#2 – Feature or write about industry influencers

When you start any content marketing campaign, one of the first things that you should do is map out the influencers in your industry – think about the type of people that you follow and whose opinion that you value.

I recently published a group interview on my blog where I invited a number of industry experts to talk about how they build reader engagement with their audience. You can view the post here.

I started by inviting a number of influencers within the marketing industry to answer a number of questions on improving reader engagement – something that all of the people I asked did very well.

In the end I managed to publish responses from Seth Godin, Anita Campbell, Neil Patel and 30 other industry experts.

 

What did I do to promote it?

I reached out to everyone that took part using social media sites such as Twitter and Google Plus – sites that would notify them that they’d been mentioned.

This was then followed up with an email to let the participants know that the post was live, where they could find it along with a call to action.

The call to action was to help share the post and vote for the post on BizSugar.

The post was then imported into my Triberr account – If you’ve not come across this before, it’s a platform that allows you to link up your Twitter profile (along with Facebook and Linkedin) and join tribes of like-minded bloggers, marketers or business owners that will see your content and get the opportunity to share it with their followers.

 

What about the results?

In just over a day the post was the 2^nd most popular post on BizSugar in June:

The post has gained quite a significant amount of traction on social media:

The post also earned some good links according to Ahrefs.com (Majestic shows more referring domains, but I prefer the graph in Ahrefs):

It also helped me get contributor of the week on BizSugar.com:

You can find the post here.

Continued Part 3:

http://onebigbroadcast.com/autospeakstraighttalk/view/287/_Part_3__There_Is_More_To_This_Content_Marketing_Than_Just_Clicking_Publish.html


http://dealernetservicesonline.biz

Content marketing has already proved that it can be a powerful way of building your brand visibility and generating leads but a lot of marketers continue to talk about creating great content like it’s the only thing that you need to do when there is so much more to it than that. The truth is that clicking publish is not enough and it never was.

I’m sure you’ve seen it, marketers with blogs that are that popular that they only need to click the publish button and wait for all the tweets, likes, +1’s and links to poor in.

When someone is in a position like that, it’s easy for them to forget that for most bloggers, marketers and business owners – clicking publish just isn’t going to

Paul May from BuzzStream did a great job of highlighting the reality about content marketing here and mentioned a number of important points that really ring true.

The main one being – for the majority of us, if we want to get traffic, social shares and links when we publish a post then we’ve got to go out there into the world wide web and actually promote our content.

Some of the best content is left to gather dust in the far corners of the web simply for the fact that it hasn’t been promoted.

Surely, you would want to make your content visible rather than letting it sit there right?!

Below I am going to show you a number of tactics that you can use to get your content visible to the right audience along with some examples of what has worked well for me and what I believe can work well for you.

 

#1 – Put the right content in front of the right people

Knowing who exactly you are targeting is extremely important in business and it’s extremely important in content marketing too.

If you know exactly who it is that you’re targeting then you can find their online hang outs, who is active within the industry and how you can put your content in front of them.

The other side of this is writing content that you know will be a hot topic for your target audience and cause some debate – which ultimately leads to more traffic, more shares, links and visibility.

A few months ago, the marketing agency I manage launched a new service, content marketing was one of the tactics that we were focusing on and our MD, Jason Brooks wrote an opinion piece that threw the question out there – “Is Google+ The Key to Building Links with Guest Post after Penguin 2.0?”

 

How did we promote it?

We shared the content using various social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and Google+1.

We also shared the post on several niche social networks, including BizSugar and Inbound.org.

The post was then imported into my Triberr account – If you’ve not come across this before, it’s a platform that allows you to link up your Twitter profile (along with Facebook and Linkedin) and join tribes of like-minded bloggers, marketers or business owners that will see your content and get the opportunity to share it with their followers.

 

What about the results?

Above image taken using Linktally to generate the tally of shares.

 

Why did this work so well?

Considering the site is a few months old and doesn’t have many posts this is quite impressive but there are a few things that immediately stood out:

• The majority of our following on Google+ and Twitter consists of marketing agencies and industry professionals from the marketing and SEO space
• The post also caused a lengthy debate between a number of people in Google+ which resulted in traffic, further discussions and shares

This shows that when you target the right people with the right content you can cause a stir, get a conversation going (in this case on Google+ mostly) and ultimately get a great deal of visibility that you wouldn’t get under regular circumstances.

Part 2 Continued

http://onebigbroadcast.com/autospeakstraighttalk/view/286/_Part_2__There_Is_More_To_This_Content_Marketing_Than_Just_Clicking_Publish.html

http://dealernetservicesonline.biz

Marketing has been democratised.

The capability to use marketing tools and technology without having to beg or pay for attention is unprecedented. It’s a time where you can now build your own crowd to market and sell to without paying the mass media gate keepers.That’s social media.

The social media networks are at your disposal and with the right tactics and software you can create brand awareness and access to influencers and decision makers in boardrooms across the world.

This freedom to take control of your own marketing comes at a cost. The cost is complexity and time. To be effective it requires using multiple networks, constant content creation and monitoring and managing.

It’s not just multiple networks and multimedia to think of, it is also about adapting to new hardware platforms where consumers receive their messaging. This is no longer restricted to just print, TV and radio but has proliferated to laptops, smart phones and tablets. They all have their own limitations and parameters to be optimal.

Within this technology and media explosion there are many marketing trends that have been emerging that we should be paying attention to.

7 Marketing Trends

Here are seven trends that all marketers need to consider in their toolbox of tactics to remain effective and current.

1. Content marketing

The importance and role of content marketing and how it works across social media, search, multimedia and mobile is becoming a key focus for many brands. Many companies don’t understand the importance of this trend and how it underlies almost all digital marketing. Brands such as Coca Cola have recognised this and changed their strategies to meet the web realities.

Brands have been blinded by the shiny new toy of social media eg Facebook and think that Facebook marketing is all they should be doing beyond their day to day habitual marketing that they have been doing for decades.

This is just a snippet of your activity focus. You should not be forgetting Twitter, Blogs and Google+…just to mention a few to market your content.

Content is the foundation of all digital marketing and is the reason people read, view or share.

Creating “liquid content” is vital to create brand awareness and tap into crowd sourced marketing.

2. Mobile Marketing

The rapid rise of smart phones and tablets has flatfooted many marketing managers and delivering marketing messages and content that is optimized for mobile platforms is becoming a “must”. Increasingly consumers are viewing content, receiving emails and buying products from “small screens”.

Companies need to urgently redesign websites and blogs that are “responsive” (respond to all devices screen sizes for optimal viewing and usability) to ensure they are optimising for mobile devices. Some websites are recording 30-40% of all traffic from mobile devices. That should not be ignored. It will cost you money and lead to missed opportunities.

3. Integrated Digital Marketing

Companies that are savvy marketers are realizing that digital marketing should not be one offs that are islands of isolated tactics. Social media and content is impacting search results. Google created Google+ for a few reasons including capturing social signals. Ensuring that your approach is allowing you to tie them all together to achieve maximum effectiveness is becoming key.

This is optimised and integrated digital marketing.

4. Social Media at Scale Marketing

Brands are also realizing that “doing” social is complex and is like juggling many balls at once. We are seeing the rush to develop, buy up start-ups and implement Enterprise platforms that are assisting marketing professionals to market, manage and monitor multiple social networks and even other digital marketing (eg email).

The tools to manage the complexity are emerging and evolving as the rush to package the technology accelerates. The holy grail to have one tool to manage your marketing is the mission for many software companies who see this opportunity.

This is “social at scale”

5. Continuous Marketing

Marketers need to realise that a strong trend is emerging called continuous marketing. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t run “campaigns”. The reality is that being found online (found in social network updates, Twitter streams and in a Google search) requires constant SEO activity and content creation, publishing and marketing.

Google hates silence.

Creating, curating and marketing content that is fed into the maws of the social media beast needs to be relentless or you will left behind and you will be lost in the web noise.

To do this well requires implementing marketing automation that leverages your time and resources.

6. Personalized Marketing

The “one size fits all” approach to marketing where mass messages on television and traditional media are becoming less effective due to media saturation. We are seeing the rise of personalized marketing on e-commerce sites, websites and emails that tailor the advertising and user interface to the relevant interests of consumers.

Visit an online store once and come back and the website knows that you are male and like Nike runners. The next email that arrives has also been personalised with products that you visited while shopping online. The web is capturing your habits as it reads the data, applies intelligence and serves up information that is relevant to “you”.

This trend is being driven by technology using “big data” to increase marketing effectiveness.

7. Visual Marketing

We first saw the creep of visual marketing into the landscape when YouTube entered mainstream consciousness a few years ago. Since then this creep has turned into a torrent of visual marketing with emergence of Pinterest, Instagram and even Slideshare.

In the last 6 months this has gone to a whole new level as Vine’s 6 second snack size video and now Instagram’s new 15 second video app has marketers scrambling for creative inspiration to apply and leverage this new trend.

Your marketing needs to ride this trend to increase engagement and cut through the online noise.

What about you?

Which trends excite you or even surprise you? Have you adapted your tactics to meet the continual marketing and technology eveolution.

Look forward to hearing your stories, feedback and insights in the comments below.
Written by Jeff Bullas 
http://dealernetservicesonline.biz
 

A new study conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau has found that 90 per cent of consumers would recommend a brand to others after interacting with them on social media.

The study focused on FMCG brands Heinz, Kettle and Twinings and found that social media can drive by driving brand sentiment, encouraging consumer engagement and increasing brand loyalty.

More than 4,500 survey responses were collected from each brands social media pages over a two month period and supplemented by 800 interviews to inform the findings.

This showed that four out of five consumers would be more inclined to buy a brand more after being exposed to their social media, with 83 per cent happy to trial the product in such circumstances.

The uplift in sentiment for each brand was measured as Heinz 22%, Kettle 17% and Twinings 19 per cent, allowing the IAB to estimate that for every £1 spent on social media as much as £3.34 could be generated.
Kristin Brewe, the IAB’s director of marketing & communications said: “The IAB study shows that, when trying to create deeper emotional connections with consumers, social media is an essential channel for brands. This isn’t surprising since social media is the only channel where it’s possible for brands and consumers to have meaningful two-way conversations, making the strength of connections that much stronger.”

Ian Ralph, the director at marketing sciences who conducted the research, adds, “Our research shows that to create an emotional connection brands really need to provide clear, timely and, most important of all, relevant content that develop a conversation. Interestingly, we also found that brands really shouldn’t be afraid about having their products on show and of linking up their social media activities to their business objectives. Social media has the potential to turn brand customers into brand fans.

“By making people love, not just like your brand, you’re more likely to drive future purchases and increase sales.”

 By JOHN GLENDAY, THE DRUM

http://dealernetservicesonline.biz
 

Social sharing is key to online sponsorship

Sponsorship regularly extends beyond digital channels to the entire marketing  ecosystem, according to a new eMarketer report, “Online Sponsorship: Defining,  Tracking and Measuring an Amorphous Channel.”  So for many marketers,  sponsorship is a multichannel game, where the activity in one channel supports  and leads to another.

Sponsorship can be difficult to define with a single label. It can mean logo  placements, banners and pre-roll video ads—or it can mean streaming concerts,  brand-created articles, along with sponsored events and webinars.

The prevalence of sponsorship marketing is huge. In a February 2012 study  from the Columbia Business  School and New York American  Marketing Association (NYAMA), 90% of US marketers said they included  sponsorships and events as one of their marketing tactics.

According to research from GroupM, sponsorship spending, at $19.2 billion, will comprise  14% of total marketing spending in North America in 2013.

IEG, a sponsorship  consultant, came in roughly in line with GroupM, estimating that North American  sponsorship spending this year will be about $19.9 billion. Most of those  sponsorship dollars will go to sports, at a 69% share of that market. In  contrast, entertainment sponsorship will represent only a 10% share.

Social has become a key element of sponsorship. “We can’t do a partnership  right now without someone asking for some sort of social extension,” said Dan  Rossomondo, senior vice president of global marketing partnerships for the  National Basketball Association. According to IEG and Performance Research, 88%  of companies worldwide used social media as a channel for leveraging  sponsorships in March 2013.

Digital interactivity works as an excellent support for a brand’s more static  sponsorship methods offline. Therefore, digital sponsorship increasingly depends  on cross-channel elements.

“What used to be clearly identified as sponsorships, with discrete budgets  and contracts, are now far more likely to be part of multiplatform,  cross-channel programs in which a partnership is just one element, and where  multiple players have a role in planning, execution and evaluation,” IEG’s  “Sponsorship Outlook” reported in January 2013.

Just as some of sponsorship’s formats and several of its elements are  evolving, so are the ways in which marketers measure its effectiveness—but to a  lesser extent.

In the IEG/Performance Research survey, the most cited metrics for evaluating  sponsorships were sponsorship awareness (94%) and brand awareness (90%).

However, a UK study from Think!Sponsorship found that nearly everyone (93.5%) said that the information they need to  evaluate sponsorship evolves over the course of any campaign. In addition, 70.9%  of respondents said the sponsorship industry has become over-dependent on  measuring brand awareness.

“I had all the wrong metrics before,” said Ron Faris, head of brand marketing at Virgin Mobile. “And the metrics before were impressions served. And all that stuff is just crap. The metric that I’m married to right now is all about the share. I also think the number of retweets and earned impressions are also really important. But I’m not going to bank on a lot of clickthroughs of views of my content.”

The social metrics—shares and followers—tell Faris how often he can message  the people he’s retargeted and how big he can make that retargeting pool.

The full report, “Online Sponsorship: Defining, Tracking and Measuring an  Amorphous Channel,” also answers these key questions: 

• What types of sponsorship are available to companies today?
• How do sponsorship spending estimates help describe this universe?
• What elements contribute to the evolution of sponsorship?
• What are the best ways to measure sponsorship’s results?

 

This report is available to eMarketer corporate subscription clients only.  eMarketer clients, log in and view  the report now.

DealerNet Services

Interesting things happening across the pond.

Dealers and manufacturers will soon be given the tool to update, track and measure the effectiveness of finance offers on new cars in a much simpler and cheaper way than has traditionally been available.

CAP is working on a near-automated system that it says will, in quarter four this year, spell the end to what it calls the “primitive” communication process for pricing and other incentive information by moving all the information into a single secure web-based service.

Independent research by Accenture has shown that new vehicle incentives are a manufacturer’s second largest cost after raw materials and dwarfing product development budgets, warranty provision and assembly costs.

The average investment in incentives per unit sold over the lifetime of a vehicle is £2,000.

But it is estimated that £40 million of additional revenue is currently generated over the lifecycle of a typical model using financial offers.

The new product will be called ‘CAP new vehicle incentive’. It will be an additional information stream to CAP new vehicle data.

Nigel Pates, product manager and former managing director of showroom systems' supplier WinWinWorld, said: “Communication of the incentive information to dealers is typically paper-based, time-consuming, error prone, inefficient and – worst of all – completely opaque. With some brands, any given car could be subject to around 12 incentives at one time and a sales manager will be juggling with these each time they talk to a customer. This is time consuming and liable to error.

“It is also therefore very difficult to analyse performance of incentives and hard to even maintain 100% accuracy at all times.”

CAP NVI, he said, will enable dealers to:

* Take vehicle offers to market faster via, for example new car configurators and point of sale marketing material

* Reduce labour costs and time spent by showroom staff learning and updating the latest incentive terms

* Eradicate errors through each incentive being linked by model by the unique identifier the CAP code

* Administer agreements with customers correctly each time

* Eliminate profit loss due to claim error

* End the need for rebate claim negotiations

* Understand which incentives are optional or mandatory

* Free up staff currently tied up administering incentive information.

Subscription costs to the system for dealers will be based on a sliding scale up to £590 a year, dependent on their existing data supply contract with CAP.

Manufacturers paying to access NVI will only be able to see data on their incentives, dealers on only the brands they offer.

Pates said: “CAP NVI will unlock millions of pounds of additional profit opportunity for manufacturers, drive out costs and eliminate errors.

“For the first time they will be able to monitor the impact of incentives, respond quickly to changes in the market, get more profit out of each model by managing lifecycle decay more effectively with incentives and gain instant clarity on dealer sales activity and incentives agreed per vehicle.”

> More details at www.cap.co.uk/products-and-services/new-vehicle-incentives.

http://dealenetservicesonline.biz
 

There’s no denying that in sales, talent is a key differentiator.  The same goes for pro athletes.  The majority of your “A” players are talented.  They hold themselves accountable and have the competencies required for success.  However, even the most talented will fail if they're put in the wrong environment.  Even the best NFL quarterbacks.  Today’s post is about how Sales Ops can create conditions that enable success.

How well have you created conditions for sales success?  Find out by downloading the Sales Performance Conditions Scorecard here.

Ultimately, sales success is about making the number.  Many variables influence making your revenue goals.  Overall strategy, go-to-market model and product suite are essential.  So too are having the right talent, structure and head count.

However, without setting up the right performance conditions, revenue goals won’t be met.  Specific performance conditions include:

• Sales Process: This is your playbook.  Is it aligned with the buyer, adopted in the field and reinforced by your “coaches”?
• Territories: The field of play.  Are territories designed to maximize growth balanced with efficiency?  Are you holding back performance based on territory design and assignment?
• Compensation: Akin to a pro athlete’s salary.  Is it competitive and geared to keep your very best?  Is it synced with your strategy and driving desired behavior?
• Quotas: Your most important player statistic.  Are your quotas attainable and reflective of current performance and market potential?

I’ll illustrate the importance of these conditions using a sports analogy with the NFL.

Aaron Rodgers is a quarterback with the Green Bay Packers.  He’s considered by many to be one of the best NFL quarterbacks playing today.   The Packers are also one of the greatest NFL franchises ever.  With the right game plan, coaches, supporting team, trainers and equipment he’ll remain elite.

Huddle Around A Sales Process

What if Rodgers’ receivers and running backs all decide not to follow a scripted play?  That’s like having sales reps create their own sales process.  Without a huddle and playbook, you get no predictable activity, cadence or alignment.  Without a sales process, some of your “A’s” may improvise.  However, to raise performance broadly, you need an adopted and repeatable process.

Give Your “A” Players the Best “Field”

Great quarterbacks use the entire football field.  However, their real “patch” – where they maneuver the most - is the backfield.  How would Rodgers perform if his “patch” was much worse than competing quarterbacks?  If his backfield was filled with gopher holes and boulders, he would fail.  Give your very best reps the very worst sales territories and suffer the consequences.

Design territories that are efficient and take untapped opportunity into account.  To do this right you have to conduct account segmentation.  Update the analysis annually and make adjustments.  Assign the highest potential territories to your best reps.  They will thank you for it and perform.

Competitive Compensation Aligned to Strategy

Rodgers’ current total pay will average about $19 million per year.  Among the highest paid QB’s in the NFL.  Consider if Green Bay had a pay policy that capped him at $5 million.  Still a good chunk of change but he would opt out.  He would get paid more by the competition. 

If your compensation plans aren’t in line with your competition, you lose talent.  Don’t kid yourself – great sales people are like “free agents”.  They expect to get paid what they’re worth.  Benchmark the market regularly to see if you’re competitive.  Reward strong performance.

Incentive pay is a lever that must align with strategy.  Suppose Rodgers was paid an incentive every time he threw an interception.  Crazy, right?  Well, no different than paying incentives misaligned with your core strategy.   Pay sales well for results that reinforce the strategy of the company.  Align the two or you won’t get the desired behavior.

Realistic Quota Setting

Here’s one last parallel to consider regarding quota setting.  Assume Rodgers was told to double his pass completions this year to make his incentive.  In addition, if Green Bay traded all their best receivers, would Rodgers make his “quota”?  It would be totally unrealistic to expect him to double his performance.  Quotas must be attainable.  To set them appropriately requires looking at past performance and opportunity potential.

Setting the right performance conditions for your team is complex.  It requires your foresight, analysis and execution.  You need support from executive management.  It demands a team approach.  It’s much more than just making analogies to NFL football.  How well have you created the best conditions for sales success?  Use our Sales Performance Conditions Scorecard to begin your evaluation.

It’s not too early to start now in preparation for 2014.  You could wait but you run the risk of losing your “A” players.  You’ll miss the number.  Success begins with setting the right performance conditions.  Move the ball downfield.

Author: Patrick Seidell

http://dealernetservicesonline.biz



 

Have you ever read or heard a truly engaging story? Have you tuned into some television show you couldn't stop watching? What makes the roller coaster ride of a story so thrilling to us?

Well, every great story begins with a prologue that sets the stage and the characters into motion. In order for us to truly be sucked in, the narrator must build a backstory, sometimes with exposition, that connects the audience emotionally to the characters and establishes the themes. Each additional word then slowly thickens the plot and revs the action up until it peaks at some climax; on the way down, the reader or listener fully experiences every jarring twist and red herring the storyline has to offer. Unfortunately, some tales crash and burn, perhaps by leaving the audience in a suspended state of disbelief. But the stories that manage to captivate our attention and make it past the lake of "unresolved subplots" to their final destinations can be a rewarding and entertaining ride!
 
What's your all-time favorite story? Personally, I'd have to go with the Princess Bride How can you go wrong with comedy and adventure, mystical forests, jolly giants, and shrieking eels, not to mention badly written true love?
 
comic via incidentalcomics