The Effective Marketer

JUNE 1, 2012

With all the (deserved) hype surrounding marketing automation, is no wonder that many companies, startups especially, are adding the technology as a key component to their marketing activities. Problem is, sometimes the rush to get the software installed and running ends up trampling the creation of processes, content planning, and other key ingredients that are necessary for a successful marketing automation implementation.

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Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Marketing Automation Work Management 141

The Effective Marketer

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

The fact that Inbound Marketing is taking over traditional marketing methods is not news. It seems that every eBook, blog post, and webinar is now touting content marketing and inbound marketing as the go-to strategies for the new marketers. Marketing is evolving , there is no denying that. But for those out there in the trenches, trying to follow all the advice and get their marketing engines running it is not that simple.

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The Effective Marketer

JANUARY 26, 2012

Thanks to Christopher S. Penn and his newsletter I read this amazing post by SEOmoz on “ 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic “ It not only validates some of my personal beliefs but also gave me additional tactics to apply to my own blog as well as companies I work with. The tactics discussed in the article are: Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share.

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The Effective Marketer

APRIL 16, 2012

Looking for a recipe to get your new video to go viral? In a recent Harvard Business Review article “ The New Science of Viral Ads” , assistant professor Thales Teixeira from HBS outlines the ingredients you will need: 1. Utilize “Brand Pulsing”: weave your brand throughout the ad instead of placing it front and center. Example is the “Happiness Factory” video for Coca-Cola. 2.

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The Effective Marketer

MARCH 13, 2012

Note: this is another great guest post by Brad Shorr. See his bio at the end. Have you ever visited a website that looked like a teenager’s bedroom – content strewn about everywhere, overflowing with information yet impossible to find what you’re looking for? This often happens when a firm fails to make a long-term content development plan a component of its new site launch.

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The Effective Marketer

JANUARY 24, 2012

I’ve heard a few times now from companies that want to get their content marketing engine cranking but haven’t put anything out there yet because of one of the following reasons: We don’t have a marketing person or department. We don’t have enough time to create content. Our website sucks, we want to fix it first. We are still researching topics for our blog posts.

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The Effective Marketer

DECEMBER 5, 2012

Whether you have 5 or 50 people in your marketing team odds are that the demands for more whitepapers, a new website redesign, additional email campaigns, and overall more content creation are increasing. If recent reports like this one are any indication, marketers across the board are being pressured to produce more and more content. How do you do it?

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The Effective Marketer

MAY 24, 2012

A recent research survey, Email Marketing Industry Census 2012 , conducted by eConsultancy and sponsored by Adestra sheds some light into how email marketing is being used and trends facing email marketing as an industry. The research was for UK based email marketers only, but the results are enlightening and can be transferred to any country, especially when it comes to best practices and ROI.

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The Effective Marketer

APRIL 26, 2012

Is great to see scientific research being done on social media, viral videos, and marketing in general (see previous post on the New Science of Viral Ads ). Problem is, many research papers contradict each other. A recent study published on Marketing Journal titled “ Seeding Strategies for Viral Marketing: An Empirical Comparison ” (requires registration), by Oliver Hinz, Bernd Skiera, Christian Barrot, & Jan U.

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Viral Marketing Social Networks Content Network Marketing 125

The Effective Marketer

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

You have created all that content, invested in a marketing automation system, and still the leads are not converting. Who is to blame? First, take a closer look at your content and answer the following questions: 1. Does it have your product name sprinkled throughout? 2. Does it focus on what your product does and describe features? 3. Does it use technical terms and acronyms?

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Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Sales Qualified Leads Case Study 120

The Effective Marketer

AUGUST 31, 2012

I’m excited about a new startup competition coming up soon. Instead of looking for the next mobile-social-facebookish-type startup, the winner will be a marketing technology startup. The best thing about the event, though, is that it will attempt to pair big brands with promising marketing technologies. If you are a startup founder developing some cool software or service for marketing or big brands, this is worth checking out.

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The Effective Marketer

MAY 21, 2012

If the myriad of webinar platforms out there with new entrants every year is not an indication that webinars are hot marketing tactic, then take a look at the following chart from MarketingSherpa : Webinars, together with virtual events were ranked top three marketing tactics to have their budgets increased in 2011. The same result was voiced by Focus Research , pointing to webinars as one of the most valuable tools for B2B marketers.

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The Effective Marketer

DECEMBER 28, 2012

How much content is too much content? Take a look at the picture. This is from a local bookstore here where I live in Mountain View. How many Hobbit books can there be? I was reminded of this again as I read Michael Brenner’s post about the “ content echo chamber ” hitting spot on something that is happening in the ‘content marketing world’ Good content vs boring content.

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The Effective Marketer

JULY 30, 2012

If you ever hired a recent college graduate for a marketing position at your company, odds are you were amazed at their lack of knowledge. Not of basic marketing concepts like the 4 P’s , advertising , or branding but their utmost ignorance of modern marketing tactics and tools like webinars, marketing automation, and even CRM software. The video roundtable below from CRMSoftware.tv, What Colleges Should Be Teaching Marketing Majors , is worth watching and reflecting upon.

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The Effective Marketer

APRIL 19, 2012

If before marketers had the challenging job of gathering data to analyze campaign effectiveness, now the opposite might be true. Email marketing, marketing automation, web analytics, CRM, and the myriad of software now permeating marketing organizations gives us more data than we can process in a timely fashion. A recent survey by CMO.com shows that fewer than 20% of marketing respondents have full confidence in what should be fundamental abilities, including measuring overall campaign effective

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The Effective Marketer

MARCH 15, 2012

I’ve got to admit, I am a big fan of the “Content Rules” book , by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman. No, is not groundbreaking or earth-shattering content. Actually, a lot of the stuff you probably are already doing and it kinda seems natural once you read it. But boy, is it actionable. It consolidates a lot of what is out there about content marketing and delivers it in an easy to read format with no gobbledigook or too much fanfare.

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The Effective Marketer

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

If you are already a content marketing convert and understand the importance of embracing content publishing as a core component of your marketing strategy, you may be wondering how well you are doing in comparison to other companies. The Altimeter Group has a report that can help you with that. Their recently released “ Content: The New Marketing Equation ” report puts together a “Content Marketing Maturity” framework to help you assess your content marketing efforts.

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Guidelines Content Marketing Paid Search Agency Planning 115

The Effective Marketer

JUNE 7, 2012

By Ashley Furness, guest blogger and Software Advice market analyst. Every company wants high leads volume – but not prioritizing those opportunities can leave sales wasting time on leads that will never buy, while the best prospects fall through the cracks. Fortunately, an effective lead scoring program can address this problem. Below is a two-part video series from Software Advice that outlines tips for creating such a program.

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The Effective Marketer

JANUARY 19, 2012

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new” – Steve Jobs. What do customers want? Let’s do a focus group and find out. This tried-and-true approach to innovation leading to brand extensions, new product categories, and new marketing approaches has and continues to be used as a cornerstone of market research efforts.

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The Effective Marketer

JANUARY 17, 2012

Note: This is a guest post by Lior Levin. See Lior’s bio at the end. The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing is one of ProBlogger ’s newest ebooks, written by the Web Marketing Ninja. ProbBlogger was started by Darren Rowse, who wrote the most popular of the ProBlogger products, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Written specifically for bloggers, this online marketing guide features yet another set of 31 steps intended to help bloggers start making money with their blogs.

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Online Marketing Planning Blogger Template 108

The Effective Marketer

APRIL 10, 2012

What does it take to put together a successful email campaign? It all sounds pretty simple when you think of it. Segment your list, create the email, send it out, evaluate results, repeat. Right? Well, not so fast. I’ve now spoken to small business owners and startup founders and they have the same initial feeling that it should just work. But, when it comes time to actually execute, something is missing.

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Email Marketing Campaigns Marketing Automation Services Landing Pages 137

The Effective Marketer

JUNE 26, 2012

This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Internal struggles between sales and marketing are commonplace in organizations of all sizes. Having worked on both sides, I’ve come to appreciate how difficult it can be to remedy the situation, and also how rewarding it is to get both departments singing the same tune. Sales and marketing can make beautiful music together in the form of more leads and sales!

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Paid Search Agency Work Management B2B Thought Leadership Planning 153

The Effective Marketer

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

Note: This is a guest post by Lior Levin. See Lior’s bio at the end of the article. For a marketer, email is possibly the most powerful medium ever created. In addition to be instantaneous and simple, it’s a personal medium that can be tailored to every person, it’s opt-in, meaning that you’re reaching an already-engaged audience and, best of all, the cost of sending each email is effectively zero.

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The Effective Marketer

MAY 1, 2012

Note: This is a guest post by David Tully. See his bio at the end. The emphasis on creating quality content has increased markedly since Google put the hammer down on many old tried and tested SEO tactics. Below I have listed 10 tips on how you can promote your website through content. 1. Offer How to Guides/Whitepapers/Analysis – Good first hand analysis or guides in relation to the niche you are in can really help boost visitor numbers to your website.

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