Why Your Technology Firm Needs a Content Marketing Strategy

The key to marketing success online is educating prospects. If a technology firm is going to have a successful online marketing campaign, it needs to revolve around the educational content being produced. Content is king.

Why, you ask? It is through content that many other online marketing channels flow best. If you are producing high value content, it is much more likely to spread in social media, attract links from other websites, and rank well in Google. All of these lead to more web visitors through social media and SEO.

Winning the Business
Anything and everything can be found online. More and more decision makers are looking to educate themselves before making a buying decision, and it is through your content that they learn. The firm that does the best job educating them is often the one that wins the business. This educational process replaces the old golf course method of developing trust. Online trust is developed through the educational process, and therefore the most trusted firm is the one that gets selected.

Building this trust, however, can take time and a lot of content. So how do you manage time and produce a regular flow of content? This is where having a content marketing strategy comes in. If there is no strategy behind the content you are producing, when you are publishing it, and what channels you are using to promote it, then your entire operation could fail.

What Types of Content Exist?
A content marketing strategy needs to focus on building trust and engagement over time using multiple forms of content. There are many forms of content available to a marketing team including:

• Blogs
• Premium content pieces (whitepapers, ebooks, guides)
• Books
• Research Reports
• Webinars
• Email marketing

The key to developing an effective content marketing strategy is getting all of your content to work together, creating a lead generating machine for your firm. Your content must be engaging right off-the-bat to pull the reader in, entice them to become a lead, and finally nurture them until they are ready to buy.

Typically blogging is used to achieve the first goal of content marketing – drawing visitors in. In your content marketing strategy, you must decide what topics your blog posts will be focused on and what keywords you will use to attract people to your blog from search engines.

Becoming a Lead
Once someone is on your blog, the next step is for him or her to engage with your brand. This often means the visitor is willing to give out their email address. In content marketing, this occurs when a visitor wants a particular piece of downloadable content and are asked to exchange their email address for the download. Your content marketing strategy must determine what these downloadable pieces of content will be about and how you will promote them on your website.

Nurturing Your Leads
The last piece of the content marketing puzzle is nurturing a lead once you have their email address. Most people on the web are still educating themselves and aren’t quite ready to by when searching for information. However, once you have an email address, it is vital that you continue to educate your prospects until they are ready to buy. Webinars are often ideal for nurturing because it allows prospects to get “face to face” with you without feeling pressured.

Every firm needs a tailored content marketing strategy to be successful. Focus on the tips above when putting yours together. And remember that without a strategy behind your content marketing efforts, chances are, you are seeing much lower results than what’s truly possible.

For more information on putting together a content marketing strategy, check out Hinge’s B2B Content Marketing Guide.

About the Author: Elizabeth Harr is a partner at Hinge, a branding and marketing firm that focuses on professional services. Elizabeth is an accomplished entrepreneur and experienced executive with a background in strategic planning, management, communications, and alliance development. She is also a coauthor of Online Marketing for Professional Services: Technology Edition.

The Power of a Smile

If you follow this blog regularly then you likely know far too much about me:  Where I was married and how many animals I have, I'm a terrible poet ... and play write, my favorite TV show,  favorite coffee, and even what I drive.  Most of all, I pray that you can see how important marketing is to me.

You've probably also picked up that I'm runner.  It's my stress relief and the source of many of my best ideas.  Last week, while on a 10-miler, I discovered something really cool.  Well, a few things, really.  Have you ever noticed that runners are rarely smiling?!?!  Seriously, we usually look like we're on some sort of death-march against our will.  On this particular morning, I had the same look.  I was tired and slow and everything was aching.  But I know to never give up in the first mile.  When mile number  one of a 10-miler sucks, then you start to do some darn quick self-reflexion.  And I noticed that I wasn't smiling (well, duh!).  So I tried a bizarre idea ... I made myself smile.  Simply turned that frown upside down.  It was a beautiful day.  I was doing what I love.  I got to see hot women in spandex... well, I had reasons to smile.

Here's the cool part.  After a while of the glass-half-full method of running, I started running faster ... and easier ... and the smile got bigger.

Here's the REALLY cool part.
When other runners see a fellow death-marcher smiling, they look at you like you forgot your running shorts.  It's odd ... jarring.  But after the initial shock passes, they usually return the smile.  Now, I'm not sure, but I would swear that, when they smiled back, they sped up too.

Could it be true ... the most important muscles on my run are in my cheeks?!?!

While it sounds crazy, it may not be.  I found an article siting the 15 Health Benefits of Smiling.  And I believe every single one of them:

• Lower heart rate
• Reduce stress
• Better mood
• Increase productivity
• Encourage trust
• Produce empathy
• Avoid regret
• Kill pain
• Increase attention
• Contagious 
• Build attraction
• Earn success
• Look younger
• Longevity
• Boost immune system

Many of these benefits will help professionally too.  Increase productivity, encourage trust, make the smile contagious, increase attention, earn success.  Maybe the fastest thing that we can do to make sure our companies thrive is focus on hiring optimistic people and dedicate ourselves to making sure they are happy at work.

The power of the smile is obvious when its face-to-face, but you can hear it over the phone too.  It's not just a look, but a mindset.  An ingrained philosophy.

There is ALWAYS a positive ROI on a smile ... give it a try.

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.

Nearing 245,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues. Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

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Can Your Marketing Content Meet the Burden of Proof?

The CMO Council recently published a white paper - Better Lead Yield in the Content Marketing Field - that contains both good news and bad news for B2B content marketers. The white paper is based on a survey of more than 400 B2B content consumers conducted by the CMO Council's Content ROI Center and NetLine Corporation. Forty-one percent of the respondents were from companies with more than $100 million in revenues, and half held titles of director and above.

First, the good news. Online content plays a big role in B2B purchase decisions. Eighty-seven percent of survey respondents said that online content had either a moderate or a major impact on vendor preference and selection. This finding demonstrates why good content has become essential to effective B2B marketing.

Now for the not-so-good news. When survey participants were asked what types of content they most value and trust, vendor-created content came in last. As the table below shows, B2B buyers value and trust professional association research reports and white papers, research reports and white papers created by industry groups, customer case studies, analyst reports and white papers, and independent product reviews more than vendor-created content.

 

While these survey findings should concern B2B marketers, they are also understandable, at least to some extent. Business buyers have been conditioned to treat the information they receive from vendors with a healthy degree of skepticism. They recognize that vendors have an agenda, and they perceive that this agenda can cause most vendor-supplied information to be somewhat less than completely objective. The survey findings show that B2B buyers believe they will get more objective information from professional associations, industry groups, and independent analysts and product reviewers.

In our criminal justice system, there is a presumption of innocence. An individual is presumed to be innocent until the state proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In the B2B marketing world, most business buyers presume that vendor content is usually biased, probably not always accurate, and therefore not completely trustworthy. The burden of proof is on B2B marketers to develop content that can overcome this presumption.

Meeting this burden of proof is particularly critical for content that is designed for early-stage buyers. That's because early-stage buyers will often form their first impression of your company based on your content. If you can establish credibility early, you'll take a big step forward with potential buyers.

Many adjectives can be used to describe content that will build credibility with early-stage buyers, but I contend that two stand out in importance. First, credible content is authoritative. Marketing content doesn't need to read like an academic journal or a legal brief, but the main points you make should be supported by sound evidence, preferably from third-party sources.

The second essential attribute of credible early-stage content is that it is non-promotional. For many early-stage buyers, even a hint of self-serving promotion will taint their view of the content. When I prepare a new early-stage content resource, I use a simple test to determine if it is sufficiently non-promotional. I ask myself this question:  If I created a version of the resource without any obvious brand identifiers and gave that version to a reader, would the reader be able to determine who prepared the resource? If the answer to this question is "yes," the resource may be too promotional.

 

Recent research by DemandGen Report has shown that B2B buyers are more reliant on content than ever. The same research also shows that buyers are becoming more selective when it comes to content. They will only spend their time with content that they deem to be valuable and trustworthy. Therefore, it's more important than ever to develop content that potential buyers will see as credible.

 

Gamify Your Way to a Financial High Score

A very close friend of mine sent me a cool article from Forbes a few days ago about motivating your staff through Gamification.

Gamification, according to the article is: “taking techniques that make games engaging and addictive and applying them to things that are not games.” In particular it’s about providing rapid non-financial recognition and rewards to reinforce positive behaviors.


Chances are that, on you smartphone and/or tablet right now, are several social media and game apps where you can earn badges.  Those essentially meaningless little icons that you've played hours to earn and collect.  

I have about 15 badges on Foursquare right now, including JetSetter for being in so many darn airports (not all badges are fun to earn!) and Fresh Brew for being in so many different coffee houses (some badges enable addictions).


While the phrase "gamification" annoys me, the concept intrigues me.  

The Forbes article does a great job of defining how you can use gamification to onboard employees into your corporate culture and reward them for reaching performance goals.

There 3 Simple Steps Are:

1. For each employee, figure out what behaviors have the most impact.
2. Make sure those employees know what is expected and have the tools, resources and support required to do what they need to do.
3. Recognize and reward behavioral steps along the way as well as end results.

See the Forbes article here



The Forbes article re-inspired me and motivated me to reach into my "Giant Bag of Big Ideas Never Fulfilled" from 2010 - before "gamification" was even a word.

Some examples of internal gamification badges you could create for your staff are:

Do Gooder: Employee with 20 + hours of community volunteerism

Savior: Employee who finds way to lower customers payments

Ada Boy: Employee who receives positive customer comments

But you can also use gamification to increase loyalty and deepen share of wallet.

If you want to affect Gen X and younger, here's an idea...

Could you imagine motivating your customers to deepen their relationship with you through phone app-style rewards?  What if each customer had a PURL (personalized URL) that tracked their relationship with you?  You could then send email to reinforce positive activity and promote "special badges" on your social media - challenging customers to earn more badges (106 customers earned the "Tree Hugger" badge this week, click here to see how to earn yours).

POSSIBLE BANKING BADGES

Easy Rider: Motorcycle Loan

Car & Driver: Any auto loan

Gonna Need a Bigger Garage: 3^rd active auto loan

Tree Hugger:eStatements

EZ Access:Checking

Charrrrge It!: Credit Card

Trifecta:Checking, Debit and Online Banking opened

Far Far Away:Vacation Savings

Tis The Season:Christmas Savings

Rockafeller:$150,000 in total deposits

It’s mine, all mine:Any paid off loan

Professor: Attend education seminar

Entrepreneur:Small Business Loan

This Could go Platinum: Any CD

Banking in Jammies:Online Banking

Mmm: Money Market

Writer’s Cramp: 30 signature-based debit card transactions in 1 month

Single-handed Stimulus:50 plus debit card transaction in 1 month

Loyalist: 4 or more total products

No More Rent:First time mortgage

Home Sweet Home:Any Mortgage

Nest Egg: IRA

Pass It On:Referrals

The challenge, of course, is measurement and tracking of the badges.  But, realistically, most of the above criteria are built on simple triggers or reports from your core, MCIF or CRM system.  The more immediate the reward notification, the better - so monthly updated files aren't ideal.  But don't let the tech-geek in you kill a potentially good idea.  If you think it will work with your base, make it happen.

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.

Nearing 245,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues. Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Follow me on Twitter @egagliano

Stop Thinking in Terms of Marketing Campaigns

For decades, marketers have thought in terms of campaigns when planning their marketing efforts. The campaign model provided a useful way to organize marketing activities and link those activities to specific marketing objectives. Today, however, effective B2B marketing requires new kinds of marketing tactics and methods that have an entirely different structure and rhythm from traditional marketing campaigns. Therefore, the campaign model no longer provides an effective paradigm for thinking about and planning all marketing efforts.

The word campaign was first used to describe a connected series of military operations intended to achieve a particular objective. Surprisingly, the online dictionary provided by the American Marketing Association doesn't include a definition of marketing campaign. However, the AMA dictionary does define an advertising campaign as a group of advertisements, commercials, and related promotional materials and activities that are designed to be used during the same period of time as part of a coordinated advertising plan to meet the specified advertising objectives of a client.

With a few changes, this definition can be applied to marketing campaigns, which we can define as:  A group of coordinated marketing activities (as opposed to a single activity) that are performed during a defined period of time and are designed to achieve a specified marketing objective.

As this definition indicates, the campaign model assumes that a marketing campaign has a fixed and defined lifespan. It begins, runs for the specified period of time, and ends. The problem is, many of today's most critical marketing tactics and methods don't fit the campaign model because they don't have predetermined lifespans. Many inbound marketing techniques fall into this category.

For example, if you want to have an effective company blog, you can't publish new content once a week for six months and then stop publishing for the next six months. That's one sure way to lose your audience. The same principle applies to other inbound marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization and most kinds of social media marketing. Once you begin these kinds of marketing activities, they will continue indefinitely and require more or less continuous attention. Therefore, the term blogging campaign is an oxymoron.

Lead nurturing is another critical B2B marketing activity that doesn't fit the campaign model. An effective lead nurturing program operates continuously. The timing and content of nurturing communications are either designed into the process or are triggered by the behavior of individual prospects. The nurturing process for an individual prospect will end under certain circumstances, but the nurturing program continues to operate as long as there are prospects to nurture. That's why the idea of a lead nurturing campaign doesn't really make sense.

As companies face the challenge of creating engagement with increasingly empowered and independent business buyers, the importance of always-on, continuously running marketing programs will continue to grow. These types of programs operate very differently from traditional marketing campaigns and require a different kind of thinking and planning.

Marketing campaigns won't completely disappear. The campaign model still works reasonably well for some kinds of outbound lead acquisition programs, but, it's time to ditch the campaign paradigm for a growing segment of B2B marketing.

The Top-5 Content Marketing Trends in 2013

Check out our latest B2B Content Marketing Report 2013 and find out what is going on in the world of content marketing. Here are five of the most interesting content marketing trends we identified:

1. Content marketing is going mainstream and is becoming more sophisticated to help marketers generate more leads and enable thought leadership.
2. The popularity of white papers as a content marketing format is declining relative to interactive, easily digestible formats such as video.
3. More than 82 percent of B2B marketers are increasing their content production over the next 12 months.
4. YouTube is gaining popularity as a social media platform to reach and engage B2B audiences – Facebook is losing ground.
5. Marketing automation is on the rise. 61 percent of marketers use marketing automation platforms, up from 43 percent last year.

For more details and charts, please download the full report.

Marketing Advice for the NSA