Tag: Content Marketing

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Marketing Trends of 2017 and 2018… Are You Up To Speed?

Here Are The Top-5 Marketing Trends That Are Hot in 2017 & 2018

Regarding marketing trends, it is surely a unique time in business marketing. What is hot in marketing is the people and technology that help cut through the din of message noise that we are all plagued with.

1 – Marketing Trends — Increased focus on customer experience.

Whatever you decide to call it — UX or CX — this aspect will be a ‘make-or-break’ component of your vision’s success. You can’t make promises your business cannot keep and this factor will become increasingly important as the global market continues to grow.

The average user will be focused on themselves more than ever before — which is saying something — and video will be the big influencer in the visual side.

Marketing Trends - The Facts

Learn from the experts about the current marketing trends

“Not convinced video marketing is the way of the future? Here are a few statistics to help you understand exactly how popular video marketing has become in recent years, according to news shared by HubSpot: 

 – Video is projected to claim more than 80% of all web traffic by 2019.

 – Adding a video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300%.

 – Embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%.

 – 90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions.

 – According to YouTube, mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year.

 – 64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it.

 – 87% of online marketers are currently using video content in their digital marketing strategies.

 – A third of all the time people spend online is dedicated to watching videos.

 – Video ads now account for more than 35% of all ad spending online.

 – 59% of company decision makers would rather watch a video than read an article or blog post.

 – Digital marketing expert James McQuivey estimates that a single minute of video content is the equivalent of 1.8 million words.” ~ Forbes Online

2 – Marketing Trends – Engaged and effective measuring of data

If you are in almost any marketing position you will recognize the value of data collection. It drives many decisions in the business world and how it markets to its audience.

Today, both the sources and volume of data collected have exploded. We define “big data” as a capability that allows companies to extract value — and make sense — from large amounts of purposefully collected data design to deliver a more personal experience. But does it really do that?

Marketing Trends - The Success Cycle

3 – Marketing Trends – Lean on the new marketing lieutenants: marketing technologists and data scientists.

So how does all this affect my world, you ask?  Well, for the most part, you will never know it is happening until you venture onto a site that displays advertisements. You will then be faced with ads that serve your interests… coincidence? No, not in the least!

In today’s marketing world, the power and knowledge often lie with the person with the best data access and deepest understanding of that information. As such, all marketing departments should have a data scientist. Data scientists are the equivalent of the traditional ‘senior’ department head.

Marketing Trends - Data Scientist

 4 – Marketing Trends – Personalized everything is no longer ‘coming’, it is here!

Have you ever clicked on a link and then 5 minutes later you are getting ads that represent your clicking and URL behaviour? I would not be surprised by that as almost every behaviour online is now tracked. Not by some nefarious as originally projected, but by entities that resell the value proposition of understanding your customer.

But really, can you understand it all? I say “not easily” and the experts agree.

SOURCE: Kissmetricsthe big data problem

The issue with big data: too much, too slow, too complicated

5 – Marketing Trends – Better video content…and more of it.

As mentioned above, a video is currently being used by 87% of marketers today. But that does not speak to the quality of relevant feed of that video.

I speak of this often regarding the right timing on your messaging — and while video can be used earlier and earlier in the marketing funnel/sales cycle — relevance is going to be key in capturing interest.

I encourage you to download this PDF that shows the relevant timing of your messages.

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July 2017 — Message From The President

2017 will Surely be an interesting year — in fact, I predict that by year’s end, we will not recognize [its] beginning.

“Alignment between Marketing and Sales is potentially the largest opportunity for improving business performance in 2017. ” ~ Marketo

2017 Loading BarSo What Does It Take To Market Effectively Within The 2017 Business Landscape?

To simply say that Sales and Marketing departments in 2017 are two very unique entities, underserves the depth of this understanding.

Marketing is more aligned than ever to be able to elicit the engagement, in-turn delivering MQL’s (marketing qualified leads) to the sales department whose job it is to make the offer and ultimately close the deal.

The digital and physical process of marketing is — and has always been — about creating and opening a dialog (albeit rarely a direct conversation) to generate leads/prospects who are interested in your widget or service.

This process typically goes something like this:

  • Marketing
    • Make a plan and strategize the campaign process
    • Determine the message target/s and deliver targeted message/s
    • Create and engage the target with compelling messages
    • Create and engage the target with a strong call to action
    • Track & ID conversion/user engagement
    • Pass the baton to Sales
  • Sales
    • Discover prospect’s “exact problem”
    • Discover prospect’s “solution awareness level”
    • Offer solution/s
    • Ask for the money/close the deal

2017 Strategies — Effective Planning For Aligning Your Sales And Marketing

The balance to the Marketing effort has been how the Sales department can then — with the prospective customer having a high solution awareness level —  provide the offer

“No matter how the CRM industry evolves, getting the sales and marketing teams to synergize is organizational goal number one. Every success grows from their collaboration and free exchange of ideas because you can’t serve the customer right when your best people are working blind.” – Marshall Lager (@Lager), Managing Principal, Third Idea Consulting

New Buying FunnelAt the top of the funnel (TOFU), your audience is aware of your brand. Through marketing, they eventually start to see themselves as friends of your brand – they have a relationship with you and feel that they can trust you.

The middle of the funnel (MOFU) is where the traditional sales funnel begins – with a bunch of names in your system. Not every name in this stage is your friend – someone who is “engaged” has had a meaningful interaction with your company, but a “target” is a qualified potential buyer. When your lead scoring process indicates that it’s time to contact someone, he moves further along in the cycle. After talking to an SDR, that prospect is either moved along as a sales lead or is recycled to the “target” stage for further nurturing.

2017 Lead LifecycleSimilarly, a sales rep decides which leads move forward as “opportunities” at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), and which leads get recycled back for more nurturing by the team. The sales rep is also in charge (hopefully) of turning the opportunities into very happy customers.

“One way to build trust between Marketing and Sales is to make them accountable for the same company goal – revenue. In our book, Fire Your Sales Team Today, we refer to this blended team as The Revenue Department. Now, Marketing HAS to deliver quality leads, and Sales HAS to follow up on all leads. These two teams work together to understand the challenges associated with turning leads into new customers, and both teams work toward driving more top-of-funnel leads, close more deals, and shorten the sales cycle – all because they want to meet monthly revenue goals.” ~ Mike Lieberman (@square2), Co-founder and Chief Marketing Scientist, Square 2 Marketing

Because Sales has the option to recycle prospects that aren’t ready to move forward, Marketing has to provide good leads and Sales has to follow through. Everyone works together toward the same goal.

Four 2017 Best PracticesFour Best Practices to Ensure Sales/Marketing Alignment in 2017

  1. Shout it from the C-suite.
    The first step in aligning the 2017 sales and marketing teams is to make sure the goal comes from on high within the company, so the very first [step] is an executive agreement.
  2. Create “pushy” content.
    Content marketing’s role, as it concerns sales, is to push potential customers further down the sales funnel before a salesperson even contacts them. Since customers today research purchases in the early stages of the buying cycle, content marketing takes on the education role once held by sales professionals.
  3. Rethink lead gen in 2017
    Lead generation suffers when sales and marketing aren’t aligned, often resulting in a “spray and pray” strategy that wastes everyone’s time, experts say.“There’s a whole process that needs to be in place where prospects come in from marketing, marketing attracts them to the product or service, and then hands them off to sales,” … “Sales is then able to effectively understand the person’s needs and interests and how they can close the deal.” ~ Jeremy Boudinet, Director of Marketing  at Ambition.
  4. Tie ROI to marketing.
    With a properly aligned marketing and sales alliance, marketing gets a huge help in one area that’s long been a challenge — “Reporting ROI”. Marketers’ budgets are increasing every single year, but it’s very difficult for most CMO’s to really tell what their contribution to revenue is because most marketing leaders are still thinking about the number of leads and not showing what we contributed to revenue.
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Other Services – In Case You Were Not Aware

There are many “other services” that come up in daily conversations, yet do not get discussed in depth until your challenges are fully discovered.

These “other services” encompass the solving of those challenges — looking at the bigger picture — of doing business in the digital age. Things such as site & transaction security, domain routing, and system & process development (systems that make your business run smoother), are just a few of the ‘bigger picture’ challenges that Cortex Marketing is adept is providing a solution for.

Things such as site & transaction security, domain routing, and system & process development (systems that make your business run smoother), are just a few of the ‘bigger picture’ challenges that Cortex Marketing is adept is providing a solution for.

That said, the lack of discussion for “other services” is almost always because many of our clients already have the foundation established for their business — their branding components, a basic online presence, and a general plan of what their business is all about — and they simply need help establishing specific marketing strategies, plans, and components needed to deliver a better return on their investment.

You Have Choices

“You do other services? I did not know that!”

Of the many “other services” we provide, only a general few are entered into the mix until we know your goals and progress through the discovery process. I did not know thatThat pathway is rarely pre-determined as there are too many variables to solidify those needed components until a plan is being put together.

We provide you with a strategy, designed to achieve the goals you lay out to us, At that time we develop a plan that puts in place the mix you need to get the result you want.

Our 360º Success Team

While delivering a full-service solution — part of the way Cortex Marketing has always brought solutions to the business world — this year we created the 360º Success Team to solve our clients’ issues regarding bigger IT & system solution needs.

The key to our team’s success is how we emphasize creating a solution-based environment where people actually want to be. We believe our corporate culture is a crucial component to achieving success for our clients.

Together Everyone Achieves MoreWhen you engage with Cortex Marketing, we have the strategists, copywriters, designers, programmers and IT specialists, all to ensure that your goals are always maintained and looked at with the latest fresh eyes. This gives us a unique perspective and provides you with what we believe is one of the best customer-service experiences in the entire marketing industry.

The bottom line is that you deserve the results you desire.

If we have fallen short and not delivered the best service on the market, we have failed in our goal. As such we offer this guarantee:

“While we cannot guarantee advertising results, we do guarantee our services. It is as simple as this: “If you are not satisfied, we are not satisfied. — We will do whatever possible to correct any issue, then attempt to exceed your future expectations. 

5-Star ServiceWe know the value of our clients and recognize that without them, we would not exist. We offer a service with integrity,  a culture where we LOVE what we do, and unparrallelled five-star customer service — and for these reasons, we make our bold guarantee: “If you are not satisfied, we are not satisfied!”

So if at anytime you are not satisfied with any part of your experience with us, please give us an opportunity to correct any issues and exceed your expectations in the future — we will make it right even if you are asking for your money back!” ~ William S. Dickinson, President and CEO Dickinson Enterprises, Inc.

‘Our other services can wait’ is our philosophy — your primary goals are our top priority.

Other ServicesHave you ever worked with a company that is always trying to upsell you? Everyone on our 360º team has, and that is what drives us crazy too! Within our culture, we simply want to fit you into the best long-term solution first and foremost. And if we can provide you with advice, coaching, and/or development of other services, we want you to know that you can also trust us with the following business solutions:

  • Website Development (WYSIWYG platforms, WordPress, Custom Programming in Python and HTML5)
  • Landing-Page Development
  • Social Media Development
  • Conversion Marketing Copywriting
  • Website and Marketing-Campaign Analytics
  • Simple and Complex Marketing Campaigns
  • User-Based Technology Guidance (MS Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, G-Suite)
  • Custom Programming and Technology-Based Process Development (systems to make your business run smoother)
  • System Administration (email, network admin, system hosting)
  • Server set-up and Management (database, SQL, JavaScript, etc.)
  • Business Graphics / Graphic Design (logo development/design, business cards/envelopes/letterhead, etc.)
  • e-Commerce Solutions
  • And more… basically, anything to do with marketing and selling yourself online!
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Conversion Traffic: The Top 10 Ways To Get Better Results

So you have visitors and it is just not converting; maybe you are simply not driving the right conversion traffic!

Conversion Traffic“Getting traffic to your website is great, but if that traffic doesn’t convert, it’s almost useless.” ~ Jayson DeMers — Founder and CEO, AudienceBloom

Keeping Up-To-Date On Conversion Traffic ‘Best Practices’  Is Not Easy!

It is essentially true that technology has a six-week cycle and that new ideas are expanding at a rate that is nearly impossible to keep up with without doing continual research.

Traffic Conversion

This week in doing such research specifically on Conversion Traffic, I came upon a great 2015 blog post by Jason DeMers, the Founder | CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based SEO agency. He’s the author of the ebook, “The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online”. In his post, he has listed the top thirty-nine best practices for increasing your conversion traffic in “39 Quick Ways to Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate“.

And while his post is now a few years old, many points on that list cannot be improved upon. So in an effort to inform you — while still maintaining some level of brevity —I will list myTop-10 from his list. So with full credit to Jason for creating this, here are my choices from his list of thirty-nine:

1. Include as few fields as possible.

When asking for information in an email opt-in form, ask for as little information as necessary. Here’s an example of how using one additional form field decreased conversions by 11 percent.

2. Add a guarantee.

Include a no-questions-asked refund policy on all purchases. This reduces risk, and increased sales will usually more than make-up for any returns.

3. Use tangible action verbs.

When testing out different calls to action, try using action language that spurs visitors to take action (for example, “grab yours,” “reserve your seat”)

4. Use testimonials.

Testimonials reduce risk and provide social proof. Use them on product landing pages as well as on your email opt-in landing page.

5. Clearly-state the benefits of your product or service.

Listing the features of your product is important, but it’s even more important to tell potential customers exactly how your product will help them or solve their problem.

6. Pay careful attention to your headline.

Your headline is perhaps the single most important element of your landing page. Brainstorm at least 10 possibilities before choosing the strongest one.

7. Keep conversion elements above the fold.

Opt-in boxes and other conversion elements should be above the fold for optimal results.

8. Use video to humanize your brand.

Include a simple video on landing pages to show there’s a real person behind your brand.

9. Create dedicated landing pages for pay-per-click ads.

If you’re using AdWords or another form of PPC ads, be sure to send these visitors to a dedicated landing page (not your home page!).

10. Incorporate strong calls to action (CTAs) into every piece of content on your site.

Let your readers know exactly what you want them to do next, whether that’s click a button, read a blog post or fill out a form.

If this interested you, connect with me on FB to keep up with all my shares & insights or subscribe to my feed or subscribe to blog.

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The Power Of Why Marketing Methodology

“People Don’t Buy What You Do, They Buy Why You Do It” ~ Simon Sinek — that’s the power of why!

The Power Of Why

My Inspiration For The Power Of Why

To understanding the Power Of Why, let’s talk about biology… yes “biology”. We are all inspired — at the top level — by our experiences. From there our feelings take over; and while we are always gathering information, that ‘information’ influences our feelings… which in turn influences our decision, and ultimately, we buy based on what we feel, not what we know.

The Power Of Why“When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision.” ~ Peter Noel Murray Ph.D.

Read His Entire Article Here

So how does this tie into biology you ask?

When you look at the information and “decision-making regions” of the brain — top down, like the image above — the”Neo-Cortex” is the ‘WHAT’ ring, and the “Limbic Brain” (or “Allocortex” region) are the center two, ‘HOW’ & ‘WHY’ regions respectively. When we buy, our final decisions are most often attributed to the ‘why’. In other words,  does it make us feel good, or special, or sexy, or smart, or [whatever].

So more often than not, your marketing message must seek to tap into that Allocortex response region, eliciting an emotion, putting the buyer on a path to make a decision in your favor.

This is only century-old knowledge, and the ‘message delivering methodology’ within this knowledge is at the core of why DRM (Direct Response Marketing) works so well. In fact, one of the most successful companies in the world uses this methodology all the time. That company? Apple.

So, Gimme Some Examples Of DRM and The Power Of Why

Okay, we are just scratching the surface here, here are a few ‘slogans’… see if you can name the brand:

  • “Think Different” (we all want to be unique)
  • “Melts in your mouth but not in your hands!” (still true)
  • “Fly the friendly skies!” (well not so much anymore)
  • “Snickers really satisfies!” (okay that one is a give away)
Apple Think Different Logo
Copyright © Apple Inc.

Well, how’d you do? My guess is, most will — while maybe more in a sub-conscience way — easily relate to the emotional experience we have had with each brand. The first one, by the way, was Apple. “Think different.” was an advertising slogan for Apple, Inc. (then Apple Computer, Inc.) in 1997 created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day. The slogan has been widely taken as a response to IBM’s slogan “Think”.

The Golden Circle — Explaining The Power Of Why

Simon Sinek codified this whole concept in the creation of “The Golden Circle”, and with 32.6+ million total views, you can be guaranteed that more than a few have been inspired. Here is that video:

I hope you left inspired today about “The Power Of Why”!

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