Happy Holidays!
December 19, 2014
19
Dec
18
Dec
Regift this: 6 tips to boost content sharing
December 18, 2014
Outside of marketing, a regift would be considered a great insult to the recipient. In the content world, it’s one of the end goals: to get your reader to appreciate what you’ve provided so much that they wrap it up in the form of a tweet, social post or email and share the gift of your insight with someone else.
So how can we as content marketers ensure our e-books and buyer’s guides are just as regift-worthy as the label maker Elaine gave to dentist Tim Whatley back in 1995?
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16
Dec
Social media stocking stuffer: tips for managing your company accounts
December 16, 2014
What’s my secret to being the coolest Santa? Pinterest. I click over to the giftee’s Pinterest page, scope out their pins and then I buy one of said pins. I’m jolly because it’s quick and easy; they’re merry and bright because they don’t have to fake a smile and shove their way through the Wal-Mart returns line.
While I’m in the spirit of giving, I’ll be straight up. I’m not going to all of your Pinterest pages to shower you with gifts. What will I give you? A social media stocking stuffer with helpful tips and tricks I’ve learned from managing business accounts.
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12
Dec
Converting website visitors into customers—the content marketing conversion process explained
December 12, 2014
With any marketing, the end goal is to make money, right? If you talk to some marketers, you’d think their primary goal is “brand consistency” or “generating awareness” or “increasing website traffic.” But in the end, these aren’t the real reasons we as marketers get up in the morning and do our jobs. We are here to help our companies make money. Otherwise, our jobs wouldn’t exist. Thus it’s imperative that our content marketing efforts convert website visitors into leads, and eventually, into customers. But how does that happen?
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04
Dec
Want better marketing? Start by retaining your agency
December 4, 2014
Many companies struggle with determining whether it makes sense to secure a monthly retainer with an inbound agency or marketing firm, or employ these agencies on a project-only basis.
As someone who used to work for an agency on the project fee model, where assignments are scoped and an agreed-upon budget is determined before work begins, I can honestly say that the employees, the agency and the work suffer. Projects are underbid and overspent, leaving creatives frazzled and holes in agencies’ pockets.
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20
Nov
How to choose a web firm: get (and love) what you pay for
November 20, 2014
It won’t take much convincing to make the case that your corporate website is one of your hardest-working assets. It’s:
• Your brand’s first impression for most people
• A marketing and sales tool that works 24/7/365
• An information resource for prospects
• The most powerful recruitment tool
• Where visitors turn into leads, and hopefully customers
With the typical lifespan of a corporate website lasting three to four years, you’ll want to make sure your decision is one you can live with for that long. One of the best ways to avoid buyer’s remorse is to not let price be your deciding vote when choosing a web firm.
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13
Nov
The content shock is coming: what to do about it
November 13, 2014
At the beginning of this year, noted marketing thought leader Mark Schaefer of {grow} wrote a now somewhat infamous blog post titled Content Shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend taking a moment to do so. His basic theory is that we are nearing the intersection of increasing volumes of content with our limited human capacity to consume it.
In other words, as companies jump on the content marketing bandwagon in droves, pumping out blogs, e-books, reports, videos and more, it’s becoming harder and harder to get people’s attention and succeed with the strategy. Just a few years ago, if you put a blog up and plugged away at it, you were a first mover and were pretty much guaranteed to have some success and earn attention from the audiences you were trying to reach. Today it’s much harder.
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23
Oct
From customer retention to customer delight in 6 steps
October 23, 2014
Acquiring new customers is a full-time job. It’s easy to get caught up in feeding the acquisition machine and neglect those who have already evolved from visitor or lead to the prime position of customer.
Truth is, it costs businesses 6 to 7 times more to attract a new customer than retain an existing one. So how do you go about keeping the customers you have?
It’s no coincidence that companies with great customer service are also ranked high in employee engagement and satisfaction. But you can’t have great customer service and delight first. As HubSpot’s Loree McDonald so eloquently put it, “Inspire from within and influence outwards.”
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09
Oct
#INBOUND14 takeaways, part 2: listen, empathize, connect
October 9, 2014
In my last post, I shared some inspiration from profound speakers at HubSpot’s content marketing conference, INBOUND 2014. Today I’d like to take a closer look at one of the recurring themes and what we as marketers can do to improve our efforts.
It’s common knowledge that good communicators are also good listeners. But as marketers (and perhaps creatures of habit), we tend to forget this fact and jump at the chance to talk about our product to anyone who even looks in our direction. So how can we listen more and talk less?
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06
Oct
Law firm marketing: are ads and ‘paid profiles’ in legal directories worth it?
October 6, 2014
As legal marketers, we are regularly asked by our law firm clients about rankings, directories, awards and the like (for the legal marketers out there reading: shocking, I know). Rankings like Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, Chambers and Partners, Martindale-Hubbell and more have proliferated to the point that entire jobs exist at law firms for the sole purpose of managing the lengthy and detailed submission processes. In fact, I believe the number now hovers around 1,000—that’s right, 1,000—surveys and rankings out there of law firms and attorneys, all competing for attention and advertising dollars.
We ourselves just spent the last month working on detailed Chambers submissions for several clients, and regularly write award submissions for media outlets like Law360, the National Law Journal and American Lawyer. While I see value in awards, especially those with advertising-independent research processes and those done by credible media outlets, I see no value in buying advertising (including display ads and “enhanced profiles”) in any legal directories out there. Here’s why:
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