Content Marketing Archives

Content Marketing: Are You Leaving Money On The Table?

Content marketing is something that is close to my heart as a marketer. I am very much the content marketing evangelist and have spoken quite extensively about it. In my Icelandic online training program there is a very big module about marketing communications and as I am reworking the materials in English (my training will be launched internationally next year) the realisation just hits me again and again how large a part of modern marketing content marketing is.

Amongst other things, the marketing communications part of my training covers the marketing process, how marketing activities must work together for optimum results, and then I list a great big menu of marketing communications tools and activities that SMBs and entrepreneurs have at their disposal.

To make sense of the myriad of things out there, I have prioritised the options and given examples of what activities are most suitable for what types of businesses. As I went through the list of only the most important things to do in marketing, just the ones that hardly any business can go without today, it became increasingly clear that in today’s business world content marketing is not an option but a necessity. It is something that we are all doing and all need to do if we are in business, and its importance will only increase in the future. It is literally everywhere!

Below are a few places where content marketing comes into play – and many of us don’t even realise it! [Read more…]

Use Content Marketing To Make Your Life Easier

– by educating your customers

Content marketing is one of my favourite aspects of marketing for many reasons. One of the somewhat hidden benefits of content marketing is how it can improve your relationship with your customers through their learning.

Most of us have experienced bad customers, whether they were difficult to sell to to begin with or whether they are difficult to work with once business is underway. There are many reasons for them being this way (some people are just like that ;) but in many cases these difficulties can be reduced through content marketing. By informing and enlightening your customers you can remove many of the hindrances to a good relationship, and even open the door to selling them things that they may never have been willing to buy otherwise.

The best way to illustrate this is by examples: [Read more…]

Lead Me

For those who have been following me for a while, the marketing process is not a new concept. In another post I have talked about owning rather than renting your marketing, by using advertising and other means to get people into a marketing process where you don’t have to pay each and every time you want to make contact with those people.

I want to talk a bit more about how we can own our marketing, and how we can use the concept of lead management to do this. A lead is someone that has come into contact with us and is now in our marketing process.

This is how I have usually portrayed the marketing process: [Read more…]

Should you still be marketing on Facebook?

Are you marketing on Facebook?

If you are, you have probably noticed that your Facebook posts are not reaching as many people as they used to – or what? Many people have been noticing this for a while now, and it isn’t just that people have been using Facebook less over the holidays or something like that and therefore not seeing what you are posting.

Facebook have simply come out and said that businesses can no longer rely on getting free exposure through their Facebook pages, and they recommend that businesses buy advertising. This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone. A: They are a business and their revenues come from advertising. B: There is a gargantuan amount of posts swirling around on Facebook everyday and they must somehow filter what people see so that people are seeing what they are interested in. If people started seeing everything, they would quickly leave (and that would in turn render Facebook useless as a marketing tool). People don’t see everything that those they are connected to on Facebook post – they filter it and choose the best stuff for you.

You can see a few more articles about these Facebook changes and their effects below, if you want to delve deeper. [Read more…]

Getting found on Google – 5 things to keep in mind

If I had a dollar, pound or euro for each time someone asks me how one goes about getting found on Google, well, I would at least have one nice free lunch each week :)

Search Engine Optimization – making your website, and other online information about you – visible on Google and other search engines (apparently there are others, like Bing and Yahoo ;) This used to be the realm of the techies. It was all about keyword analysis, meta data, robot txt, link building and all those fun things. Many of those things are still valid, but many are not and its impact is constantly diminishing. You can no longer get ahead in the search engines by using trickery because Google and all the others are alert and are constantly changing their algorithms to make sure that they can’t be manipulated. But you know, this is actually not a bad thing at all. It is actually really really good. Because you know what that means? It means we just all have to get better at marketing.

Hmmmm … how? [Read more…]