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February 20, 2020
The must-know content marketing statistics to benchmark your plans against this year
Content marketing is still very much at the heart of digital marketing, with content continuing to be a vital tactic for bringing in traffic and encouraging conversions.
However, content marketing has moved past blogs and now encompasses so much more. The industry is also more competitive than ever, with content being produced on masse, making it harder to ensure yours stands out.
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In order to be successful at content marketing, you need to ensure that you’re taking into account more technical aspects – such as SEO – but also that you’re effectively battling for consumers’ attention. It is this battle that has led content to change at a rapid pace, with competition leading to increased levels of innovation.
This is why you need to stay on top of the latest trends and advances in the content marketing arena. With this in mind,…
Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) came a long way in 2019 and they are going from strength to strength. So what's in store for them in 2020?
2019 was a pivotal year for the Customer Data Platform industry. It experienced a number of important events, including:
The continuation of rapid growth that saw revenue near €1 billion, new funding exceed €400 million, and the number of vendors increase by 40%.
The industry saw its first big wave of consolidation, including:
Acquisitions of CDP vendors by enterprise technology firms (Mastercard bought SessionM, Dun & Bradstreet bought Lattice Engines, Informatica bought Allsight, Acquia bought AgilOne).
Acquisitions by CDP vendors of other firms (Amperity bought Custora, Leadspace bought Reachforce, Netcore bought Boxx.ai, Manthan bought RichRelevance).
Asset sales by CDP vendors who couldn’t survive independently (Radius, Stride, Mintigo, IgnitionOne).
Industry analysts including Gartner and…
Content marketing that makes use of SEO should be a core marketing strategy for any e-commerce company
Are you looking for a way to systematize your e-commerce content marketing? Would you like to be able to more easily delegate the keyword research and content creation tasks to one of your subordinates? Would you like to turn all of this into a standard operating procedure that can be used over and over again?
In this post, I'm going to walk you through an overview of a very specific process that can be used by e-commerce companies for their SEO and content marketing. At the end of the post, I'll point you to a number of pre-made standard operating procedures that you can easily download for customization and use within your e-commerce business so that you can more easily convert your target audience into customers.
Content marketing strategy
Content marketing that makes use of SEO should…
Artificial Intelligence is transforming content production for marketing, which can help deliver improved ROI and business growth
AI is putting content marketers on the verge of becoming AI-first! AI is all set to revolutionize content. Is your business AI-ready?
Talk to any smart marketer today and they will tell you how artificial intelligence is being adopted across the customer lifecycle. Whether it is AI-generated content or predictive analytics, AI is being applied in some form or the other to reach, convert, and engage customers.
Owing to the competitive edge and improved marketing ROI it offers, more and more content marketing organizations are investing in AI-based content solutions. This chart shows us how content marketing organizations are applying AI to improve content effectiveness.
AI…
Use a selection of these tools to boost the quality of the content you write
Writing relevant and user-friendly content is harder than it seems. You need to ensure that your text reads clearly and with no mistakes in order to maximize the impact of your message. It’s a real balancing act, which is why a range of content writing tools have been developed to ease your writing journey. Here are 29 of the best online content writing tools to help with all manner of different writing challenges, such as grammar, spelling, writing for SEO and copy editing.
1. Hemingway App
Hemingway App is a very practical application which assesses the readability of your writing by analyzing things like grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and sentence structure. The clever software points out any weaknesses in the text and offers appropriate corrections to enhance it.
2. Readability Test Tool
This readability tool allows you to test a variety…
A step-by-step guide to creating infographics to boost online engagement
We’ve all heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. With the rise and domination of visual-driven social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, these words have never been more true. Increasingly, content creators are turning to easy-to-consume visual content like infographics to engage and inform audiences.
For good reason, too - visual communication research suggests that images are more memorable than text and illustrations can aid understanding of text material, and studies on online behaviour reveal that posts on Facebook and Twitter featuring images produce much higher engagement than those without images.
While the value of infographics in digital marketing is clear, working with a graphic designer to create custom infographics can be both time-consuming and expensive. Fortunately, there…
Five steps to creating an effective process that generates results
It’s difficult to argue with the benefits that good content marketing can deliver for businesses. We have talked regularly here on Smart Insights about the opportunities provided by great content and how it fuels many inbound marketing techniques, including:
SEO
Paid search marketing
Social media marketing
Email marketing
Conversion rate optimization
However, once the overall strategy and approach have been agreed, the next step is execution. Unfortunately, creating and maintaining good quality content is not straightforward. There are often many stakeholders and dependencies across businesses, including marketing, PR, creative and legal/compliance. If you work for an agency you will also need to consider the client’s point of view, too.
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One of the trickiest elements of the…
Written content and infographics offer a range of benefits for digital marketers, but which is best for conversion rate optimization?
While many may argue that written content cannot go head to head with infographics, its importance in conversion rate optimization (CRO) is enormous and cannot simply be substituted with any other form of content.
Similarly, infographics also have a strategic place in digital marketing and present great prospects for CRO in 2019. In this article, we will discuss how certain content marketing practices and infographics play a role in optimizing your website’s conversion rate.
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Conveying your message
"You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything" - Beth Comstock
Text content has the power to send your message in a diverse range of styles,…
Content isn't really king, it's the kingdom. It is made up of various pieces that combine to create something greater: an effective content marketing strategy
You’ve no doubt heard marketers proclaiming that “content is king,” but that’s a vague and misleading statement. Really, a content strategy is more like the kingdom because it’s made up of various individual pieces that combine to form something greater. There are many different facets to an effective content strategy, and — unbeknownst to many marketing departments — there’s isn’t just one type of content that rules them all.
What content marketing ultimately boils down to is reaching your potential customers in a way that intrigues and engages them. Actually reaching them is the crucial first step, since you have to stand out from the crowd of 20 billion web pages that are viewed each month.
With so much content competing for views, it’s up to you to…
To be successful at content marketing, your first task is to create a content marketing strategy.
Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to gain more leads and customers. But there's one problem: content marketing is a lot of work.
For example, consider a study by Zazzle Media. In this study, 60% of companies say they find it difficult to produce content consistently while 65% find it hard to produce engaging content.
There's a solution though. To be successful at content marketing, your first task is to create a content marketing strategy.
In your content marketing strategy, you have details such as:
Marketing goals
Ideal audience
Marketing channels
Content frequency
How to…
