| Event | Date | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 05/20/2013 - 05/27/2013 | New York City NY | |
| 05/23/2013 | New York City NY | |
| 05/27/2013 - 05/28/2013 | New York NY | |
| 06/12/2013 - 06/13/2013 | New York City NY | |
| 06/24/2013 - 06/26/2013 | San Francisco CA | |
| 06/26/2013 | ||
| 07/15/2013 - 07/17/2013 | Dana Point Ca | |
| 07/23/2013 | Los Angeles CA | |
| 07/25/2013 | Los Angeles CA | |
| 09/18/2013 - 09/20/2013 | Austin TX |
IDG Global Solutions
How do you put content in front of the right audience, at the right time, in the right context? Dennis Reilly from Digitas provided answers in an interview with IDG Global Solutions Director Howard Sholkin at a BtoB Digital conference in March 2013. Reilly also discussed key marketer issues around digital, content distribution, mobile, and social…
eConsultancy
There are two big questions about marketing as a discipline at the moment. Firstly, is it becoming more, or less, important within organisations? Secondly, has digital completely changed what marketing is or has it fundamentally remained the same?
As you might expect we at Centaur, under the Marketing Week and Econsultancy brands, champion the cause of marketing, and marketers, globally. We believe the value of marketing is, rightly, in the ascendancy. We have always maintained that digital marketing does not exist in isolation. It is part of the bigger whole that is marketing. But digital has undeniably brought new aspects to that whole. So what if we were to reconstitute marketing as it is today with digital and classic fully fused? What would that look like?
Here follows our Modern Marketing Manifesto with its suggested twelve constituents. Its aim is to outline why we believe marketing is increasingly valuable and to define what it is to be a modern marketer.
We believe marketers should sit at the board table and help set strategy. If you do not believe your understanding of markets, products, customers and positioning plays a vital role in shaping strategy then you are not a modern marketer.
Great businesses look beyond the horizon. Great marketers have the vision to define the horizon.
IDG Global Solutions
IBM’s Christine Jacobs says content is the foundation for conversation. Jacobs believes successful marketers need to understand their audience, avoidpush marketing, and focus on creating a dialogue. At a BtoB Digital conference in March 2013, IDG Global Solutions Director Howard Sholkin asked Jacobs to share her advice on how to achieve the promise of conversational marketing…
Content Marketing Inst.
The term content marketing has been gaining a lot of attention over the last few years, and rightfully so. Content is a lifeline in today’s social ecosystem, so its rise in popularity makes perfect sense. But content marketing holds little benefit if it isn’t supported with a strong content strategy that enables a brand to tell a very consistent story across the media landscape.
Your content strategy should help draw parallels between what’s important to customers and what your brand stands for; it enables marketing teams to create more relevant content based on what your brand is comfortable talking about (and what it’s not comfortable talking about). And it provides opportunities for your employees, partners, and customer service reps to be a part of your story, too.
If you are ready to upgrade your content strategy — or create one from scratch — here are 3 considerations that will help keep your business in line with current content marketing best practices.
Content marketing is more than just fodder for SEO; it’s more than tweeting out a cool photo in real-time during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and it’s so much more than an infographic that blesses your site with a multitude of back-links. Content must be emotional, tell a story, and aim to impact consumers’ behavior, attitudes, or perception of your brand. And, while search is certainly important, your brand story encompasses much more than what you write on your blog or website.
Content Marketing Inst./IDG
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) surveyed more than 1,400 business-to-business marketers in the United States and Canada last year. CMI found that the software industry is strongly committed to content marketing with 99% using some form of it (social, webinars/webcasts, videos, case studies, and white papers, etc.). On average, software marketers spend 29% of their total budget on content marketing and a majority expect that percentage to increase in 2012-13.
The research report–sponsored by IDG Consumer & SMB, IDG Enterprise, IDG Global Solutions, and IDG TechNetwork—is available now…
eMedia Vitals
As publishers add native advertising and other content marketing services to their product portfolios, there’s a growing need for business-side editorial teams to manage this content. Sales teams have staffed editors as part of their custom publishinggroups for decades. But the role of business-side editors is expanding as native advertising programs lead to more commingling of editorial and sponsored content.
Publishers that are experimenting with or considering a native advertising program may need to invest in a dedicated editorial team to help advertisers develop, optimize and publish content. Deploying “brand journalists” on native advertising projects – separate from the rest of the editorial staff – will also help publishers protect their own brand from thinly veiled press releases or other low-quality drivel that advertisers submit under the guise of “real” editorial.
There’s an urgency to get this right. In a recent study from Econsultancy and Adobe, content marketing was deemed the top priority for 2013 among digital marketers. And native advertising – in which branded content is published on third-party media sites – is quickly becoming a key piece of brands’ content marketing strategies.
Direct Marketing News
Marketers are an optimistic lot. More than a third (34%) of the 2,620 marketing pros responding to a survey fielded by theAmerican Marketing Association andAquent said their levels of job satisfaction increased in 2012. But–all praise Lennon and McCartney–things appear to be getting better all the time for members of the marketing tribe. Forty-four percent of them expect the situation at the office to become even rosier next year.
Faced with mounting pressure to make better use of advanced data analytics and to adapt to rapidly growing channels such as mobile, one could well assume that the marketer’s lot was one of stress and drudgery. But these new challenges may have had a rousing effect instead. “Big changes like this can often cause people to be invigorated in their jobs. Marketers are now able to use data to predict customer behavior instead of just making guesses,” says Nelson Rodriguez, VP of global marketing for Aquent, an agency that provides companies with temporary marketing talent. “They feel they’ll be learning new skills, and that can be exciting.”
Aquent joined the AMA to sponsor the online survey, conducted last November, which sought to discover salary levels, strategies, and trends in the marketing community. A quarter of the respondents worked at agencies, with the remainder representing industries including healthcare, financial services, and retail. They ranged from entry-level marketers to senior-level executives.
Content Marketing Inst.
I love diversity of the arts. It makes the world a beautiful place. It brings us Beethoven and Yiruma, Carravagio andBanksy. But remember there was a time when each of these fellows was unknown and unheard of, until someone discovered, consumed, and shared their work.
The lesson here for businesses is that, whatever content you create, people should know it exists. Even the most epic content is worthless unless someone finds it, enjoys it, and passes it along to his friends and peers. That’s what great content is all about.
Google’s Keyword Tool helps your content get found. It allows you to identify good opportunity keywords (or phrases) that are popular and easy to leverage. When these words are added to your content (in the headline, copy, or both) people can easily find your work online. So before you write your next article, find out exactly what keywords customers are searching for online and incorporate them in your content.
Here are some tips for using Google’s Keyword Tool:
Think of a word or general phrase that you want your business to be known for or associated with — for example, pain management. Here’s what that would look like in the Google Keyword Tool if your match type were broad (estimated):
eMedia Vitals
Two “old school” digital platforms – organic search and email – remain key drivers of traffic and leads, respectively, to B2B sites, according to a new study by Optify.
Organic search drove 41% of traffic to B2B sites in 2012, according to the Optify study, which analyzed more than 27 million visits from various sources to 591 B2B sites in North America. And Google accounted for 90% of that search traffic.
But while organic search is the top traffic driver to B2B sites, it lags in converting visitors to leads. Email remains the lead dog for leads, with a 2.9% conversion rate – double that of organic search (1.45%) and social media (1.22%).
“Organic search is still the strongest traffic driver, but email is the best way to get people to engage,” Optify CMO Doug Wheeler said in a phone interview.
“I really thought, in the age of content marketing, that inbound marketing was the way to go,” Wheeler added. “But the real secret is getting them onto your outbound list. Publishers may not want to dial down email just yet.”
Here’s an infographic from Optify that summarizes the results of the study.
Search Engine Watch
With the New Year comes the temptation to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. However, New Year’s resolutions might imply that what you were doing last year was wrong. What about all the thing B2B SEOs did that were right. Instead of focusing on New Year’s resolutions, let’s take a look back and think about all of the things B2B SEOs did that were working in the past year. Let’s focus on how we can enhance what we know works well. B2B Content Marketing Here is an interesting set of statistics: Of the clients we worked with last year that produced more than four new content marketing assets on their website per month, their organic search trafficrose an average of 58 percent year over year. There is no question that new content fuels organic search engine traffic growth. Coupled withconversion optimization and the development of solid lead management principles, much of ongoing B2B SEO is driven through new content development. Some of the types of content marketing assets that had the most success in 2012 include:
• Blog post development.
• Keyword-targeted SEO landing pages.
• Infographics.
• Short industry-related articles and news information.
