Business Growth Blog

The hardest part of implementing a content marketing plan is figuring out what to write about. Companies usually begin in the self-promotional phase: they write about upcoming trade shows, new hires, case studies, and press releases. The content is very company-centric.

While it’s great to showcase the company culture, products, and services, it’s kind of boring stuff. It’s not likely to pique the interest of many new potential customers.

The most successful content marketing strategies are customer-centric. The content is written to teach, inspire, and motivate. Prospects find it interesting and helpful and become followers and evangelists for the brand. Good content helps companies build a following, generate leads, and increase sales efficiency.

Here are eight steps to help you start developing a list of relevant, highly valuable topics for your content strategy.

“The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.” ~ Leonard I. Sweet

Most business and marketing leaders know they need to include digital marketing as part of their 2019 business growth plans: things like blogging, email marketing, social media, paid advertising, and website development. They’re often already doing bits and pieces of it, depending on the skills, resources, and budget available to get the work done, but gaps in the strategy can cause a disjointed approach that detracts from the potential return on investment.

The most effective approach is consistent and holistic. Here is an example of an integrated digital marketing plan designed to consistently increase awareness, build a following, generate leads, and help salespeople meet their 2019 goals. I also included an example of how much it would cost and how you can create a realistic budget for your organization. Check it out, and if you have feedback or want to share some of your digital marketing successes, please comment with us below.

Hiring an outsourced marketing agency is a big decision. It’s not much different than hiring an internal person. These are people you’re going to work with to get important work done, and you want to ensure they’re capable and a good fit.

While there’s no question that each agency is unique and brings different skills and resources to the table, here are 7 things you should expect from any outsourced agency you hire.

I was talking with a client recently, and she told me an interesting story. She said people frequently email her to share that they really enjoy her daily email newsletter. Which is great, except for one thing: She only emails newsletters once or twice per week, not daily!

When she replies to thank them and shares that she only sends newsletters a couple of times per week, her readers are surprised. They really thought they were getting an email from her every day.

When I heard this story, it got me thinking about what this actually meant.

Sometimes I go an unsubscribe spree - I unsubscribe from almost every newsletter that comes into my email inbox. Even emails I like to read. After a while, I just get too many, and it becomes overwhelming. I never read half of them anyway. I hit the “select all,” quickly scan to see if anything stands out, then hit “delete.”

I tell my clients that email marketing is a crucial part of a business growth strategy. And here I am, opting out after opting out. So what's the deal? Is email marketing important or not? Here's my philosophy on what email marketing is really about.

There’s often minimal communication between sales and marketing teams about their corporate newsletter strategy. Publishing email newsletters is typically seen as a ‘marketing’ function, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Email marketing is meant to build brand awareness, but it serves an even more important role: to support sales prospecting efforts. After all, the contacts on your email list are the same people that sellers are actively trying to convert into customers.

The first place most people go to find the products or services they need is Google. At a minimum, Google is the new phone book. For example, if I wanted to find out where I could purchase dry ice for a party I was having, I would type in, “Dry ice, Saginaw.” I’ll scan the first page and pick the most convenient and trust-worthy looking company.

Google also helps buyers self-educate early in the sales cycle — before they’re ready to talk to a vendor or sales rep. For example, if I was searching for information about types of office layout design, that could signal I’m considering an office renovation.

It’s true that most of our email boxes are overflowing. We can’t keep up. Email marketing is becoming increasingly noisy, which is why we need to make sure we’re marketing across multiple channels to get maximum exposure to our target buyer.

There are a lot of savvy business leaders and industry experts out there that don’t blog. Unfortunately, their hard-earned “intellect” is not being used to its full potential.

For a company blog to be a profitable investment, leaders and experts from across the organization need to take ownership and participate. Prospects and customers don’t want to read boring blogs that anyone could write by doing a little research online. They want to hear real stories, experiences, and ideas from experts in the field.

Blogging is a long-game strategy that takes practice, dedication, and patience, so it can be easy to put off. But the longer you wait to get started, the longer it will take to get results. (And the more time your competitors have to steal your thunder!)

Here are a few ideas to get over the hump and start blogging now.

What are you going to measure to know if you’re making progress or not? If you start reading any articles about metrics (inbound marketing metrics that is), they all talk about the same stuff: website traffic, keyword performance, blog views, call-to-action click through rate, visit-to-lead conversion rate, and lead-to-customer conversion rate, just to name a few.

Those metrics are indicators of success, so you need to look at them. But, from a high level, what are 1-2 key business metrics that will make you feel really good about the progress you made this year?