While MailChimp is arguably one of the best priced email marketing tools available, other platforms to consider are Marketo, GetResponse, Constant Contact, Aweber, and HubSpot.

6. Connect various content marketing platforms

We use Zapier to automatically add the leads collected on my website into my main newsletter list. It also helps me monitor my social media platforms by sending me an email notification when someone mentions me on Twitter so I can respond.  Similar platforms include the well-known IFTTT.

7. Find out how your content marketing is performing

The nice part about many content marketing tools is that they are easily customizable. Each month, Google Analytics automatically emails me a report showing me which content and pages are driving the highest amount of traffic and conversions.

BONUS: Blog Writing Subscription Service

You can also automate your content marketing from creation to conversion. Our Content Builder service identifies the keywords your audience is using, the content they are consuming, and then suggests 100 or more content ideas for you to approve.

We then deliver 1, 2 or even 4 or more articles every single week for an entire year. We can even load them onto your website, share or promote them on social, deliver leads and measure your results.

Content Marketing Automation – The Why

Content, as we know it, is essential for brand building, nurturing relationships, and tapping the full potential of a business. It is the fuel that drives content marketing.

Not automating your content marketing is a mistake only amateurs make, and if you take top content marketing influencer Jeff Bullas’ word for it, only social media purists would think otherwise.

And why should you believe him? Well, Jeff occupies the eighth spot at Forbes’ list of The World’s Top 40 Social Marketing Talent. Simply put, his authority should not be taken lightly.

But keep in mind, content isn’t all there is to content marketing. As such, content marketing automation has ceased to be a nice-to-have. If you want to squeeze the most results from your content, however you feel about automation, it has to be done – and done well.

According to Quick Sprout:

“Content is a marketing pillar. It’s trustworthy, value-driven, and compelling. Coupled with marketing automation software, content can amplify the success of your relationship-building efforts.”

In the same vein, Uberflip asserts that content marketing automation gives context to your content in a way that makes sense to both your audience and marketers, allowing you to tweak your strategies towards more favorable results.

Perhaps more importantly, content marketing automation enables you to piece every facet of your content marketing strategy together, as opposed to a siloed approach where visualizing the big picture can be a challenge.

Studies suggest that automating content marketing can help you maximize campaign ROI:

• Gartner found that companies that automate lead management produce a 10% increase in revenue in six to nine months.
• The Annuitas Group found that businesses using marketing automation for lead nurturing experience a 451% increase in qualified leads.
• Pardot’s users boosted sales revenues at an average of 34% after using content marketing automation.
• According to the Aberdeen Group’s research published in 2012, companies that use marketing automation experience 53% higher conversion rates and 3.1% higher annualized revenue growth rate compared to non-users.

The bottom line is that content marketing automation helps you to save time, money and effort.

It provides a way to streamline those content marketing processes that do not require human intervention. It allows you to spend your valuable time measuring, optimizing and testing new ideas in order to improve your content marketing outcomes. It even lets you ride the current trends in content marketing. All this frees up your time to focus on improvements that will move the needle.

Content marketing automation also allows you to be working when you’re not working. Sure, you could stare at your twitter stream and try to decide the best time to share your latest article…OR you can use content marketing automation tools to do that simple task for you. All while you sleep!

The reason so many content marketers use automation is that it simply helps them to do their jobs more effectively.

Content Marketing Automation – The Basics

Great content requires talent and skill to pull off. It requires a human touch, with a dash of artistry and a hefty serving of creative knowhow. To put it simply, content is not something you can automate with little thought.

However, that is not to say that our content marketing strategies can’t benefit from a little automation. In fact, marketing automation platforms can provide a serious boost to our content marketing endeavors.

Everything from strategy creation to content positioning, flexibility, and analysis can be assisted by applying marketing automation.

“Drive thy business or it will drive thee,” is a familiar Benjamin Franklin line quoted in The 5 P Approach to Copy that Crushes It, a free ebook from Copyblogger.

According to the ebook:

“The premise in this case would be that the key to business success … is to have systems in place that allow you to work on your business, not in your business.”

And that is what automation can do for content marketing. It is a system you build to allow you to work on your business, develop a sound strategy, and generate better ROI, all while the more repetitive duties of sharing content on social media, emailing potential prospects, replying to inquiries, measuring the results, among others, are automatically handled by the system you have in place.

To get started with content marketing automation, there are some things you need to have/implement:

• Blog or website to host your content, which must be useful and tailored to your target audience
• Social media presence to engage in a more personal and immediate way with your audience
• SEO to make your site searchable and available for specific industry terms, search keywords, and topics

If you’re new to the game, content marketing automation can be pretty overwhelming. But to get you started on the right path, here are some content marketing automation best practices to keep in mind:

• Choose marketing automation software that comes with email tracking, website visitor tracking, lead management, CRM and social media integration, and built-in reporting and analytics features.

• Optimize your website to attract your ideal prospects. Remember that customer profiling starts on day one. The goal is to build an email list over time.

• Based on the user’s profile, connect with them by sending relevant content such as informative articles, white papers, ebooks, and special discounts.

• Use your marketing automation software to create triggered responses. For instance, if a user clicks on content A (an article on your site), does B (downloads an ebook), C (requests a white paper), or D (browses your products), program your software to send the appropriate response for each action.

• Marketing automation software with A/B testing capabilities (built-in or integration with third-party apps) helps you test and tailor your message to the needs and preferences of your target audience. Remember the goals that A/B testing should allow you to accomplish: To identify, locate, and attract high-quality leads and turn them into buying customers – and ultimately, brand advocates.

• Create an editorial calendar. Gmail and other calendaring apps let you set reminders via various mediums: email, in-app notifications, text messaging, and so son.

• Use your marketing automation tool to establish key metrics for identifying and scoring leads. Software like HubSpot and Act-On have a lead scoring and analysis feature.

• Build your target’s profile using progressive profiling where, instead of requiring your target to fill out forms with lines and lines of data they may already have supplied your organization in the past, you only ask for new, valuable data, keeping your forms short and easy to fill out.
• As a lead moves further down the sales funnel, only send targeted content and offers based on their behavior, interest, preferences, and other demographic details such as economic standing, educational background, professional background, purchasing power, and so on.

• Use your automation software to create email templates and signatures, and message formats tailored to each goal or user, e.g., webinar invitation, invitation to view a recently posted article, share news on social media, or download a newly published case study.

• Consistently post educational, actionable tutorials or other types of helpful resources that answer your target audience’s questions. Schedule and link these to your social media accounts using tools like Buffer, Tweetdeck, or Scoop.it so that followers on various platforms can be reached.

• Continuously monitor and measure your results via your software’s analytics, and pivot if necessary. This means being agile enough to quickly respond to changes in your target audience’s preferences. A campaign that generates great results in the first month may not perform as expected in the next month. Be able to redesign your campaign accordingly.

• Diligently track which campaigns yield the most benefits and focus on those.

• Maintain ongoing relationships with existing users. Retention and upselling by being ridiculously helpful will be your next goals.

Content Marketing Automation – The Tools

If you’re in the market for content marketing automation software, here are some suggestions:

1. HubSpot – covers list building, email management, lead tracking and scoring, lead segmentation, and many more
2. Eloqua – has lead management, targeting and segmentation, sales enablement, web marketing, and marketing measurement features
3. Marketo – provides sales intelligence, lead targeting, scoring, and nurturing capabilities
4. Pardot – carries email marketing, lead generation, lead management, ROI reporting, and sales alignment functionalities
5. Autopilot – has sales management, split testing, third-party integration, and extensive tracking capabilities
6. InBoundio – inbound marketing software with social media and email management, lead nurturing, lead management, and reporting functions
7. Act-On – provides lead nurturing and scoring, list management, and A/B testing features, among others

Content Marketing Automation – The Risks

When sharing content, the important thing is to ensure relevance. If the person on the receiving end does not think the content being sent to them do not answer their questions, problems begin and you end up with unsubscribes, and spam and abuse reports.

When you automate content marketing, always make sure that your targeting is accurate:

• Send actionable, educational, useful content to new leads who are only just starting to get to know your business.
• Send more detailed information packets to leads that already trust your brand but want to know more about your products.
• Send links to your sales page to leads that are ready to purchase.

Bottom line, the experience you deliver must be tailored to your intended audience, or your marketing will certainly backfire.

Another problem is ease of use. A lot of the tools available today are so dynamic (not to mention flexible enough to work across multiple platforms), leveraging the technology to actually implement a more robust strategy isn’t easy. More than half of B2B marketers feel the implementation process is difficult. And, only about 38 percent are using automation to pull-off more advanced marketing techniques like progressive customer profiling.

Strategize Your Way into the Future

Don’t live your content marketing life on a “hand to mouth” basis. It’s a waste of time and resources. Instead, have the bulk of your content scheduled way in advance, giving you the opportunity to plan ahead of time and integrate content directly into your long-term goals.

The key here is to balance evergreen content with time-specific content, gaining the best from both worlds. It is likely that this time-specific content is going to need to be produced on the fly and delivered in a precise and timely manner directly where and when it’s needed. Your content teams should be able to handle this endeavor but will find it difficult if the content queue is jammed up with additional, evergreen content pieces.

This should never happen. Instead, everything should be planned out well in advance and scheduled ahead of time. This is a major labor-saver, freeing up your content team to produce great pieces of time-specific content when it’s needed.

Be Proactive

Modern customers don’t just want convenience; they expect it. This has altered the landscape of traditional content marketing somewhat. Perhaps, once upon a time, it was enough for businesses to react to the needs of the customer, or to provide solutions as and when required. This is not the case any longer.

Now, business owners need to be proactive. They need to understand the needs of the customer ahead of time and position themselves in a way that enables the direct implementation of a solution. Automation can help us to achieve this.

Marketing automation provides us with the data we need to really get to know our customers. By using this data, we can start segmenting customers into different groups and provide proactive services via our content strategies.

Leverage your martech stack to store and use data from each and every customer interaction. This includes data on purchase groupings, access points, and search queries. By commissioning reports from this data, we can begin to understand the different people who interact with us, and their different motivations. This enables us to provide content of genuine worth.

This is really not possible without marketing automation and provides another example of a time when marketing automation helped us to go the extra mile for customers.

Respond Quickly and Spontaneously

True greatness – in the sense of content marketing – is achieved with flexibility and responsiveness. We’ve discussed the importance of being proactive, getting our content into place before the user even realizes they need it; but this is not always possible.

Part of the reason why business is such a beautiful and rewarding – if occasionally infuriating – discipline to get into is its unpredictability. We can use data and analytics to make predictions, and we can set Strategy A, B and C in place to safeguard our actions, but the market or wider social conditions affecting our industry will always throw us a curveball sooner or later.

This is why we need to be able to respond quickly and easily. Marketing automation enables us to do this by handling the heavy lifting for us, leaving our content teams the swiftness and freedom required to get in quickly.

An extreme example of this is found in the automotive industry, when a manufacture suddenly issues an emergency recall. Without marketing automation, we have to manually locate customers who are affected, divert other content initiatives while emergency content is drafted, and deploy the content where it is required.

With marketing automation in place, we can swiftly access a database of the affected customers, contacting them directly via pre-programmed messaging. Our content teams are already free to draft up the important public service piece for hosting on our site and social media, and the content delivery architecture is already in place. The word spreads, and it spreads fast. Our goal is achieved.

As mentioned above, this is an extreme example, but the fundamental principles translate across the board. Give yourself the ability to respond quickly and effectively when required.

Keep it Dynamic

Fields such as content marketing and marketing automation are constantly evolving; in fact, they could be described as dynamic. It makes sense, then, for you to introduce dynamic content to your email marketing and to your website, providing your users with content offerings which are as smooth and pleasing to the reader as that segue.

Content marketers now have the tools at their disposal to upload content which changes based upon the location and preference of the user. Utilize these tools and create a much more personalized effect. This personal touch is something which is too often lost during the automation of your content strategies. It is important to reclaim it whenever you can.

Build a Long-Term Narrative

This one comes down to planning. Once you have launched a killer bit of content, what comes next? Do you consider that content done and dusted and move onto something else? Or do you carefully consider the next steps in your journey and that of your audience?

Plan your content carefully. Make each piece worthwhile and useful in its own right but look to build an ongoing narrative, with each piece leading into the next. Refer back to your content marketing mission statement to ensure you are heading in the right direction.

Segment, and Segment Again

We are already well aware of buyer profiles, but the idea of the buyer profile is not simply to segment your audience into manageable chunks, but to whittle your categories further and further to provide the most tailored experience possible to customers.

So, if your buyer profiles are not achieving the right result, segment again, narrowing them even further. Be as specific as your resources will allow and achieve far more bang for your content buck.

Understand Your Channels

Your automation platform has a reporting function, so use it. This function tells you where leads and prospects are accessing your content, which pieces of content are proving the most effective, and which devices are yielding the most conversions.

This represents an astonishingly valuable bit of insight. Knowing which channels are pulling their weight and which ones need further work gives you a strong indication of what you should do next.

Be Human

Automation can, occasionally, become a little too automatic. If this seems like a ludicrous statement, bare with me a moment. What I mean is that we should take every opportunity to inject a bit of humanity into our marketing.

Unless you have shelled out for a particularly incredible bit of software, the content you deploy via automation is not created automatically. You have to write it or produce it, so have fun with it. Add your own voice and don’t lose sight of your humanity. Your audience will reward you with a positive response.

Get Inspired

There’s no harm in casting a glance sideways every now and again to check out what the competition are up to. In fact, this is positively encouraged. Plagiarizing content is always wrong, and provides no benefit to marketers anyway, but sealing ourselves off from the outside world is simply pointless.

Look around you, look at what others are doing, think about how you could do it better. Inspiration is the driving force for creativity and, no matter how much you try to bury yourself in facts and figures and conventional wisdom, your content must be creative.

Keep it Fresh

Your audience are only human, and humans get bored from time to time. It is up to you to combat this boredom and to maintain interest in your content. To do this you need to look inwards.

What do you do when you get bored? You find something else to read, watch or do. What sort of things keep you from being bored? Things that remain fresh, interesting, diverse and useful. Work to introduce this freshness to your content marketing.

Play with different forms of media, invite guest bloggers to work with you, or form content partnerships. The definitions of fresh and exciting change all the time; make sure you are alive to these changes.

Better Understand Your Audience

The AI involved in a lot of today’s automation tools makes it easier for you to define who your customers are. Your technology makes segmenting simpler and more accurate by grouping customers based on specified information – such as purchasing history, website activity, and demographic data. The beauty of today’s tech is that it also gives us a more accurate perception of buyer segments because it takes into account how buyers change over time.

As your software continually ingests information, your buyer segments become more sophisticated, and they are allowed to evolve with the changes in terms of buyer needs and wants. Sure, customer interviews, market research and customer feedback surveys are still valuable for optimizing your personas, but, combine this knowledge with what automation technology offers, and your personas become a lot more effective. This gives you the insight you need to develop more effective content marketing strategies – that are both segmented and at scale. Taken another step forward, you can further segment your content with buying stages. Almost half of marketers use dedicated content for three to five distinct buying stages.

This type of streamlined marketing can help to boost sales numbers because your audience will be more receptive to content created and delivered specifically for them. Better personas, more effective segmentation, and the ability to deliver customized content at scale… you can't beat these kinds of results. Told you automation is an ROI machine for your content marketing!

Create a Better Customer Experience

And then there’s customer experience. Nothing helps marketers deliver a better CX than technology. And CX is one area in which the bar is always rising. Customers grow accustomed to a better experience with brands that excel at CX, forcing other companies to either catch up or lose market share.

You already know that investing in CX will drive the ROI of your marketing. Research shows that there’s a $3 return for every $1 invested in the customer experience.

With automation, there’s a lot you can do to improve your CX:

• Lose less leads with an organized lead capture system. Every lead is contacted, exactly when they are supposed to be, with the right content. This means, potential customers aren’t neglected.
• Send leads exactly what they want based on how they interact with your website.
• Lead nurturing can be behavior based. Leads who probably do want another email to hear about your latest life-changing blog post will receive it in their inbox. Those who would perceive another email as overkill, won’t.
• Develop more relevant content. This is a big one for improving your strategy. You can track which content your audience responds best to and what type of content helps you achieve certain goals. Then, use these insights to refine your content development, giving your audience what is the most useful and engaging for them.
• Content can be personalized. Something as simple as calling someone by their first name will actually help to increase sales – studies show that personalized emails increase the average order value by 5 percent. Take personalization even deeper by using other information you’ve learned about your audience, and you’ll get even better results. Deep personalization can drive a 17 percent revenue increase.

Strategize Smarter with Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics are a gold mine for your content marketing strategy. With automation, you can connect the dots of how your buyers are interacting with your content at each stage in the customer lifecycle. And from this information, it’s possible to get a reasonable prediction of what each part of your content marketing strategy will result in.

This goes further than being able to offer more relevant content for a better customer experience. With this type of analysis, you can assign values to different content offerings along the journey and project how effective each component, as well as the whole strategy, will be at driving sales – based on past performance and historical customer data. This makes it easier to determine how much to invest in different types of content in order to achieve the desired return.

With attribution modeling reports, for example, you can tie a conversion or a sale to actions a customer or lead took when interacting with your content, such as downloading an ebook or registering for an event. Another useful step, for those with a big enough budget, is to tie big data from third-party sources into your marketing tools, giving you more information about who is interacting with your content and how.

Focus on Value

The bottom line of content must always be meaningful and valuable. You can craft a flashy bit of content, publish it, and then distribute it via your marketing automation platform, but your efforts will be wasted if the content is found to be ultimately of little to no value.

Your audience are smart; they engage with you because they have a specific problem and require your expertise or killer product to resolve this problem. As such, marketers must respect this intelligence and make sure that each piece of content hits this target.

Ask yourself: what is the point of this content? What is it trying to achieve? And is it successful?

Continue to Support Your Customers

Once we start achieving results from the content we launch, it is tempting to get a little carried away. We spend time creating great content. We carefully select the automation platform which best suits our needs, then we put the two elements together and… hey presto… a rapid upturn in conversions and new customers.

But what about the other end of the scale? What about the customers you have already acquired? Don’t they deserve love and support too? They certainly do and failing to provide that support can be costly. A study found that 67% of customers who churn cited bad experiences as the reason for their leaving the fold – i.e., they were pushed away, rather than pulled by attractive offers elsewhere.

Content can play a major role in preventing churn. Consider your interactions with displeased customers; what was playing on their mind? what issues needed to be resolved? Could these solutions be supported or provided with content?

Measure Results

What’s the point in implementing a strategy without metrics to measure its success? Without such metrics, we can’t tell if our strategies have worked or failed, we can’t know if we are going forwards or backwards, in fact, we can’t be sure of very much at all.

Fortunately, with the right kind of systems in place, the metrics we need to apply to data are within reach.

There are many different ways to achieve success in the content marketing game. Many marketers set their sights on boosted traffic via inbound marketing channels, while others are aiming for enhanced brand authority and social media shares. Some may aim to garner improved customer lifecycle value via content-based support.

Decide which outcome suits your organization and then what you will do to accomplish your aim. If boosted traffic was your target, analyze referrals and search engine keywords among visitors to your site to gauge if you have been successful. If enhanced brand authority and social media shares were your desired outcomes, use plug-in tools for your analytic software to assess whether these have been achieved.

Alternatively, if enhanced support was what you wanted to provide, commission reports on data from your customer feedback channels to check on this. Use the data and the functionality at your disposal; then set about planning the next steps of your content strategy.

Measure the ROI of Content Marketing Automation

The right marketing automation technology can push the reach of your content marketing strategy, giving you more impact and providing insights to help you improve even further. The outcome? Content marketing that’s more efficient and more powerful, and which offers a better return on investment; always a welcome trio of advantages.

Your marketing automation, when you break it down, is one of the most effective tools you have for boosting your content’s ROI. This what you can use to demonstrate your demonstrate the worth of your content marketing, thus driving more support for your campaigns. 45 percent of agencies use their automation platforms to track and prove ROI.

In order to seriously improve your conversion rates, to capture more lead data, and to boost sales, automation has to be viewed as much more than a time-saver and a platform for churning out automated content. While, for a lot of companies, automation started out with email and then social media, today it is a lot more than this.

Some time back, I hosted one of GetResponse's Automation Hub webinars, in which I discussed several formulas that will help marketing professionals identify and calculate ROI for their content marketing efforts.

The owned platform is important – that’s the big difference. Remember that by the time a consumer is ready to make a purchase, they’ve already completed 90% of the buyer’s journey. And that’s where the various calculations for ROI on automation can help. That growth over time can come in the forms of sales as well as savings on other marketing costs.

If you need simple, mathematical formulas that can put a monetary value on your content marketing automation efforts, watch this video today!

View automation as the intelligent, AI-inspired machine that it is, and work towards unleashing its full potential for your overarching content marketing strategy. Then you’ll start seeing the ROI you want and deserve.

Marketing Automation Works!

Content marketing automation isn’t automatic marketing, as a Contently article insists. There are many different ways the strategy can sabotage your marketing success if you don’t apply the technique mindfully. Content marketing automation is just one aspect of the bigger marketing pie, and as HubSpot puts it, “it needs constant care in order to flourish.”

At a recent content marketing workshop, someone mentioned that they started following me on Twitter and that I’d tweeted a few times during the group discussion. I laughed and mentioned that it was content marketing automation at work. This is something you can do as well!

How can I help you get started? Contact me today!

You're likely to have encountered a request for proposals (RFP) if you've been in the marketing industry for some time.

You may have different opinions about what an RFP is and how effective it can be, depending on whether you are the client or the agency.

RFPs were a great way for buyers to compare and categorize suppliers of similar products (commodities) in their prime.

Let's say you are looking for a new supplier for hospital supplies. A request for proposals (RFP) can help you evaluate your options. There are many things you can learn, including the history of clients and their prices, as well as proof of reliability.

An RFP is a great way to resolve issues later on in a relationship, especially for an industry that can be as dry as sheets and bandages and rubbing alcohol.

RFPs can be confusing in creative industries such as marketing. Understanding when and how an RFP can help you is crucial.

RFPs are a great way to find a content marketing agency.

The Key Takeaways:

• 
  While an RFP is a traditional way to hire an agency, content marketing is something that is not traditional.
  

• 
  An RFP will stifle creativity as well as strategy for solving a problem.
  

• 
  It is possible to find a great agency for marketing without a RFP.
  

What is an RFP?

Companies often issue a request for proposals when they are trying to find a solution for a problem that has already been identified.

This document contains a rigid checklist that often covers many things, including prices, work history, number of employees, and a description for the project. The RFP often includes a timeline in addition to the description of project scope.

The RFP can have some advantages. A company is essentially announcing that they are a hot lead by issuing an RFP. RFPs show that they are ready to buy and know the problem they need solved. This is a salesperson's ideal.

However, the RFP process has its downsides, especially when it is about choosing a content agency.

A rigid checklist makes it difficult to think creatively about the company's problems. This type of selection criteria is best when there are tangible and objective results. The RFP will fall flat if responses are easy to interpret.

The RFP that falls flat

It's much more difficult to quantify creative elements when it comes down to the truth. You could theoretically say that a video marketing company will create 60 second animations to use in your ads. It seems pretty straightforward, right? What if they design and style your brand in a way that you hate?

They were perfect on paper. Their pricing was reasonable, their timeline was precise, and their plan seemed to be foolproof. This doesn't mean that you don't like their work.

Content marketing is an artistic space. Companies are often graded on their responses to an RFP. This can lead to them overlooking their work, process and results.

An RFP is a sign that the company is aware of their problem and can fix it. They would probably fix it themselves if that was the case.

The RFP will not be accepted if the company issuing it doesn't have a marketing department. Marketing is always changing. Each day brings new marketing trends, both good and bad. There is also more data to learn.

Content marketing is highly in demand. Content is the king in the digital age. This is a difficult industry to grasp.

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An RFP can stifle creativity and create a list. This is great for a business dealing with an industry that moves band-aids around, but it can be disastrous in marketing.

Content marketing is all about strategy. You can't just throw caution to the wind and hope for the best.

Your strategy is what will set you apart from the rest. These are just a few of the many benefits that a content marketing strategy could bring:

• Your brand should be consistent. A strategy can help you stay consistent, from publishing tone to voice, which can lead to trust and brand loyalty.
• It's easier to track ROI. A strategy will help you define your efforts and track your results. You can save time and money by knowing what works.
• The complete picture of the puzzle. The full picture can sometimes be blurred due to the many ways of driving traffic. Strategy will help you see where your efforts are most effective and where they fall short. Perhaps your blog is doing well, but your social media channels are not being used. These are the areas that need to be addressed with a strategy.
• Optimizing leads. Content marketing generates leads. With a solid strategy, this process can be optimized for more sales.

Although this isn't a comprehensive list, you can see the point. Strategy gives content marketing a solid foundation and makes it easier to succeed.

This is not something an RFP will highlight. An RFP doesn't allow a company to offer advice in the specific area that they are best at. An RFP effectively whitelabels the relationship in the decision-making process.

You may see the company logo, name, and contact information, but you will not meet the person until the deal has been signed.

It is essential to have good rapport between your agency and you. Effective communication between you and your marketing agency is key. You should be comfortable speaking up for yourself and your client if you have concerns.

If I have successfully made you wary about the RFP…

How do you find the best marketing agency?

There are some things to keep in mind when you search for the right agency.

• Be clear about your goals and open to new ideas. There are many reasons you might need a marketing agency. You might be having problems with your content marketing efforts, or your blog and videos. If you don't have marketing professionals on your team, it might be worth looking for a larger marketing agency. You should set a goal and not follow a path when looking for an agency.

• Take a look at their strategy. You don't have to abandon the RFP just because you didn't accept it. Stress test any agency that presents you with their strategy. You want to ensure that the agency you are considering is legitimate.

• Ask the right questions. It's important to start a conversation. You want to have a conversation.

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You need to find the right marketing agency, just like Goldilocks.

There are many types of marketing agencies. There are many types of marketing agencies, from overhead agencies that can handle all your marketing needs to niche agencies that can optimize specific aspects of your strategy. After identifying your problem and setting a goal, it is better to let experts help you find the right solution than trying to figure it out yourself.

Do you need to do some heavy lifting in your content marketing strategy? To learn more about this niche, you can check out our SEO Blog Writing Services.