1. Use a Social Media Planning Tool
Using social media can be quite overwhelming, if you do not have the right tools to help you. This is whether you want to create content, post photos and videos and generally engage your audience.

By using a tool, you will be able to stay organized. This will ensure that you are producing fresh content on a regular basis, so as to keep your audience engaged. In addition, using tools will make your life so much easier and you will be much more efficient and productive.

You will be able to manage your accounts from multiple platforms, schedule posts, run contests and keep track of your analytics.

One such tool that you can use is Planable. When using Planable Social Media Tool, you will be able to create content and preview it as it would appear on the platform where you want to post it, schedule posts, get audience feedback on the posts that you have created rather than having to switch to communicating through email. You will also be able to manage multiple social media accounts on one platform.

2. Use Hashtags
Since it was first used in 2007, the use of hash tags has widely spread across different social media platforms. It has become quite popular since it makes it easier to create conversations around a particular topic or your brand and it makes it easier to search for things based on the user’s interest.

Using hash tags also makes it possible for you to insert humour into your posts and to start conversations about topics that you care about. Ideally, it is best that you use 1-3 hash tags per post. Using too many hash tags might make your post look like spam.

You need to use the right hash tags to increase chances of your posts being found much more easily or even going viral. Some of the best ways to know which hash tags are the best to use is to find out what hash tags are generally used in your industry, research what words industry influencers mainly use online and find out which hash tags are trending. You can also brainstorm which words you know will be of interest to your readers.

3. Use a VPN to Ensure Proper Localization
Localizing your social media content can make a great difference when it comes to customer relations and encouraging better audience interaction. Localizing your content will help you to be more customer focussed, as you can use more appropriate strategies to reach your audience.

One of the ways that you can localize your marketing is by using a VPN to pretend to be in a different country that then one you are actually in. Once you spoof location with VPN servers, your real IP address will be replaced by the VPN IP address and it will be as if you are in that country. This will enable you to see traffic better in that locale and understand what kind of traffic your page attracts and which products or services get the most traffic.

By: Priti Shetti

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Be honest and deliver

For non-profits in particular, there will – or should be – times when your material really is groundbreaking and even worthy of a viral response. Whether your headline is simply an update on the work your organization is accomplishing or news that belongs at the center of discourse for your organization’s given focus, be sure to deliver what you’ve promised. Many “groundbreaking” headlines simply don’t contain content that matches the energy and promise of their headlines. As a non-profit, the pressure is greater to be honest and fair about the material you are sharing – and rightfully so. As a content marketer, consider yourself a gatekeeper for your organization: don’t let cheap material into the world – ever. It’s your job to find a way to engage readers, but never by sacrificing the integrity of the content, which can ultimately take a toll on the integrity of the organization as a whole.

Long-form content isn’t the enemy

I firmly believe that non-profits in particular benefit from longer-form content and thought leadership. Many non-profit organizations rely on a public perception that they are leaders in their focus and/or industry, and as such, a certain level of research, reliability, and thoughtfulness should be expected at all times. Long-form content may not have a high read-rate when compared to “instant gratification” pieces or quick updates. However, you’ll likely find yourself coming back to your longer, more serious pieces again and again. They provide an excellent source of link-back material and further establish your organization as a reliable resource.

Come back to your core

I love non-profits because they are born out of honest and generally basic desires: help people, make the world better, improve access to water, eradicate a disease, etc. These are not small promises, but they are focused and generally impossible to disagree with as worthy goals. If you find yourself scrambling to come up with content that is widely shared or read, remember the core of your organization and the “why” behind what drives others to support that core. I’ve found that returning to this initial, emotion-driven core is helpful in that it a) reinforces the most important messages that you can craft for your organization and b) re-establishes the promise to your stakeholders and readers – and often, that promise is what led them to your website, blog, or other content presence in the first place. Don’t be afraid to reiterate what works – you might be surprised that this is exactly what your readers want (or need) to hear again.

By: Claire Topalian

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Photo credit: Smart Insights and Get Response

So take a look at your email marketing tactics and evaluate how you can improve. These tips will help.

1. Use your name in the “from address” of your email marketing campaigns. Using your business name results in fewer opens because it isn’t as friendly and personal.

2. Make it worth it for your audience to open and read your emails. Always include a surprise in every three or four emails so they get used to the idea that you may give something away in your emails that no one else is going to get. This can be something as simple as a free audio download.

3. It’s all about stand-out headlines. Focus on crafting headlines that let your readers know what’s inside and why they should open without being dishonest. Your text should deliver everything your headline promises.

4. Segmentation is imperative for good email marketing because that’s the only way you can freely mention the right product, the right service, and the right topic to them at the right time. If you’re new to this tactic, read 50 Smart Ways to Segment Your Email List Like a Pro from Optin Monster. Then enlist the help of your virtual assistant to implement it.

5. Check out your competition’s email marketing list. Sign up for their freebies and watch how they do things. Don’t copy them, but do figure out how they do it, identify the gaps, and note the topics.

6. Work on building a real relationship with your email list members. Let them reply directly to the emails you send, and then answer them. They like knowing a real person is behind the emails rather than nothing at all. Check your email marketing software, many of them default to a generic reply to address. You can change this for each email.

7. Evaluate your writing style. Email writing should be a little more laid back than most people think. Email should be personal, brief, and exciting to read. Show your enthusiasm with your word choice. Try talking your emails using voice to text to get the rhythm right. Be sure to edit if you do this! The spoken word doesn’t always translate well directly to written language.

8. Get personal in your email. Share your experiences and give details that you normally would not give on your site. Trusting your readers with a little-known fact will make them feel special and that your friendship is mutual.

9. In your high school English class, you were probably taught to write in the third person, rather than using you and I. However, you should talk directly to each individual, using the word “you” to allude to your more personal relationship, which helps persuade your readers to take the action based on your relationship and their trust.

10. Tell stories to your audience that leads them to make the conclusion to buy what you’re recommending to them. Stories can be case studies, your own story, or client stories. When they see real-life examples, they’ll be much more connected to the content.

11. Include your CTA link in more than one spot in your email. If you mention the product or solution, link to it, don’t wait until the end. That way the moment your reader is ready to click through, they can do so. Make sure they land directly on a landing page specific to the CTA.

By: Karen Repoli

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Consumers may have mostly ignored the details of privacy policies for years, but now that the negative consequences of those practices have hit people’s newsfeeds, consumer, investor and lawmaker confidence is eroding. The U.S. experienced the most extreme loss in trust ever measured from 2017 to 2018, according to Edelman Trust Barometer. Trust in U.S. institutions dropped from trusted (68) down to distrust (45). As a marketer what should you do?

Trust matters

The Edelman Trust Barometer reports that 80 percent of U.S. consumers chose to buy from companies they trust, and 68 percent would recommend those companies. Yet, 63 percent would not buy from a company they don’t trust, and 58 percent would criticize those companies to friends and colleagues. A survey of food brands by Label Insight found that 94 percent of consumers are more likely to be loyal to a brand when it commits to full transparency, and 73 percent are willing to pay more for that transparency. As a marketer, you cannot afford to lose trust in your brand, and social media is a large contributor to brand trust.

Nobody likes a tradeoff

Your customers don’t really want to trade information about themselves for better deals. Research by professors Joseph Turow, Michael Hennessy and Nora Draper found that marketers were incorrect in assuming that a majority of Americans give out information about themselves as a tradeoff for benefits they receive. The researchers found that marketers have been living under a trade off fallacy. Only 21 percent of Americans agreed that getting discounts, free services or better services for collecting online information is a fair tradeoff. In fact, 72 percent of Americans believe that what companies know about them from their behavior online can hurt them.

Time for an institutional audit

Since this social media shakeup, now is a good time to take an audit of your own practices. What data do you collect? Is all of it necessary? Is the information you collect from your customers a fair trade for the discounts or services you provide? How long do you keep that data? A Deloitte study found 93 percent of consumers believe they should be able to request a company permanently delete data. Are you selling or providing access to third parties? What are they doing with that data and what are their practices and policies?

Reconsider your privacy policy

What is the true intention of your privacy policy? The Turow, Hennessy and Draper study found that most consumers — 65 percent – falsely believe that when a website has a privacy policy, it means the site will not share their information with other websites and companies without their permission. For many companies, a privacy policy is simply a legal document that explains what is collected and how it is used in very long and complicated language.

Researchers Lorrie Faith Cranor and Aleecia McDonald calculated how much time it would take to read all of the privacy policies an average internet user encounters in a year. They found it would take 76 work days, or 15 work weeks, to complete. A Fairer Finance survey found that the small print for some companies now runs more than 30,000 words. Seventy-three percent do not read all the fine print, and of those who do, only 17 percent say they understand it. Are you making it easy for your consumer to understand what you collect and how you use it.

Don’t be creepy

Just because Facebook offers targeting based on 98 personal data points does not mean you have to use them all. An InMoment report of U.S. consumers and brands found that 75 percent of consumers find most forms of personalization creepy, and 22 percent would leave a brand after a creepy experience. Being creepy is having a negative effect. The Deloitte study found a 10-point drop in 2017 for willingness to share personal data in exchange for personalized advertising — from 37 percent to 27 percent. Is your personalization too personal?

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

The one thing we shouldn’t do is get rid of social media and internet marketing completely. Psychology Today reports that social networking and the internet have positive benefits when used to communicate with family and friends providing social support that benefits people’s mental health. A Time, Inc. survey found nearly 90 percent of respondents like custom online content as a way for brands to engage with them, and two in three have greater trust in that content than traditional advertising. A Stackla survey found 86 percent of people say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. Consumers engage with brands when there is an authentic value exchange from consuming the content. Is your online and social media strategy focused on the positive benefits of delivering consumer value?

Consumers want relationships with brands online, but if we are to earn their trust, we must make efforts to give them more control over that relationship. If we don’t, we are most likely in for even more crises and new government regulations like the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect in May.

By: Keith Quesenberry

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The most important law you need to know and follow in the United States is the CAN- SPAM Act of 2003. This law applies to all forms of commercial email messages and not just commercial email messages sent in bulk to lists of people. What makes a message commercial? It’s not clearly defined in the Act, but it’s probably broader than you think. For example, a commercial message doesn’t have to promote a product or service directly to messages as be considered commercial. Even messages that promote content “any electronic on a commercial website — such as a blog post, free ebook, mail message, educational article or tutorial — would be considered commercial since they indirectly promote the company.

The cost for noncompliance can be very high, particularly since you can be charged penalties for each separate email violation up to $40,654. Furthermore, if your email messages violate other laws, such as those related to deceptive advertising, you could face even more fines or criminal penalties, including imprisonment.

There are seven primary requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act. Following is a basic explanation of each of the main requirements. If you always err on the side of caution and assume messages sent from your company are commercial advertisements or promotions (even if they’re not directly advertising or promoting a product or service), then you should be safe.

Header information. The header information in your messages must not be false or misleading. This includes the information in the message’s “From,” “To,” and “Reply To” fields as well as the routing information. In other words, your messages should accurately identify both the person and business that initiated the message. Furthermore, the header information should include the originating domain (which is typically your business’ web domain) and real email address.

Subject line. The subject line of your email messages must reflect the true content of the message. Don’t try to conceal what the message is about with a clever subject line. Instead, the subject line should clearly explain what the recipient will get when they open the message. Both inaccurate and vague subject lines could get you in trouble.

Ad disclosure. You must identify that the message is an ad or promotional in nature. The good news is that the CAN-SPAM Act provides a great deal of flexibility in terms of how you disclose this information. The most important thing to understand is that somewhere in your message, you must conspicuously explain that your message is promotional (even if it’s indirectly promotional) or an advertisement. Leave no room for confusion here.

Location. You must include your physical address in your messages. This has to be your valid postal address, which means it can be your street address or a post office box registered with the U.S. Postal Service. It could also be a private mailbox that you registered with a commercial mail receiving agency, but make sure that agency was established under postal service regulations or it won’t meet the requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Unsubscribe option. Your messages must include an easy and obvious way to unsubscribe if recipients want to opt out of receiving email messages from you in the future. You cannot create conditions to opt out, such as requiring a person to pay a fee or provide any personally identifiable information aside from an email address. Furthermore, the opt-out process must not require a person to do more than send a reply email message or visit one web page. If you send multiple types of messages (e.g., newsletters, product updates and so on), you can offer a way for people to choose which types of email messages they want to opt out of receiving from you. However, you must also provide a way for them to opt out of receiving all messages from you.

Opt-out completion. After you send a message, recipients must have 30 days to unsubscribe. If someone unsubscribes, you must honor that request within 10 business days. Once a person unsubscribes, you’re not allowed to transfer or sell that person’s email address (individually or as part of a list) to anyone else (unless the company you’re transferring the list to is helping you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act).

Third parties. If you hire another person or company to manage your email marketing, you’re still responsible for complying with the CAN-SPAM Act. In fact, both you and the person or company handling your email marketing are responsible and could get in trouble if the law isn’t followed. Therefore, make sure anyone you work with knows the laws and complies with them. You’ll need to monitor their activities for compliance on an ongoing basis.

By: Susan Gunelius

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I call this scenario “the clean.” The crime scene may well be bloody and I may well need to don a Hazmat suit, fill my bucket with Clorox bleach, and get scrubbing with my stiff brush until the apartment is again rentable. The crime is over, it’s unlikely to repeat, and my job is just to restore the scene to normal.

If, on the other hand, you’re a bastard who had deep contempt for the people you serve, allow your resentment at their stupidity come off you like waves of heat and believe that the customer is always wrong and that all your products and services are pearls to swine, then, yikes! This happens all the time. So, instead of passionately working hard to service customers and clients with kindness, super-service, innovation, convenience and value, they just assume that good enough is good enough.

When it’s cheaper to hire PR pros than to change the culture

This happens the most with monopolies and essential services. We all know their names. And, they’re often lambasted, drawn and quartered. While the fact that most of their clients and customers are being held hostage keeps these companies complacent when it comes to very expensive revisions in the process, quality, and service, they’re not stupid. It’s cheaper to hire an army of crisis communicators, PR agencies, ad men, and online reputation managers than it is to turn a Comcast into a Zappos — at least for a while, that is, and especially when you still represent a monopoly. Online reputation management does work, but it’s an endless game of whack-a-mole.

I call this scenario “repair and repeat.” My analogy here is war. Some neighborhoods in Israel are the victims of chronic rocket attacks. Israel’s smart: they realize that if they allow these neighborhoods to look war-torn then settlers will never move there, will never stay there.

They have dedicated teams to come in, immediately after every attack, and quickly mend the damage, be it structural or cosmetic, from panes of glass to entire rebuilds — all in the service of making sure that people in these neighborhoods feel like they have a semblance of peace and security, even though they’re living a life or Russian roulette. This is very similar to doing online reputation management for a company that has decided to spend all their money on PR, ORM, publicity, and advertising without making sure it integrates with actual services, quality, customer care, and the ability to deliver on what was and is promised in those ads, PR, and publicity.

It’s putting lipstick on a pig

Yes, maybe some accountants ran the numbers and decided that it would be cheaper to repair settlements than to make peace in the Middle East. Maybe some bean counters decided that the amount of money resulting from settling on a number of deaths associated with a flawed automobile is less money than a recall. Maybe it’s easier to care in public and on social than it is to really give a damn because you’re pretty much the only game in town. Yes, sometimes the numbers don’t lie and yet you do the right thing anyway.

And now, maybe it will be worth it, even to the bean counters

While the internet is nothing new and we have been talking about the customers taking over the conversation that used to be controlled only by Madison Avenue since 1999s Cluetrain Manifesto, it really wasn’t until Google went from playing catch-up and appeasing a corporate culture that liked to play internet- and search-stupid (“we didn’t mean to do anything terrible! what’s ‘black hat?’ — my search guy said it was kosher”).

Now, as I have been saying week after week, Google’s refining and constricting and honing its search, relying less and less on a link-based algorithm that’s been around and mostly unmolested since Sept. 4, 1998, and more on how content, information, sharing, clicking, viewing, and authorship relates to social networks, news and content platform, blogs and social platforms, and Google+. And while Google has been twice-bitten and thrice shy, continually always loosening the noose again and again, they’re now taking two steps forward and only relinquishing one.

Online reputation can’t be managed on its own

The rope is tightening, so lazy SEO and online reputation management agencies are not only becoming less effective but they’re losing entire first and second pages that they had previously held for — and promised — their clients (though we online reputation management agencies are amazingly good at promising nothing as we know how unpredictable, mysterious, and fickle Google has been every step of every day of the last 15 years). And when you’ve paid $30k/month for years to an agency that has promised to turn a bloody disaster back into a pristine property, it doesn’t matter what the contract promises to not promise, I am sure clients can become quite irate.

The law of diminishing returns

While online reputation management can work using brute force and infinite resources (think $30k+/month ad, infinitum), there will be a point of diminishing returns as Google normalizes the online reputation management campaign and the newest, freshest, and most relevant real, organic, authentic, and popular content will bubble to the top, especially as Google gets better and better at connecting organic social sharing with authorship, timeliness (real-time webbiness) and popularity into not just a contributing factor of Google’s search algorithm but the dominant source for emergent news and relevant content.

Remember, at the end of the day, Google needs to read the minds of the people who visit — based mostly on cryptic phrases written by normal folks and not by Boolean ninjas fresh from their degrees in library science.

In the end, a tarnished reputation may not be your customers’ fault

If you’ve simply been besmirched, write a check to me. If, on the other hand, your corporate culture is circa 1953 in 2013 and you feel like the customer is mostly wrong, you’re cutting essential services to maximize shareholder value and you honestly believe that huge retainers to Edelman, Hill & Knowlton, and Ketchum is enough coverfire to allow you to behave badly, then think again.

While writing huge checks to an online reputation management agency is an essential first step towards reclaiming your good name on Google search, if your company is being chronically pulled through the mud, you feel like you need to blame your customers for being idiots, you find your good name self-mocked and derided on Twitter, there’s an unflattering hashtag about you, and you’re a trending topic when it comes to suck, the evidence does not support that it’s your customers’ fault.

By: Chris Abraham

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Every day, we all receive numerous messages in our inboxes and across the web that use our personal data to target us. Gleaning information about us from the websites we visit, the content we read, the places we check in and more, marketers take advantage of our digital footprint to send us targeted offers. Often, this outreach is welcomed. It can help us plan a vacation in our personal lives or help us find the best software in the workplace. It often saves us time, reminds us to finish a task or finds us a better deal. It’s fair to say these are all helpful outcomes.

But, sometimes, too much personalization in marketing can feel a bit creepy, or just simply awkward. A recent Forrester report showed 89 percent of digital businesses are investing in personalization. But when so many marketers are trying to find ways to target you or your company, there is a potential downside. While it’s helpful to be reminded about unfinished tasks, getting content or ads that have nothing to do with our interests or needs is bothersome. And finding out just how much a company knows about you and your business can be downright creepy.

When do marketers cross the line? And when do potential customers stop appreciating the offers and start feeling a little uneasy about them? Here are a few recommendations for using the data you capture in a way that can help boost trust among customers and prospects.

Use Your Data to Add Value to Your Customer’s Day

When using buyer data to target your campaigns, the most important thing to do is to add value to their day. Don’t reach out to potential customers just to say, “I see you downloaded a white paper from our site … would you like to chat?” In that scenario, the prospect will likely ignore your email and avoid coming back to your website. Instead, send prospects relevant, timely information through different types of collateral, such as an infographic, video or how-to, that further explains how to solve the problem they’re facing.

For example, if an IT buyer was reading Office 365 reviews online, send him or her an email about how to implement Office 365 and things to consider when moving to the cloud. When marketers provide timely information to help solve a problem, prospects are often willing to share more data about themselves, their company and the challenge they’re facing. But, do your homework to determine where your customer is in the sales cycle and what information will help drive them closer to the sale.

Know How Your Buyers Consume Content and Where They Go to Find It.

The best way to ensure you’re adding value for customers and prospects is to know them well, and that requires both firmographic and demographic data. Customers respond differently to marketing based on their age, company role and their individual needs. For example, recent Spiceworks research revealed some key differences between IT decision makers and business decision makers in terms of how they consume content.

Since IT decision makers spend more time evaluating technology solutions and vendors, they need more technical content, and on average, they consume 17 pieces of content throughout the decision-making process. These IT buyers prefer to consume content via webinars, online forums and conferences. Business decision makers, on the other hand, typically consume about 12 pieces of content throughout the purchase process, and they’re more receptive to tried-and-true marketing channels, such as email, phone calls and physical mail.

The age of the decision makers can also provide insights into where they’re seeking content and the amount of personalization they want. For example, research shows that compared to baby boomers, millennial buyers are more likely to turn to Google and social media to learn about new products and services. Millennial buyers are also twice as likely to respond to a personalized message than Gen Xers and baby boomers. In other words, millennials might be receptive to a personalized video that addresses them by name and explains how you can help them get their job done. Baby boomers, on the other hand, might find that incredibly creepy.

Bottom line: Do your research to avoid invading your buyers’ personal space and sending them content they won’t be receptive to.

Get Digital Feedback on Your Personalization Efforts

And lastly, be sure to test your research with different marketing campaigns. Find out how your customers respond to different levels of personalization by running A/B tests and asking for real-time feedback. This could be as simple as including a poll in your emails or asking prospects to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” personalized content you created for them on your site. Then, use that input to modify your level of personalization and tailor the experiences you create for different types of buyers. This give customers and prospects a little more control over how their data is used.

At the end of the day, the more value you provide, the more willing customers will be to share their data in return for more personalized experiences.

By: Sanjay Castelino

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Today’s internet marketing practices have matured dramatically since the days of dial up. Channels like social media have likewise matured, changing the landscape from a “Wild West” feeling to a more familiar competitive market. As businesses spend more on aspects of marketing like paid ad inventory, prices go up. There is, after all, a finite number of eyeballs browsing the internet at any given time.

Businesses also find themselves competing more earnestly for organic traffic and impressions. While it used to be easy to rank high on search engines if you were the only business on the block doing SEO, now achieving results pits you against countless others.

With all this going on, business owners should expect to dig deeper into their pockets in the near future in order to achieve their goals for awareness, revenues, growth, and more. To help encourage you to keep pace, here are some observations we’ve made that reveal the current state of online marketing and indicate where it could be going soon.

Survey Says: Online Marketing Spending Growth Outpaces Traditional Ads

In a recent survey of CMOs, the respondents indicated that they intend to increase their digital marketing spending by 15.1% on average. By comparison, the average respondent said they plan to shrink their traditional advertising spending by 1.7%. The decrease follows a distinct trend of budgets shrinking for traditional media, which includes ads on TV, radio, print, billboards, and other non-digital channels. The last time budgets increased by more than 1% was in 2011. Since that point, budgets were cut by an average of 1.6% every six months. That’s a total drop of 22% in traditional ad spending from 2011 to the present.

In the meantime, digital marketing budgets have increased by double digits every six months with only one exception. The changes equal a 167.5% increase, for an average of 12% every six months. Spending on digital and traditional marketing techniques is diverging, and the effects are more noticeable in certain industries. Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies in particular say that they will have the biggest jumps. Product-focused B2C companies intend to increase digital marketing budgets by 17.9%, and service-based B2C companies say they will increase their budgets by 18.2%.

All of these data points indicate a steady stream of dollars flowing into digital channels. Companies in all sectors are investing more in online marketing campaigns, including content creation, strategy, management, promotion, and actions like performance measurement.

Budgets Stay Largely Flat as a Portion of Marketing Spending and Revenues

While budgets are increasing across the board for most companies, the ratio of that budget to other key metrics has remained stable for the most part. The current industry average for marketing budgets as a portion of overall spending sits at 11.1%. This ratio is mostly unchanged since 2011. Similarly, marketing spending as a portion of company revenues is an average of 7.9% this year. That number has increased and decreased by small increments since 2012, barring a slight jump and then regression in Fall 2012.

So what does this mean in terms of trends? Well, if spending is increasing but budgets as a ratio are staying flat, that indicates that companies tie their spending growth to sales growth and budget growth. You could chalk these strong correlations to inflation or a general growth trend in both revenues and spending. You could also observe that, across all industries, spending strategies remain fairly conservative.

But a few key distinctions are to be made if you take the time to break down spending further. For instance, the ratio of money spent on content marketing compared to a business’s entire budget can dictate their ability to accomplish their content marketing goals.

In a survey of B2C companies using content marketing, the average respondent said they spent 22% of their marketing budget on content. The companies that rated themselves as “least successful” at accomplishing their goals spent an average of 18%, while the companies that said they were the “most successful” spent 26%. These differences were even more pronounced among business-to-business (B2B) companies. The average B2B content marketing spend was 26% of their overall marketing budget. Yet, the least successful companies spent just 14%, while the most successful ones spent a whopping 40% on average.

So, while the aggregated data may hint that online marketing spending strategies are conservative, companies that lean into their digital marketing campaigns with a larger budget percentage tend to see better performance.

Costs of Online Advertising on the Rise

One of the biggest factors encouraging companies to increase their budgets is that costs have risen. According to a study by Adobe, the costs of digital advertising are rising five times faster than the current rate of inflation in the U.S. Looking at data from 2014 to 2016, mobile display ad prices increased 12%, video ads increased 13%, and mobile paid search ads went up 11%.

Overall, companies spent 42% more on search advertising. At the same time, search engine traffic increased by just 11%. These two observations together mean that competition is getting more fierce for smaller slices of traffic.

Similar trends can be seen with social media advertising. Companies engaging in social media marketing are having a harder time earning impressions organically. To compensate, they are increasing their volume of paid social campaigns as well as their budgets. Bid prices for limited ad inventory go up. In total, experts predict that ad prices for Facebook could rise anywhere between 25% and 79% in the coming year.

Few Companies Measuring Performance, Impact and ROI

As the costs of marketing rise, it’s more important than ever to measure impact and performance. Without this data, businesses could spend on campaigns and activities that don’t bring them measurable value. Also, they lack the data to optimize their campaigns over time. Without knowing, for instance, that one social media campaign type brought better performance than another, the business will have fewer decision-making tools in hand to strategize for future campaigns.

Despite the risks described above, 58% percent of companies don’t use marketing analytics to measure performance and help them make decisions. For social media marketing, 34% of companies don’t measure the impact of their campaigns at all. 42% claim they have a good “qualitative sense” of how their campaigns are performing but don’t have the numbers to back up these observations.

The situation is even more dire with content marketing. 5% of companies don’t have any content marketing target metrics to speak of. 41% don’t measure content marketing ROI, and 21% say they are “unsure” as to whether they are accurately measuring ROI.

Every penny you spend on digital marketing counts, especially as costs rise. Make sure you have a strategy in place to maximize your returns, as well as tools you can use to measure those returns quantifiably.

Get prepared for the future with the expertise you need to compete and stay ahead as the digital marketing realm becomes more expensive.

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In fact, your B2B content marketing strategy will include several “must have” components. Without them, your ability to generate leads, convert those leads, and retain existing customers could suffer greatly. With these “must haves,” you can increase your chances of success and ensure that your content marketing campaigns follow all of the latest recommended best practices.

So, to help you improve your B2B content marketing strategy to be as effective as possible, here are the six “musts” you need in place.

Have a Documented Content Strategy

There’s power in the simple act of writing things down, yet so many B2B companies neglect to document their content marketing strategy! In fact, in a recent survey shows just 37% of all B2B companies said that they had a documented content marketing strategy at all.

Looking at just the B2B companies finding the most success with content marketing, only 62% said they had a documented content marketing strategy. This, despite the fact that they dedicated 40% of their total marketing budget to content marketing on average.

The danger in not having a documented strategy is that important details are left up in the air. You may not realize there is a gap in how your content strategy is able to nurture late stage buyers to an actual purchase. Or, you may fail to define your specific content marketing goals, leading to campaigns that are poorly optimized.

Most worrisome, not having documentation leaves critical parts of your content marketing campaigns open to interpretation. A writer may create content with a completely different audience in mind than your target personas, and without documentation there is no way for them to know otherwise. Every person involved in creating content should have the same intent and abide by all of the necessary markers of quality, so the content you create is consistent and up to your expectations.

Define your content goals. Outline your expectations for each piece created. Ensure that your content marketing campaigns account for your buyer personas during key stages in their journey. Getting all of these things down in writing can help you have more precise control over your results, while achieving quality more in line with your expectations.

Conduct Original Research and Publish It

Your B2B company can survive by simply regurgitating and repackaging information obtained by others, but it will face stiff competition from those that publish their own research. According to one survey, half of B2B companies say that their original research reports generate leads that have the highest conversion rates. This makes them the most effective form of content, beating out video, webinars, case studies, white papers, and social media content.

Conducting your own research can be tough, but the efforts pay off. People will share and cite your information readily, as long as it provides current information that answers an important business question. Your research can also earn you a top spot on search engine results if it covers an important topic, follows SEO guidelines, and earns shares from websites with high domain authority.

Aim for Content Downloads, Which Correlate to the Highest Customer Conversion Rates

B2B companies don’t just want engagement or occasional readers. They want paying customers. Therefore, they should seek out the content marketing methods most likely to earn them a customer conversion out of their sales leads. Surprisingly, content downloads had the highest conversion rate according to the same survey cited above. 66% of companies listed them as the asset with the best conversion rate. Webinars came in second, which seems counterintuitive given how much of a time investment registering and attending one can be. Equally surprising – demo requests came in third.

Nevertheless, creating premium content and requiring a download seems to be the most effective content marketing tactic for generating qualified leads and converting them to completed sales. Consider this as you determine which types of content are priorities and most deserving of your time, money and effort.

Tap Subject Matter Experts and Industry Influencers to Gain More Traction

The right input from the right source can make a huge difference in the perceived value B2B marketing content offers. By crowdsourcing information, ideas, and quotable phrases from recognizable names in your industry, you can amplify the authority your content projects while making it more appealing.

One company revealed to Forbes that onboarding influencers was a game changer for their content marketing effectiveness. They switched from a focus of educating target audiences to engaging them in discussions. The topics they covered had no right answers, making them more interesting to explore and contribute to. Having influencers submit their own input completed the package and helped the content have broader appeal. Using this strategy, the company was able to earn seven times the amount of impressions and 160% more engagement compared to their average post before the switch.

When seeking out influencers to contribute, make the process of responding as simple as possible. Ask one direct, easy-to-grasp question, and let them know exactly what the intended guidelines are. If you can reduce the effort required to contribute to the project, you can improve your response rate and get more people to contribute their valuable input.

Don’t Neglect Video and Visuals

Visuals help “sell” content and make it into a much more appealing package. When you have the resources, make sure to pull important quotes and statistics from your content and repurpose them into easy-to-read graphics. These graphics will undoubtedly get more visual attention and shares compared to text-only options. They also make for impactful assets any time you want to promote your content on social media. Don’t be surprised if many people seem to just read the photos and not really dig into the article itself!

If you want even better engagement, video content is where the industry is headed these days. Four times as many people say they would prefer to watch a video about a product or service compared to reading about it. Key decision makers in particular are busy and enjoy having information compacted into a format that combines audio and visual information. 75% of executives claim that they watch branded video content related to their industry at least weekly, and 65% say that they later visit the website of the brand that created the video.

Like graphics, video combines well with other content and can also be a great way to repurpose it. Creating an executive summary of a research report can encourage downloads, for instance, while providing a more appealing and easily shareable format to earn more impressions.

Ready to Start Selling More? Get Help Creating and Optimizing Your B2B Content Strategy

The path to success for B2B content marketing is never easy nor obvious, and it must be customized to fit the unique needs of your particular company and your target personas. Get help forming a strategy that accounts for all of the above “must haves,” while increasing your chances of meeting or even exceeding your marketing goals. Contact us today to find out how!

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For businesses, this same principle holds true. If you aren’t active on social media, others may talk about your business and seize control of the narrative. Or, even worse, your business is all but invisible until someone else shares content or news talking about you.

In addition to providing visibility, having a proactive social media marketing strategy can help boost your sales performance and help you achieve your marketing goals. You can earn new customer leads, increase brand awareness, and even offer customer support through social channels. To cover the full scope of why your business needs to be on social media, consider the following five benefits described below and how they are an essential part of any digital marketing strategy.

Create a Highly Visible “Hub” for Your Business’s News and Announcements

Let’s be honest. Very few people are going to religiously check your business website’s “News” or “Blog” page for announcements and press releases. If most people don’t visit news sites to get news, they certainly aren’t actively going to business’s websites to see the latest developments. This assertion isn’t meant to discourage you from tending to your website at all, but rather to make you realize just how much more visibility being on social media adds for your business. Sharing news and announcements on social is dead simple, and your followers may even help share those materials for you once you release them into the wild.

In this way, your social media profiles serve as your business’s online “hub” away from its main website. Your profile photo, the content you share, and the announcements you make all have the effect of turning your social accounts into an official mouthpiece for your brand. From here, you can help shape your public image and control the flow of information you release into the world.

Increase Your Visibility on Search Engines

The jury is still out as to whether social media engagement and content shares can raise the search engine ranking for a business’s website pages. Hootsuite, for instance, found a small correlation but concluded that a deeper study with more data points was needed.

Even if social media can’t help raise your web page rankings, it can help you occupy a more obvious spot in the rankings altogether. Why? Because social media platforms have great domain authority, which allows them to rank highly any time a search is made. So, if someone searches for your business name or a related topic online, your social media page and posts talking about your business are highly likely to appear near the top of search results. Twitter is especially good at earning top ranks, since Google features recent tweets similar to how they would news posts.

Having a social media profile and actively discussing your areas of business can therefore give you additional opportunities at ranking near the top of search engine results.

Publish Your Content and Earn Traffic for Your Marketing Campaigns

While people are more likely to check your social media pages than your homepage for business news, you can encourage more traffic to your website by posting on social media. With the right images and messaging, you can easily pull in huge amounts of traffic just from one post. The aim is to get people’s attention and to make full use of your available resources. In other words, you are going to craft great content previews for content like shared blog posts.

For campaign-related traffic, you can describe your offer in attractive terms to earn attention and traffic. A retail business can describe a sale for their website store, for instance. Or, you can encourage people to sign up for entry in a contest by posting a link to the relevant landing page.

Social media posting is particularly useful for boosting the ROI of your content marketing campaigns. Without social sharing, many businesses would get little traffic to their blogs. By posting on social, the business can boost traffic and potentially up their correlated domain authority, which explains the positive effect Hootsuite saw between social engagement and SEO rank.

Raise Brand Awareness and Earn New Customer Leads

Social media creates opportunities for countless people to discover your business and what it does. Google searches for business names spike if that business can generate social buzz, for example. You also have the opportunity to earn exposures through people who follow and engage with your brand on social media. For instance, someone who “likes” or comments on your post on Facebook can have those interactions appear on their friend’s newsfeeds.

Social media advertising is also another potential source of significant new impressions and customer leads. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn have powerful audience customization tools that allow you to get in front of your most valuable buyer personas with just a minimal budget.

Software companies can similarly offer free demos or pitch their product’s benefits to relevant audiences. Social media provides the visibility, and once you have someone on your landing page or on your email list, you have opportunities to convert.

Interact With Your Audiences and Provide Customer Support

Brands can do an excellent job of building relationships with their audiences when they can create content that encourages engagement.

The UPS Store, for example, came out with a powerful social media post that piggybacked off the popularity of a recent Nintendo product release. To date, the post has gotten 3,200 shares, over 200 comments, and 10,000 “likes.” Interactions like these don’t just multiply brand impressions. They also change the way people might perceive a brand. Someone who loves the playful tone of the post can then translate these positive associations to the business posting it. Or, the brand can help forge strong associations between itself and the values it cares about most.

People who interact with the brand can therefore end up being more loyal customers, while repeating the desired positive brand associations to their friends and followers. According to one survey, 48% of people say they are more likely to make repeat purchases from a brand that engages with them, and 90% of millennials consider it “cool” when a brand responds to their questions.

But what about people who have nasty things to say about your business on social media, or people who have a complaint? That is actually a great opportunity! After voicing a complaint about a company on social media, 71% of people who have a positive experience and have their issue resolved say they are likely to recommend that company to others. They also say they are likely to spend 21% more than they normally would.

Don’t Ignore Social Media Marketing, Or the World Could Ignore You!

Because of all these benefits social media marketing provides, especially for visibility, having a social media strategy is no longer optional for businesses. Even if they do not intend to advertise or promote themselves on the major social platforms, they need a professional presence that responds actively to people looking for support and answers.

If you want help forming your own social media strategy for your business, look no further than us! We have experience creating content, earning followers, interacting with audiences, supporting cross-channel marketing campaigns, and creating paid social media advertising campaigns based on your goals.

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