New research shows 72% of brands don't measure success
Content marketing is now a key digital strategy, but this infographic shows that measuring content marketing effectiveness is still a challenge for many marketers. Research from surveys including the joint SmartInsights-Hubspot Content Marketing ROI research highlights shows that companies are struggling to know how to measure content marketing ROI. Recently, Bite's research shown in this infographic supports this - they commissioned RedShift Research to survey over 100 Marketers to find out the roles of who is driving content marketing, resources allocated to it and the importance of video content.
Key findings include:
81% of companies have a dedicated Content Marketing role or are looking to invest in a this as the board sees this as a priority amongst 43% of businesses.
Top 3 benefits of content marketing are: to drive sales, customer retention and customer loyalty.
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Is Content Marketing Headed for a Tech Revolution?
Are you ready for the fourth wave of content marketing? According to Scott Brinker:
“the fourth wave of content marketing, now emerging, is the proliferation of interactive content with responsive web marketing apps.”
In Scott’s ebook, The New Brand of Marketing Scott argues that marketing is now a technical discipline where art gives way to code. Whereas that might sound like a huge leap, it’s got to be worth hearing out and this article introducing it is a great read, I’ll summarise and expand on this below.
So what are the three waves preceding this?
We know content marketing is pretty popular and interest in it has grown dramatically in the last couple of years….
So what’s the story of the first wave? If we agree to share the waves view that in the chart above? The…
3 techniques to weave content marketing into your storytelling
In 1791 a Dublin theatre owner named Thomas Daly bet his friends that he could invent a word that didn’t mean anything in 24 hours. Thinking he was crazy, the friends took the bet. Thomas chose the word “quiz” which hadn’t ever been seen before, and he plastered the word all over walls and billboards in the city of Dublin.
24 hours later, the theatre audience was speaking of and using the word “quiz” in conversation, and Mr. Daly won a large sum of money from his counterparts.
There is a strong chance you’ll never forget this story. The next time the word “quiz” is brought up in conversation you’ll think of Thomas Daly. That’s the power of stories.
Stories have been around since the beginning of time and continue to enthrall us.
There’s something visceral about the plot, drama, and heroism in stories that we…
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July 1, 2014
What can marketers learn from the success of publishing sensation Buzzfeed?
BuzzFeed is one of the fastest growing media businesses on the planet. In the space of four years they have transformed from a widely derided content aggregator site packed with pet memes and listicles that generated limited income into a profitable social content advertiser with over 300 staff, including a Pulitzer prize winner and a host of former broadsheet desk editors. They have an office in London, a cavernous headquarters on Fifth Avenue, their own video production studios and, perhaps most interestingly, a reporter based in Istanbul tasked with covering the conflict in Syria.
In November 2013 BuzzFeed received 130 million unique visitors (a 350% increase year on year) and 30 posts received more than 1 million views. There were…
7 Steps for completing a blog or website Content Audit
It’s easy to forget about your website’s old content, especially if it’s getting buried under your newer posts and pages. These stagnant pieces of content might be the reason your website isn’t ranking very well on SERPs, or could even be driving away potential customers when they stumble upon them while browsing.
Conducting a content audit is the best way to optimize all your current and future content to serve your audience better.
Why should you audit?
As Google’s own Matt Cutts says, it’s important to review your content to prevent it from 'going stale'. Conducting a blog or website content audit can take a lot of work, but if you’re serious about improving your website’s traffic, conversions, and user experience, it’s something you cannot and should not avoid.We found that many of their clients thought their on-page…
10+ tips to plan, build and share more engaging quizzes
This New York Times article highlights the reasons behind the growing popularity in online quizzes amongst consumers. Quizzes are great fun and can be an excellent way to drive traffic, but not all quizzes are created equal. There is a certain art to building and distributing a quiz that must be perfected in order to maximize the effect of your efforts. After analyzing over 1000 quizzes built using Interact, here’s what I’ve learned.
Building a quiz
1. Get the name right
80% of people make a decision about whether or not they should check out an article based on the title. That’s why you should spend a minimum of 20% of your time researching and testing out headlines.
When Upworthy first began their rise to power, they became famous for their '25 Headline' approach, in which…
How should content marketers drive leads for B2B?
Getting a good 'lead' remains the metric that matters the most to marketers. To a Journalist, a good 'lede' is a great headline that entices readers to read the full story. As the content marketing revolution marches on, all companies will need to become, in part, media companies. Modern marketers can join the charge forward and improve program ROI, by adopting a new CPL: the Cost per Lede.
Discussion of two biases in marketing
However, as I work with marketers around the world, I’m struck by two persistent traditional marketing biases that keep them from joining the revolution:
1. The bias in favour of director-and-above level professionals, at the expense of individual contributors; and
2. The bias in favour of opportunities and leads, at the expense of prospects and suspects.
As the VP of the Global Audience Business…
Can content marketing software ease the pain?
A new technology report by Rebecca Lieb at Altimeter has just been launched evaluating the software landscape for content marketing. You might read that as a “not for me” - doesn't sound too exciting at first glance, but we'd suggest that it might be worth re-thinking that stance.
The $44Bn market: Content marketing is big and complex
Now valued at a whopping $44Bn, the creation and promotion of customer or branded content remains on a huge growth trajectory, and yet Altimeter finds 70% of marketers lack a consistent or integrated content strategy - marketers still have a scattergun approach to content.
“Content is the atomic particle of all marketing” Rebecca Lieb
[note: Seth Godin also said content was marketing’s last stand about 2–3 years ago]
The reality is that marketing is now a complex process, it involves multiple stakeholders throughout the organisation, outside agencies and suppliers, and multiple channels…
Why is content marketing so popular yet so few have a content marketing strategy?
This infographic features a nice curation of research from the Content Marketing Institute showing that content marketing is more effective when marketers follow a strategy. We agree - we saw a similar finding in our EMEA research with Hubspot and our infographic Competing on Content!
While 88% of marketers in the UK are now implementing elements of content marketing only 42% actually have a documented content strategy.
We though you'd find the infographic useful since it summarises the top content challenges marketers are facing and gives guidance on how to overcome them. As well as five key benefits of following a content marketing strategy.
Source: JBH Marketing Infographics
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Essential techniques for making your communications more customer-focused
It’s no secret that effective timing is an essential ingredient of successful marketing. Spotting seasonality and maintaining frequency are the easy things to manage. Getting people to want to spend time with you is more of a challenge.
This doesn’t just mean showing up at the right time, it means earning the right to person’s precious time
To pull people through the buying decision, you need to understand how much time they want to give to the process. Then, ensure that you have the right tools and techniques of an appropriate duration, available when they want them.
Grabbing someone’s attention is something that’s done in seconds. A person will either notice you, or they won’t. Then the moment has passed. If they then start to consider buying from you, they will gradually increase the time that they’re happy to devote to finding out about your products…
