Advertising is one of the most common elements of a marketing strategy – or at least it’s one of the faster lanes to take when marketers think of how to monetise their content. But it’s not the most suitable plan in many cases. If your blog is not getting the results you want, don’t assume that blogging just isn’t your thing – instead consider that the wrong approach has been taken.

Before you decide to go down the path of ads and announcements within your blog, think about the following.

Monetising solely via ads/ announcements is one of the slowest ROI ways to generate capital

If you have a blog with a few hundred daily readers and you think that it’s time to make the leap, first calculate. For example, let’s say a relatively new blog in Australia has 1,000 visits a day, with a click through rate of 0.1% and each click earns you 0.1 AUD, that means you would earn exactly this: 0.1 AUD a day = 3 AUD per month = 36 AUD per year. This is for all the marketing efforts and costs it takes to maintain a traffic of 30,000 monthly visitors.

Ads essentially compete for the attention of your reader

Stop thinking of the cents you’ll generate for a minute and focus on the attention grabber effect an ad may have. When you insert an ad you’re also inserting an element that is competing for the attention of your readers. Every time you write a post or produce a video you invest valuable time to create quality content. You aim to capture a few minutes of your readers’ time or at least spike enough interest to get them to come back to it (or even better, share it).

The point here is that the ads you are trying to make money off are also aiming to do just that – thus becoming a competitor within your blog. It’s important to ask yourself if the ads you decide to insert may actually eclipse your own content. This can even result in a loss of constant traffic, which is ironic, because traffic is what you need to gain any capital from ads.

Ads may negatively affect conversions within your blog

Every element in your blog that invites readers to take action is part of your strategy to better assess, analyse and guide your next steps in the world of content marketing. Maybe you want your readers to read a post and share it via social media, or simply to subscribe to your newsletter. Each of these carries it’s own call-to-action. The problem with ads is that they also compete for these clicks. If clicks increase for the ads you place, then they will most likely lower for the rest of your page, which ultimately affects the retention and conversion rate of your visitors.

Ads can interfere with the objective of your blog

As a blogger, one of the main objectives is to avoid bounce rates and have readers stay on the page to read interesting, relevant content. This connection with users can be broken if ads become nuisances that the reader isn’t even searching for, leading to page abandonment with little possibility of a re-visit.

Ads require time investment and can jeopardise your reputation

The reality is, ads require some time investment on your part, because in order to gain any worthy capital from them you need to manage software, analyse results, optimise and analyse again. This takes away from the time you could be investing in creating original, innovative and engaging content for your followers. Also, the display of ads on your page might not coincide with what your readers are looking for. Merely placing these ads on your page can pose a risk to your image and reputation, especially if they’re not aligned with the products and services you’re directly recommending or using. This one might not be that big of a deal, but it is definitely a factor to consider before deciding on which ads to opt in for.

Ads can slow down your site

One of the leading causes for visitor abandonment even before the site fully displays is its loading speed. Obviously there are several factors that slow down a site, such as programming styles, complex themes, images, storage, cache…and yes, ads. If you decide to place several ads, always check the loading speed of your site after they have been placed.

Readers may come to feel like a cheap commodity

On the one hand you’re trying to make your readers feel important – but on the other, you want to monetise and sell their attention and clicks for cents to Google or other affiliated platforms? We’re all followers and readers of blogs that interest us, so as a blogger it’s always a good strategy to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. This is especially vital if you’re a blogger who has made quality the main point of difference. Beware, because cheap advertising can lower the bar.

So consider the complete picture, not just the money

The above points are there to remind you that there is more to ads than just the money. This is not to say that placing ads in your blog is a bad idea. If it was, we wouldn’t see them so often in so many blogs and news sites. This article is here to simply make the statement that ads with no real relevance or quality (just there for the cent gain) may not always be such a good idea. This is especially true for new blogs with little traffic. The goods news is that there are many other ways to monetise that can be more effective than ads. For example:

• Offering service that mobilises your readers (coaching services, consulting…).
• Creating products that your audience is looking for or commenting on (e-books, online courses, webinars, etc.)
• If you don’t have time to create your own product or service then be sure to promote one that you truly identify with and let your readers know this.
• Focus on your best skills. Maybe you’re a designer, writer, furniture aficionado or cooking expert? Why not use your blog as a platform to showcase and shed light on your own experiences and talents?

After reading the above, feel free to leave a comment to let us know how you’ve been monetising off your blog and what suggestions and advice you have for bloggers who are just starting out.

The post Why Placing Ads In Blogs Can Be A Negative appeared first on Inboundly.

According to one of the latest reports by the agency Parse.ly, published early September of this year, Facebook has officially overtaken Google as the main source of traffic. Meaning that the big news sites and online content portals receive more visitors from Facebook than from any other website – including Google search pages. Jaw dropping, right?

Back in September, Facebook launched a tool called Signal, which aims to overshadow Twitter as a platform for real time access to news and announcements. Facebook also launched Instant Articles, another project aiming to eclipse Twitter by allowing mainstream media to publish their content directly onto the social network without links.

The ambition to dominate continues with the recent revamp to the notes section on Facebook. In order to finally crown itself as the hub of all content on the Internet, Facebook wants you to start blogging within their platform. Just to give you an idea of the power of blogging: Did you know that 60 new blogs and around 1,500 posts are created every minute? According to Worldometers, about 4 million blog entries are published every day. Facebook wants in on all this content posting – they want users to create, read and share content without leaving their platform. That is the main reason behind its new interface for notes.

What does the new note interface consist of? 

Above is a screenshot of the new Facebook notes look and design. If you’ve ever tested out or worked with the blog publishing platform Medium, you’ll come to realise that some of its characteristics and even visual aspects are similar to the Facebook notes revamp:

• The primary image is enlarged as a header
• The size and extent of the title is expanded
• Formatting elements are added (bold, italic, etc.) with a system markup similar to that of wikicode (for example, enclosing a word with two asterisks makes it cursive)
• It allows bloggers to tag people and add hashtags
• It allows users to “like,” comment and share.

What advantages does the revamped Facebook notes have for bloggers?

With this revamp, Facebook is essentially inserting itself in the world of blogging platforms and competing with Blogger and WordPress, among others. Facebook already has more than 1500 million users. These are the users Facebook is counting on to become bloggers and readers of its revamped notes section.

I’m sure the Facebook development team asked themselves, “Why use an external service or platform and then take an extra step to share it on Facebook, when it can be done directly?” That question is a strong motivation for the powerful social media platform to try to attract bloggers and make them switch over, that and the commodity, immediacy and organic reach potential.

In my humble opinion, I think this revamp will have growing success. It will be received more and more by those who have never blogged but have the curiosity to start. Given its simplicity and the fact that it’s already integrated with the social media platform, it’s just an added incentive that doesn’t require the user to register externally. It might also very well attract those who have several thematic blogs and who want to publish their opinions or stories to reach those 1500 million.

When it comes to organic reach, we all know Facebook has internal algorithms to determine what content is shown to its users. It’s safe to presume that this new revamp will favour publications that are created within its own notes section and it will carry more weight than external links on users’ newsfeeds and timelines. This means that social media marketers will want to incorporate publications via Facebook as part of their social media strategies.

The next big plus is a strong base for interaction. Given that it will all be integrated within this powerful social media platform, the likes and comments of these microblogs are more frequent and visible. In the end (and putting aside SEO rankings and monetisation via ads as well as traffic statistics) what bloggers tend to appreciate is being read and being responded to. This new notes section gives way to that.

And the downside?

The main downside that many might frown upon is the fact that content published via these microblogs will not be yours, but rather they will be the property of Facebook. Given the policies that users agree to by using their platform, Facebook can essentially use content as they please. They can make money by inserting ads in your content pages without sharing any of the capital with you, or maybe conceding to a commission they see fit.

After reading all this, it’s up to you if you want to get on board with Facebook’s attempt at dominating content.

The post How Facebook Plans To Take Over Content appeared first on Inboundly.

So what did we learn this year?

Better strategy, less effective

This years survey raises questions about effectiveness.

28% say their organisation is effective at Content Marketing (1% down from last year)

55% say they know what an effective or successful Content Marketing program looks like

46% say they have a documented Content Marketing Strategy (up by 10% from last year).

So Marketers say they’re slightly less effective this year, than last, but more have a documented strategy this year and fully understand what they should be aiming for. So why are only 28% producing effective Content Marketing?

Building an audience, with no hard sell

If your organisation has just started with Content Marketing, you may have shared some blog posts, maybe some videos, had a few clicks, but not had a spectacular response. Don’t be deterred. Content Marketing takes time, and you must firstly build an audience before selling to that audience. Positioning your organisation as an expert in your field doesn’t happen overnight. Founder of the Content Marketing Institute Joe Pulizzi suggests it takes 15 – 17 months of consistent content creation and distribution to get consistent results.

Producing the right content for your audience

46% of Marketers have a documented Content Marketing strategy, but staggeringly 40% have one, but it’s not documented. So where is the plan? How do you know from week to week what you’ll be producing for your audience. How do you know what your audience pains are in your industry, for you to help alleviate them? Do you even know your audience? Content Marketing must be planned, making sure you fully understand your audience, their needs, buying preferences and goals. Unless you fully get your audience you’ll never deliver content that addresses their needs. Creating buyer personas will help you talk specifically to your desired audience.

You need to ensure you get organisational buy in for your documented strategy. There is a reason why 64% of Marketers say team meetings about Content Marketing are valuable, within your organisation there is a raft of expertise in your field to tap into. 69% of Marketers are challenged with producing engaging content, maybe getting into the mindset of thinking like a publishing company is one of the best ways to build audience engagement, whilst tapping into those channels where your audience are likely to be.

Distributing your Content

87% of Marketers say they will produce more content next year. Is your organisation effective at distributing content and then measuring it’s success? It’s key in Content Marketing to have a documented strategy for distribution, there is no point in putting your efforts into writing blog posts for your website and then not sharing them to communities where your targeted audience are likely to be. Make sure you measure the performance of each piece of content, it will help you make decisions of what works, or doesn’t, so you can tweak your plan to suit your audience.

No one said it would be easy

And it isn’t. But with the right planning, a documented strategy and a distribution plan in place there is no reason why your business can’t get more effective with Content Marketing. With 32% surveyed stating that their organisation’s Content Marketing is still in the adolescent stage there is still a whole lot of opportunity for businesses and industries to tap into the lead generation opportunity that is Content Marketing.

Check out the full research presentation from here and use the learnings to make your businesses Content Marketing more effective.

The post Content Marketing in Australia 2016 Report: What you need to know appeared first on Inboundly.

Or do you run an accounting firm, lawn-mowing business, or a cleaning service?

“Content marketing? Oh yeah, it’s not applicable to my business…”

If this sounds familiar, we need to sit down for a little chat.

It may surprise you to learn the number of businesses in the “not so fun” category pulling off content marketing. You’ll even find some doing it with flair.

What every marketer should know is there is always chatter in an industry. Both on and offline the conversation is flowing, and you’re either listening or not.

It’s just a matter of looking at your business a little differently. Looking at it, like the gun marketer you know you can be.

The first step is a mental shift

It’s simple. There’s no such thing as a boring business. If people are buying from you, they’re showing interest in some facet of what you do.

Next, is to adopt the mentality of an inbound marketer. If you’re reading this blog, then you understand how effective content marketing can be.

Traffic, cold, warm and hot leads, and exposure are all at your beck and call. Thinking outside your self-imposed box is the starting point.

Try not to talk about the product

Time and time again we implore you to discuss benefits instead of features.

What that means is less:

“The system boasts 8gb of RAM and a 1Tb SSD hard drive. Rated at a whopping 3.6 GHZ, the processor is the best on the market…”

And more:

“With 8Gb of RAM your new PC will handle Photoshop, browsing the web and streaming Spotify, at the same time with ease. Its Solid State Hard drive means your files are available in an instant. Unlike traditional hard drives, information on SSDs doesn’t need to load from a spinning disk. You can expect performance like that which your smartphone delivers.”

Ok, a computer store is an easy example but you can deploy this tactic in almost every industry.

The rule? Focus on what problems you’re solving for the customer and generate content like mad.

If you give away some freebies in the process, exposure will follow.

Chip on your shoulder topics

You can think of shoulder topics as, anything related to your business.

Think, masseuse writing about different massage oils and the way they affect women’s skin. Or weather reports for a deep sea fishing charter.

Something that relates to your company even remotely will work.

A great example was posted by Brian Dean from backlinko.com. It tells of a client who owned a run of the mill company: pest control.

Brian took on the job of improving search engine rankings for his client.

He came up with an infographic on organic pest control in your garden that people shared, republished and talked about on an almost viral level (viral for a pest control company I’ll assure you).

The infographic cast a wide net. It targeted gardeners, home improvers, landscapers, green thumb hobbyists and a whole other host of people who would usually be out of reach.

The guy ran a pest control company and grew his website traffic by 15% in two weeks.

Visual content is your friend

If your business revolves around any form of stats, you can turn them into infographics.

Think weather patterns, sales forecasts, anything you can collate to show a trend people love. If you’re struggling with a topic or need a little more data to present something sound, head to Statista to bolster your piece.

Another fantastic way for not-so-fun industries to engage audiences is through video.

Tutorials, walkthroughs and demonstrations all yield results.

Here is a video tutorial teaching people about Sub Arc Welding. To all those in the welding industry, this video has had over 2.5 million views. (Hint-hint, nudge-nudge).

The welding example works in many ways. As a male, I am interested in seeing the inner workings of industries I know nothing of. I want to see a mechanic’s multi-thousand-dollar toolkit. I want to see how to pull apart my vacuum cleaner and fix it, just in case I ever need to.

Don’t get me started on female-specific services. Some make-up artists are now internet celebrities just for teaching ladies make-up techniques.

No matter what business you’re in, it can work for you

The aim is to generate ideas around your businesses that people will find interesting. I don’t need to get excited about the welding video mentioned above, but if I’m interested, I’ll probably hang around.

If you’re providing honest, reliable information that is easy to digest and readily available, you’ll likely have me as an interested onlooker.

From there, winning me to your cause might only be an email sequence sending me to a landing page away.

And you’ve got me. A new customer dragged in through the power of content marketing.

The post Why Content Marketing Works for “Boring” Businesses appeared first on Inboundly.

10x Content Explained

According to Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday video, the definition of 10x content is: “Content that is 10 times better than the best result that can currently be found in search results for a given keyword phrase or topic.”

Rand’s video also brought to the table the effect of “viral” content on search engine rankings and ever since it was published, “10x” has itself gone viral as a topic and strategy. It has appeared on numerous forums and social media conversations in the publishing industry and has gone from a simple weekly Whiteboard Friday video to a qualitative and experiential measure of stand-out content within a certain industry or domain.

If you’ve been in the online marketing scene for a while, you’re well aware that the bar has been constantly raised over the past couple of years due to changes in both Google’s algorithms and user expectations. Also, you’ll definitely know that you need to “step up your game” to incorporate a successful content marketing strategy. Some may still think that as long as they create content that is better than average they have a chance to stand out in search engine result pages (SERP) but unfortunately that’s not the case.

In a nutshell, if you want to outrank the competition then you need to create content that is 10x better than anything you’ll find on Google.

 A Broader Definition of 10x Content

10x content reflects a level of superiority based on numerous factors that are qualitative. The best way to understand 10x content, is to ask yourself what you think about when you look for the answer to a question or search on the web. Maybe you’re looking for the answer to a specific question, but more often than not, you’re looking to satisfy a more general curiosity.

You begin to search for topics that you think will lead you closer to an answer because you want to understand it more deeply. Now imagine the 2-3 tabs that you open to gather the answer you’re looking for, which are usually the links that appear at the top of SERPs. Take those 2-3 tabs and combine them into one great piece of content that includes the best of each of those pages. That’s 10x content. Users want to get to the answer fast, and prefer to click on content that has it all, that goes beyond the other limited information links. You want to create links that will get bookmarked and shared, so think of the content that you’ve bookmarked yourself.

Why Is It Important To Have 10x Content?

10x content is increasingly important nowadays thanks to the expectations of user experience when looking up something in search engines. User expectations have increased because interactive technologies are getting better all the time. This type of content focuses on earning links versus link-building, and thanks to the ever rising content marketing and its importance in digital marketing strategies, standing out with 10x content is now vital.

How To Create 10x Content

This is where your own unique knowledge of your domain and industry, plus a little creativity, has to come in. Also remember that thorough, up-front research can go a long way. Keep in mind the websites that rank on the first page of Google receive an astounding 89.71% of all organic search traffic. So start by reviewing the content that’s currently ranking well and that will help you determine the quality level that your content needs to exceed to start ranking higher.

You can’t create content that is 10x better than your competitors’ without knowing what they’re publishing. Take a look at all of the results on the first page of your target keyword phrases and make a plan of how you’re going to outperform them. Competitive analysis is an essential first step to creating 10x content. Remember that digital marketing requires a lot of testing so don’t give up if you don’t get immediate results – but do change up your strategy if there’s a long period of getting no results.

A few other tips:

• Identify the unique value that you are going to provide to readers and influencers
• Recognise the investment of time by the reader and accommodate them
• The mobile and social experiences of your content need to be outstanding
• Don’t try to create viral content (Google will not favour this).

And finally… 10x content is worth the effort

When it comes to content, you should always have the mindset of educating and informing rather than interrupting and selling – and this is especially true of 10x content.

If creating 10x content was a simple process, everyone would be doing it. To be successful, you’ll need to put the work in to understand what is valuable to your audience and figure out what’s going to be better than the status quo. You may even fail time and again, but testing new approaches and ideas is the only way to discover new ways of adding value for your potential audience and market.

And when you get it right, the results are worth it.

The post How to Create 10x Content for Your Business appeared first on Inboundly.

As Google describes it, “Primer is a fast, easy way to learn new marketing skills. You can take our bite-sized lessons wherever and whenever you have five minutes free.”

The app boasts a super slick interface as you’d expect from a Google-built application and its lessons cover advertising, content, measurement and strategy.

Upon opening the app, I’m asked, “What would you like to be primed on today?”

I’ve handpicked a few of my favourites to chat about.

Get Customers Interested by Telling a Great Story

Ryan Holiday, ex-American Apparel Director of Marketing put this course together.

The key message is in finding your company’s story regardless of how unexciting it may be. It asks you to figure out what makes you special.

There are two ways to find your story: make it personal or find a higher purpose.

The personal approach centres on a time when your business idea spawned. Maybe your idea came from something inspirational that you read or through a life-changing personal experience.

Having a higher purpose focuses on larger solutions that other businesses may share. For example, disrupting the custodians of an industry or creating new ones, or solving world problems and furthering humanity.

Telling a story gives you more opportunity to resonate with prospective clients. It also serves as fuel for content marketing ideas.

Don’t be afraid to elaborate on your underlying tale. Play to it in your sales campaigns and base your mission around it.

How Remarketing Keeps Customers Coming Back

Remarketing is a new advertising concept. When someone visits your website, they likely won’t buy from you straight away. You may succeed the first time, but more than likely they’ll need a second, third or fourth nudge before pulling out the credit card.

Remarketing shows your offer to the client even after they’ve left your website. Your product will now appear as an ad on the next website they visit (assuming they have AdWords on their site).

It’s in line with Gary Vaynerchuk’s, jab, jab, right hook method. Often you’ll need to be in contact a few times before achieving a conversion.

According to Primer, you need four elements to make remarketing an effective business strategy:

• Enough active visitors. You’ll need plenty of the right people visiting your site in the first place.
• Target customers. Are the people you’re remarketing to worthy enough to bring back?
• A remarketing tag. This is the hardware that is crucial for the process to work. It lives on every page of your site and operates the cookie, so Google knows who to retarget on your behalf.
• Online advertising. This works as your control room. Here you can control how many times a customer will see your ad, where it appears and how much you’re going to pay for it.

If you tick the above boxes, it might be worthwhile exploring remarketing further.

How Strong A/B Tests Can Read Customers’ Minds

Primer suggests that A/B testing is a way to almost peek into your audience’s mind. Testing headlines, images, and other elements to see what works best can save you wasted time and effort down the track.

By elimination, you can remove the parts of your content marketing campaigns that aren’t achieving engagement.

It dives into great detail – even things as small as colours – to test in your marketing pieces. It asks you to pit one version of an advertisement against a replica of itself.

A/B testing is almost a given these days. If you’re not doing it, you’re missing out on a load of data about your clients and potential clients.

You don’t have to get too technical. Most marketing automation tools have this functionality built in.

It’s worthwhile testing it out and having some fun to discover what moves the needle and what doesn’t.

Find Valuable Insights in People’s Online Searches

How people behave online says a lot about them as a customer. Events like moving house, getting engaged or getting a new job offer us quality data. These insights identify if they’re likely to do business with you or not.

If we go one further and discover what people are searching for, it gives us unparalleled knowledge about who is searching and why.

The question is, how do you find insights most in line with you brand?

The Primer app poses:

“Imagine, for example, a man does this search online: ‘How do I house-train a puppy?’ We could make a few guesses about what’s going on in his life.”

The assumptions we can derive are:

• He has (or is getting) a new puppy.
• He’s likely never trained a puppy.
• This is likely his first puppy.
• He might need dog toys, food and pet supplies.
• He might be interested in obedience schools.
• He probably doesn’t like cats.

The market couldn’t be anymore uh, Primed (damn they’re good).

And when Mr Puppy searches any of the above, related businesses had better be present.

So Why Not Try Marketing School Next Time You’re Waiting at the Bus Stop?

Primer is by no means a replacement for constant, deeper learning about marketing, your customers and your own business.

I like to think of Primer as an inspiration generator. It may uncover things you never thought would be suitable for your business.

It’s handy, well presented and updated often. And hey, it’s free so why not give it a shot.

Remember, Primer is a marketing tool for Google. It teaches you new ways to use Google’s services and sows the seeds of their products.

But if you’re already using Google’s suite of marketing tools, it could be a nice training aid for you to get more out of your AdWords campaigns.

Or you could continue playing Candy Crush on your morning commute.

I won’t tell.

The post Mini-Marketing School with Google Primer appeared first on Inboundly.

So how do we get their attention? Modern marketers know the smart money is on content marketing.

In case you need a refresher, content marketing is providing real value to your customers by way of producing useful readable, watchable or hearable media.

High-quality podcasts, blogs, e-books and videos are all examples of content.

But the act of creating high-value content alone isn’t enough. There’s no point slaving over a blog post or sweating through a podcast if there’s no one to see or hear it.

If you don’t know where to start, or your strategy is a little messy, it’s time to tool a distribution plan. And the simplest way to get started is by using social media.

With a little preparation and the right execution, getting your content in front of the right eyes need not be the pain it used to be.

Get yourself a content plan

Many sites provide planning tools you can use to get your content syndication in order. Some are great tools, and we encourage you to use them. Others can over-complicate things. The key is to keep it simple.

The easiest option is to start with an Excel spreadsheet that’s customised to fit your campaign.

First, establish the goals you’re trying to achieve through content marketing. Your goals could be building a community, increasing click throughs or sign-ups, or just constructing brand awareness.

Next, choose which platform(s) you’ll use to deliver content. Remember that not all mediums are equal. There’s no point serving up a how-to tutorial over three tweets, or for an accounting firm to provide a tax time update via Instagram.

Now, decide on the tone and core message. And remember, it must fit both the goal and the platform.

Lastly, decide on the frequency of updates. Again, how you determine this will depend on the platform you use.

As we mentioned, simple is best. Here’s an example of how your plan might look:

Content: A Blog post on the benefits of XYZ posted on the company blog.

Goal: To have people sign up to an email list.

Platform: Facebook 10 – 15-word post with an image.

Core Message: Inform customers of the values of XYZ and gain more insights by signing up.

Tone: Friendly with humour.

Frequency: Twice daily.

Here’s an example of a spreadsheet that some of our clients use for their social syndication strategies.

Measure your results

Once you’re settled on the ins and outs, test, test and test again. Try sharing the piece on Twitter, or talk about it in a podcast. You can use the same message delivered over different mediums to find the one that’s best suited.

You can test things like the times posted, frequency, length of the post, hashtags used and people or companies mentioned to help define the message.

The point of this process is to define what works best for you. It’s not necessary to live on all social media networks or to have a blog, podcast and a YouTube channel.

Your best bet is doing one thing well and sticking with it. Mastering a single content distribution avenue that delivers results is far better than many flimsy attempts all over the web.

Measure, test and learn from the feedback.

Important! Be aware of vanity metrics. Likes, retweets and favourites are all great, but they distract from the underlying aim.

Keep track of the original goal and re-iterate your message if it isn’t working.

Be brave – if what you’re doing isn’t getting you the results you want, don’t be afraid to kill your darlings. In other words, even if you love something, if it’s not working try something else. Fail fast and move on.

Time for action

Now it’s up to you to go ahead and create something. If you’re stuck for ideas, have a read of a past Inboundly blog post: 5 Ways to Generate Ideas for Your Inbound Marketing.

Discovering that perfect process sooner will result in a lean, mean social syndication system.

Once your system is sound, it won’t be long before people start taking notice. And who knows – you might even learn a thing or two along the way.

The post Content Distribution: Where do you start? appeared first on Inboundly.

We’re reaching our customers on different media, on different platforms and on different devices. A contact here, a contact there. Focusing on core metrics, conversion rates, and a defined message – and all this while also trying to run our company.

You’ve looked into solutions from Marketing Automation through to Content Marketing. And you’re wondering if it’s worth the cost, and the time.

It can seem like a face-in-your-palms mess, but thankfully there is some respite.

A Starting Point

VC firm Accel Partners is trying to make the marketing scene a little less murky by way of an unofficial starting point called Growthverse.

Growthverse collates companies in the marketing technology space, in an easy-to-view HTML5 representation. Its purpose is simple, and is summed up by the question asked on the main page: “What marketing problem are you looking to solve?”

Users can select, without logging on, from a range of pain points. From Marketing Automation and Retention, through to Content Creation and Organic Acquisition – it’s all there.

Drilling down on a category reveals another sub-category further defining the query. For example, Paid Acquisition displays options like mailing houses, PPC and retargeting firms.

Put simply, it’s a map of the convoluted marketing technology landscape that’s also easy on the eye.

Where Did it Spring From?

Past attempts at documenting the marketing tech scene have created more confusion than they’ve solved.

Scott Brinker, co-founder and CTO of Ion Interactive, produced a marketing landscape supergraphic for which he later apologised.

“I didn’t set out to scare the bejeezus out of everyone,” Brinker said at a summit in Boston.

We wonder if the supergraphic monstrosity spawned the idea of Growthverse?

The people responsible are Kobe Fuller, Principal at Accel Partners and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, CMO of Mozilla.

Fuller and Kaykas-Wolff are no strangers to the marketing landscape. Accel Partners funds mostly software companies, many who operate in the marketing space. And Kaykas-Wolff, the Chief Marketing Officer at Mozilla? When he talks, people listen.

“We want marketers to have this as the first resource they go to when they are developing their marketing stack,” Kaykas-Wolff said in an Interview with TechCrunch.

A Marketing Solution

Growthverse is a valid first step for anyone embarking on a marketing research project. If you’re a seasoned marketer, you can compare the tools you’re currently using to those in the same category. Who knows, maybe you’ll even uncover a better, more cost effective solutions in the process.

Regardless of how you use it, Growthverse is a sign of where we’re at with marketing. We’re steering toward critical mass. It’s a stern reminder not to get caught up in the multitude of technology solutions.

As Fuller said, “It’s still confusing but we’re doing our part to make it a little easier.”

Put Together Your Strategy Today

So if you’re looking at getting your marketing plan up and running, Growthverse is a great place to start. It will help you understand the different paths you can take and equip you with the knowledge you need to put together a winning strategy. And if you’re a seasoned marketer, it’s an effective way to measure your current plan against the available options.

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So if targeted marketing is becoming more personalised, why are more users turning to ad blocking tools? And why is the trend from consumers today to block the very ads that marketers thought they desired?

 A little history

For a while, web ad blocking was available, but its use was quite rare. Early ad blocking tools (Internet Junkbuster, AdSubract) were just as effective as the ad blockers of today, and at dial-up speeds also made browsing a lot faster. Yet a survey by Forrester Research found that before 2002, only 1% of users were actually using ad blockers.

By 2010, however, an article titled What They Know brought an awareness of ad targeting and since then the knowledge has gradually gone mainstream. In 2012 a report by ClarityBay stated that “9.26 percent of all ad impressions on 100 popular sites are being blocked.” So why the shift towards ad blocking?

The trend today

A report in 2015 tells us that print still “pulls in about ¾ of the web’s revenue in one sixth of the time.” So compared to print, the value of the web as an advertising platform is staying relatively low in relation to time spent. And mobile ads which are even more targetable than web ads, have even less value to advertisers.

Print advertising still holds a tight marketing grip – it’s easier to place an ad based on content, but harder to track the individuals. I know, I know – harder to track individuals could not possibly be a good thing right?

So how can the web become as valuable to advertisers as print has been? To begin answering this, I’d like to share some top-notch Nobel Prize economic research that still resounds to this day.

How to survive “information asymmetry”

Dr. George A. Akerlof in The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism wrote: “Indeed, I soon saw that asymmetric information was potentially an issue in any market where the quality of goods would be difficult to see by anything other than casual inspection. Rather than being a handful of markets, the exception rather than the rule, that seemed to me to include most markets.”

A good example of this is the job market for computer programmers. How does an employer find someone who not only interviews well and sprints through programming puzzles in flying colours, but who can also actually add real value to a complex project?

When it comes to advertising, anyone who buys or sells anything has to spend a lot of time getting around this asymmetric problem. Deceptive sellers learn new tricks, while buyers and honest sellers find new ways to funnel out deception. It’s an ongoing challenge that requires constant updates and improvements, very similar to the motor that runs digital marketing. Today, a CIO’s signup for a site license can be compared to a tourist trying to buy a genuine Louis Vuitton purse from a street vendor.

Akerlof also wrote: “Dishonest dealings tend to drive honest dealings out of the market.” Along the same lines, how can ads, as abundant as they are nowadays, inspire trust? The main reason ad blocking has become a trend with consumers is due to a lack of trust. The web still feels very unregulated and free, so as a consumer, you want to weed out the cheap ads right from the start.

Can targeted advertising help honest buyers and sellers to find each other?

A really insightful article by Evan Davis, John Kay and Jonathan Star titled Is Advertising Rational states: “Advertising is not a process by which gullible consumers are persuaded to buy things they don’t want… Instead, it furnishes consumers with some useful information. It is not so much the claims made by advertisers that are helpful, but the fact that they are willing to spend extravagant amounts of money on a product that is informative.”

In other words, quality targeted advertising itself may well correlate with authenticity.

What is truly needed is a way of extracting truthful information from producers and distinguishing those who limit themselves as door-to-door salesmen from those who go beyond and truly believe their product to be of high quality.

Advertising signalling is an action that sends a credible message to a potential consumer. A manufacturer will always know more about their product than a consumer, so going above and beyond just the standard pay per click is a reliable sign of their own confidence in it. Strong advertising signals tend to demonstrate to consumers that production costs and the demand for the product are enough for advertising costs to be recovered. Nevertheless, let’s not forget that when it comes to digital marketing, products and marketing campaigns will always undergo testing and rely on the fluctuation and unpredictability of the market.

So is targeting advertising worth it in 2015?

In essence, advertising enhances buying opportunities of potential consumers by informing them of products they know little of, but a perceived expense in targeted ads is an important direct predictor of a brand choice. Knowing how much capital a company has thrown down for a targeted ad campaign helps consumers distinguish between the big, stable companies and the smaller, up-and-coming ones. This assures the consumer whether or not the product is here to stay and it can be critical with more complex products such as software and electronics.

Bottom line, when it comes to target advertising in 2015, unless you’re willing to go above and beyond with your targeted ads spending, then it’s most likely to either get blocked or fall under “banner blindness” – when consumers become so subliminally accustomed to the visual presence of web ads that they begin to tune them out altogether.

The post Does Targeted Advertising Work in 2015? appeared first on Inboundly.

Google+ still feels like relatively new marketing terrain, so it’s a good time to get ahead of the game, establish a strong foothold and boost your business with Google+ communities.

This article will explain why Google+ communities are so convenient for SEO in 2015 and how to get started with your own community page.

What Are Google+ Communities?

Google+ communities are proving to be one of the best SEO boosting elements of Google+ for business, bringing together brands and professionals alike.

Every digital marketer knows well by now that Google+ helps and improves the positioning of your site. If you link any content to your Google+ profile then Google is likely to look upon your site favourably. Keep in mind that part of Google’s success is due to the simplicity of the platform and its seamless integration with many Google apps (including search feature).

Although Google+ helps SEO in general, this article is here to inspire those who have already created a Google+ business page to strategically create a Google+ community page, focusing on its potential and on how to squeeze the most SEO juice out of it.

For those who have yet to create a community, it’s important to know that these communities are basically branch pages created from within your Google+ business page account, mainly used to bring together other Google+ users to interact and comment with posts, likes, and shares. It can be a private community (where people request to join) or public community, about any topic.

Posts from these communities can then be set to be defined as discussions, updates, new products, etc. Communities are somewhat similar to Facebook groups in that it helps other users interact with each other about a brand or business.

When it comes to these community pages, the navigation/management of the platform is the same as your Google+ profile.

Benefits of Using Google+ Communities for Your Business

The main benefits of community pages are as follows:

• Content will attract users who want to learn (remember to get visual and interactive as much as possible)
• Source of inspiration for future web content (community posts or suggestions can inspire blog articles or FAQ pages, etc.)
• Source of traffic to your website when you post/comment in communities
• Engagement with others that have similar interests to better exchange opinion/views
• Google tends to like you better for it!

When it comes to Google+ communities, the number of members can fall into a wide range. There can be 100 member communities right up to communities 100,000 members or more. If you create and share content that is relevant enough to these communities then you’re bound to acquire traffic. Plus, Google+ users are known to frequent their communities more and reward/credit the work.

How to Create Your Google+ Community Page

Access your Google+ business page. If you manage several, you most likely access them via Google+Business and you’ll be able to see an overview dashboard of all your accounts, click on the desired page and view it as yourself. Below is an example of a Google+ business page for a site called My Style Furniture, focused on selling furniture online:

Then hover over to the left drop down and click on Communities:

It’ll take you to a stream of all the communities you’ve joined and/or manage. Along with the option to Create a Community. Click on that:

Once you hit create, you have to choose what kind of community you’re creating. Is it public or private (only invited members can join)? For this example, we created a public community page to enhance furniture sales:

After you click on Create community it takes you to a list of the final steps (boxed in red) to be taken before you can fully launch your new community (add an optional tagline, pick a photo at least 960 pixels wide and 540 pixels tall, fill in About section, and finally add discussion categories) I suggest extracting some of this information from your Google+business page:

By scrolling further down the page shown above you’ll see the sections to be filled. As you can see and given that it’s My Style Furniture’s google+ account, we filled out this info accordingly. When you’re done, it’s time to hit DONE at the top right:

Finally, after hitting the DONE button, an automatic post to promote your recently created community to your users pops up. Fill out the description to sell it and voila – you’ve created and announced your new community to all your followers:

Advanced Tips For Using Google+ Communities

For better results, here are a couple of tips and guidelines to follow when participating in or using Google+ communities:

• When you create a post in your Google+ business page, the more efficient thing to do would be to share and reshare from the same original post on to other community pages and avoid just copying and pasting the same post on each of the other communities.
• Just like you can create them, you can join them. A good selection of communities to join can help boost your own community page. These are the communities you’re aiming to repost (share) to. The better the quality and reputation of these communities, the more your content will be viewed by those you’re targeting. So if you’re creating a site to sell furniture, you might want to join communities that fall under Interior Design.
• Avoid over-posting. A double-edged sword for marketers in Google+ is that it forces its members to avoid and identify spammy accounts. If you post to 10 different communities, each of those posts shows up on your profile. So people can see how many communities you’ve spammed with the same post. It kind of forces you to use new images, rephrase text and be original in your posts to different communities if you want to gain credibility in Google+.
• Within each community there are subtopics and it’s important to ensure that your content fits within those dynamics (new product, discussion, etc.).
• It’s ideal to publish in 5 or 6 communities and leave a few days in-between before reposting similar publications.

As stated above, Google+ has become increasingly beneficial for business and online marketing. Creating a Google+ community page (or several) with the right strategy and consistency can bring in a lot of traffic. Now try it out yourself.

The post Using Google+ Communities to Promote Your Content appeared first on Inboundly.