Mark Hanley, president of Massachusetts-based consulting house I.T. Strategies, recently asked me for my opinion on the state of the market for printed brochures. Do printed sales materials have a future or are they on their way out? It’s a great question, and one which is brought up time and time again by marketers in meetings I attend.
Content can be the most effective resource in your marketing toolkit — especially if it’s based on research.
Reporter Nick Clunn recently wrote an article based on a little-noticed study that showed many school districts didn’t adequately protect student information. His article took a cumbersome study published by Fordham University’s Center on Law and Information Policy and turned it into an easily readable and interesting piece. This is a great example of using market research to produce content relevant to your readers — in this case, every teacher, student, and parent in the country! Continue reading
Youtube released this great video a while back announcing its users now upload 60 hours of footage per minute and watch more than 4bn videos each day. With this much content being uploaded constantly, one could be forgiven for assuming that none of it gets watched, but it has been revealed that individual videos on Youtube are viewed on average 300-400 times. In this post, we examine the importance of Youtube for video content marketing projects and some of the things to keep in mind when using it. Continue reading
Content marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of any successful online marketing strategy. The majority of big businesses have already bought into the technique, and SMEs are starting to follow suit. The power of content marketing is that it allows you to reach out and connect with your online audience in an informative, entertaining and engaging way. Continue reading
A new thought leadership platform encouraging stakeholder engagement and subject matter expertise has been launched by a global B2B technology company. Continue reading
Credibility and trust is key to B2B marketing and communications and video offers great potential to capture the true essence of a company’s biggest assets – its employees. Experienced business leaders, grizzled industry veterans, subject matter experts and engineers all look great on video if captured in the right way, and their authentic appearance can actually enhance forward-thinking B2B marketing efforts. Using video in marketing with the aim of giving employees a voice of their own requires patience and skill. However, the rewards are big for all involved – here are 7 tips to help you help subject matter experts and other employees to shine on video. Continue reading
Effective content marketing is based on a genuine desire to help potential customers – and can, when implemented, lead to fundamental change in company culture. But old wine is old wine…
Content marketing is about engaging your target audience with useful information that that helps them solve a problem or become better informed. It is not an exercise in directly promoting your products or services. Instead it involves encouraging and building dialog with interested parties, which can help position you as a trusted advisor and a credible, knowledgeable supplier who understands their industry and needs. Continue reading
Whether the objective is clever headlines that hook the audience, or long copy that engages and informs the reader and gets them to take action, successful B2B marketers have always realized the importance of carefully crafted words and messages in their marketing plan. But compared to its more prestigious cousin “design”, writing has been an unsung hero. Continue reading