January 21, 2021 Global pandemic. Fake news. Social protests. Economic turmoil. Political instability. If 2020 were a movie plot, no one would believe it. Unfortunately, this is the world we’ve endured the last 12 months. The effects of this imperfect storm come out this month in Edelman’s 2021 Trust Barometer. This annual index measures the average percent of trust people …
10 Women in Technology Speakers to Keynote Your Event
February 13, 2018 by Carla Johnson Last month I wrote the first in a series of blogs about why and how we need to bring more women onto the main stage at events. The response has been incredible, and I want to thank everyone who has shared the post, commented, sent me emails, texts and picked up the phone to …
Is Marketing Its Own Worst Enemy?
February 1, 2018 by Carla Johnson People have been talking about marketing’s need to change for as long as marketing’s been around. We’re told to adjust or perish. Choose between surviving and thriving. Stop taking orders and start creating value. But marketing has the potential to be much more than any of these best-case scenarios. Which is exactly the point …
What do B2B Customers Want in 2018?
January 23, 2018 By Carla Johnson Getting their message and content in front of their target audience is the biggest challenge B2B executives say they face in 2018, according to Bridge the Gap: The State of B2B Marketing Communications 2018, a report published by communications technology company Ytel. In fact, 55 percent of the 2000+ CEOs and other top executives …
Why B2B Brands Should Jump on the UGC Bandwagon
January 2, 2018 by Mitch Duckler For years, the world’s biggest B2C brands (e.g. Starbucks, Target, Coca-Cola) have been riding the user-generated content (UGC) wave, while B2B brands have only recently begun to gain traction in creating and distributing UGC. Between 70 and 90 percent of the buyer’s journey is complete before engaging with a vendor, and according to Forrester, a customer …
Stop Burning Budget on Inefficient Strategies
April 18, 2017 by Chuck Frey Would you stack bagfuls of cash into a crude pyramid, and then set it on fire? Of course not! That would be stupid, and you’re not stupid, so you’re not going to ignore inefficiencies in your content marketing initiative, are you? Here are five areas that are especially problematic: 1. You’re producing content, but …
RESEARCH: B2B Enterprise Content Lacks Audience Centricity
April 13, 2017 by Carla Johnson Research from the Content Marketing Institute, released yesterday, shows how far B2B marketers still have to go to put customers squarely in the middle of conversations. Too many B2B marketers still focus on their brand, rather than their audience. In fact, 53 percent of respondents say they focus on creating content for audiences versus …
A Strong Storytelling Strategy Will Expand B2B Reach
October 6, 2016 by Carla Johnson B2B marketers have tapped social media as a pillar approach to reaching audiences. In fact, 83% of respondents in the 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends from Content Marketing Institute named social media content and their number one go-to tactic. But social media for B2B usually means LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. A few brands that …
How to Tie ROI, KPIs and Other Metrics to Storytelling
October 4, 2016 by Carla Johnson We hear about storytelling a lot, but what does it mean? And does branded storytelling actually work? And can you measure it? That was the topic of last week’s Content Marketing Institute twitter chat with Jacob Warwick, marketing strategist at Blast Analytics. Here were the top takeaways from the chat… Question 1: What’s the …
Customer Education: The Secret to Successful Marketing
September 1, 2016 by Chuck Frey In card games, trump cards carry much more value and importance than any of the other cards. In the world of modern marketing, customer education is the trump card – it’s critically important to winning the game. Remember, companies that play their cards the best will always win. It wasn’t always this way. In …
Don’t Be Trapped by Form
August 30, 2016 by Robert Rose When I first came to Los Angeles, one of my screenwriting instructors told me something that I still find invaluable today. He said, “When you have a story, outline it, abstract it, even write it without considering whether it will be a novel, a screenplay or a television show. If you start with the …
Where Do You Fall on the Customer Experience Maturity Scale?
August 16, 2016 by Carla Johnson Customer experience isn’t a new idea, but the growing attention to it is. Customers are more widely connected than they’ve ever been, easily hopping between a growing number of devices. They’re looking for a rich, consistent experience that delivers value – whether that’s information or entertainment – whenever they want it. Marketing’s ad hoc …
What’s Brand Storytelling and Why Do You Need It?
August 11, 2016 by Carla Johnson Frustration. I’m hearing more of it and not just from marketers – but from executives as well. Conversations that used to be within the walls of marketing are overflowing into the C-suite. And a big part of that conversation is about relevance. How do we become more relevant not only to customers, but to …
Use Buyer Persona Research to Improve B2B Customer Experience
August 9, 2016 by Tony Zambito Customer experience has been and will continue to be one of the major influences on how buyers make choices. Recent research by SiriusDecisions found that for 80% of B2B buyers surveyed, customer experience counted as the top significant reason why they chose to work with a specific provider over another. These findings are consistent …
Does Your Company Have a Full-Funnel Content Strategy?
July 28, 2016 by Chuck Frey Do your sales and marketing teams have a full funnel content strategy – a process for moving your ideal prospects from awareness to consideration and acquisition? An effective content strategy isn’t just focused on inbound marketing – generating leads to fill the top of the sales funnel – which is where many B2B marketers …
Can You be the Steven Spielberg of Content?
July 12, 2016 by Robert Rose Allow me to geek out a bit. I was surfing Reddit last week, and a thread caught my eye. It was a question about the classic movie Jurassic Park. The person asked why, after 20+ years, the CGI (computer-generated imagery) seemed so much more realistic than some of today’s movies that feature state-of-the-art technology. …
Growing Up – Moving Away from Kid’s Menu Content
July 7, 2016 by Jeff Julian Content marketers love writing content. It’s almost like we made Content Marketing up just to fool our managers into letting us write and get paid for it. Just in the segment of content dedicated to help marketers, thousands of pieces of content are being produced and distributed daily but most of it is, well, …
Digital Experiences Have No Easy Button
June 7, 2016 by Robert Rose I’m finally finished with a six city tour – teaching content-driven experiences to marketers. It’s a blast to tour around the country and get to meet so many content marketers at these events. Two ideas came together for me during the tour – one from a class attendee in Boston, another from an article …
Why Subscribers are Key to Growing Your Brand’s Audience
May 31, 2016 I’ve had the amazing pleasure of working with many brands to transform their marketing departments and build their content marketing programs. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are, they understand that how they get and keep people’s attention is very different from just a few years ago. They lead with value rather than their brand. …
The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
May 26, 2016 by Tom Pick With 93% of B2B marketers now using content marketing to build brand awareness and generate leads, success going forward will require producing higher-quality content—not just more of it. Creating high-quality content starts with planning (deciding what to write about) and research (determining what to say about those topics). Those decisions will start with your …