Paul Counts here and I am so thrilled and excited to tell you about this brand new Marketing Counts workshop called Social Media Marketing Counts. Inside this workshop we dive in and take you over the shoulders as we show you how to get traffic from social media marketing!
You watch me market online via social media channels. We’re going to cover Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. So you’re going to learn how to market effectively on the most popular and largest social media channels online. As a bonus, we’re going to teach you how to use Quora as well.
You’re going to watch over our shoulders as we set these up and you’re going to learn the best practices for effectively marketing with social media.
Now this workshop is being created for our Marketing Counts Club students and we’re offering it for you at a discount right now.
What we’re also going to do with this training is we are going to be transcribing this training so you will get the transcription, but we’re going to make it part of a book so we have a lot in mind for this.
Watch over my shoulder as I layout in detail how to get traffic from social media!
Understand how social media works in 2020!
Get the inside look at how real marketing experts use social media to grow.
Setup free traffic systems with social media marketing!
Limited Time: Resell Rights Bonus Included!
Bonus Traffic Checklists
Bonus Traffic Copy/Paste Templates
Bonus Transcription Included
If you know how to setup proper social media marketing campaigns in 2020 you can achieve unlimited success!
We are so excited for you to learn from us, and also get the chance to resell such a high-quality and robust video course. This is a 2 hour course with transcripts included FREE. It will be sold for more than this price WITHOUT licensing rights!
About a year after its 2016 launch, Pencil realized its name was bad for business. Co-founder Sydney Liu would talk about the online storytelling platform to enthusiastic listeners at events–but would-be users, thwarted by a second-rate domain name (usepencil.com) and a barrage of unrelated search results, couldn’t find its website.
So, in 2017, the company, based in Menlo Park, California, decided to redo its logo, site design, and color scheme before ultimately relaunching as Commaful. The overhaul worked almost immediately. “Within a week, we were number one on Google for our name,” Liu says, and organic sign-ups began to increase.
Rebrands are fairly common for startups and small businesses that don’t spend the time (or money) in the early stages to get their messaging, logos, or even monikers just right, says Douglas Spencer, president and chief brand strategist at marketing consultancy Spencer Brenneman. Besides discoverability issues, “they can run into legal challenges,” he says, or “find themselves with a logo that just looks amateur.”
But change is expensive: Most small companies (with less than $30 million in annual revenue) can expect to invest $90,000 to $180,000 on a rebrand, according to marketing agency Ignyte.
Fortunately, there are ways to cut down on costs–and make sure your investment pays off.
1. Do your homework.
Serial entrepreneur Dan Demsky once had to throw away thousands of dollars of packaging because of trademark infringement issues, so when it came time to brand his latest venture (men’s travel-apparel site Unbound Merino), he started with the basics. “Memorability and ease of spelling,” Demsky says, plus “having the domain name.” He also hired a good trademark attorney.
You’ll pay $2,000 to $2,500 for a comprehensive trademark search and around $1,000 for the application, says Marc Misthal, a lawyer with intellectual property firm Gottlieb, Rackman & Reisman. Expect added costs, including extension fees, if the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejects your application.
2. Solicit, but limit, feedback.
Opinions are a dime a dozen, so while you’ll want to run your brand plans past some employees and clients, you’ll also need to drown out the noise. When content marketing software company PathFactory–formerly known as LookBookHQ–started considering a change to its name and logo in 2017, it limited the internal brand committee to five people.
“Keeping the decision-making committee as small as possible really helped, because everyone will have their own idea of what [the brand] should be,” Cassandra Jowett, PathFactory’s senior director of marketing, says. “Changing your company’s name is not necessarily a democratic decision. Not everyone should get a vote.”
Conduct customer research, but avoid simply asking people whether they like a potential new name, logo, or color scheme, says Emily Brackett, founder of Branding Compass, a web-based branding app for small businesses. Instead, focus on the value prop you would like your name, logo, or design aesthetic to convey.
“You could say, ‘We really want to come across as caring and compassionate,’ ” Brackett suggests. “Does this logo look caring and compassionate, or does this [other] logo look caring and compassionate?”
3. Have a rollout plan.
PathFactory officially announced its new name and logo at the 2018 SiriusDecisions Summit, a major event for the B2B marketing industry. “We tied it together with a product announcement to explain the need for a change in our image,” Jowett says. “The two together got a good reception”–and a lot of much-needed media coverage.
Prior to the official announcement, the company sent swag bags to select customers, and for months after the rebrand, PathFactory left messaging about the change on all its digital channels. Even then, “not everyone realized it was the same company,” Jowett admits.
Smaller-scale rebrands won’t require so many bells and whistles. But you should still communicate why you’re making a certain change, Brackett says. Messaging can come in the form of a press release, blog post, or email to your customers.
“You want to control the narrative,” agrees Bo Bothe, CEO of BrandExtract, a brand strategy consultancy. “If you just throw it out there to the wolves, they’re going to tear it apart.”
4. Avoid second-guessing.
Once you’ve unveiled your redesign, expect some resistance to your changes. So don’t rush to backtrack if you receive immediate negative feedback. Chances are, the blowback will blow over. (See Slack’s early-2019 logo redesign, below. The barrage of bad press ultimately dissipated.) Commaful had several users threaten to leave once it unveiled the new name and logo, though they ultimately stuck with the platform, Liu says.
“Keep in mind, the product is what matters,” Bothe says. “If the product is badass, the logo will become less relevant. As long as you’re not offending anybody, you’re probably fine.”
If It Ain’t Broke…
When Nicolas Vandenberghe relaunched his software startup as Chili Piper in 2016, his wife and co-founder, Alina Vandenberghe, quickly designed a new logo and stuck it on the website. “It was meant to be temporary,” Nicolas recalls, but customers took to the little red pepper so much, it survived the company’s formal brand refresh last year.
Chili Piper hired a design agency to draft alternatives, but ultimately the New York City-based company realized “if we change the logo, our customers will go crazy,” Nicolas explains. “They love the logo.”
There are many reasons startups or small businesses rebrand, including copyright infringement issues and the lack of a competitive differentiator, says Brackett of Branding Compass. But founders should take a cue from Chili Piper and make sure they’re not trying to fix something that’s working.
For fledgling and cash-strapped businesses in particular, “there are so many people who haven’t fully learned about your brand,” Brackett says. “Don’t change it because you’re bored.”
Let’s face it… Writing Sucks! So stop your suffering now and stop trying to do everything yourself. Instead, let me and my team of talented graphic designers, create a continuous stream of Hot Internet Marketing Newsletter Content for you. (After all, you have better things to do… right?)
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You will never become a 6 or 7 figure earner online until you start delegating – or outsourcing – the majority of your work. It simply isn’t possible.There are not enough hours in the day to do everything a successful online marketer must do.
And one of your jobs as an online marketer is to publish great content on your websites, your blogs, in your emails, in social media, in your products and so forth.
So, with this in mind, perhaps I should introduce you to the topics and features you can come to expect each month within each upcoming issue of your newsletter:
YouTube: Quick & easy ‘set & forget’ video marketing techniques to send continual targeted traffic
Blogging: How to get your readers positively addicted to you and your blog from the very first time they visit.
Conversions: How to literally quadruple your sales conversions, guaranteed. Make 4 times the profits from the SAME traffic
Outsourcing: This is the key to making millions, yet most marketers get it totally wrong. Here’s how to use outsourcing to make your first 5, 6 and eventually 7 figure incomes.
JVs: Scared to death to do JVs? Think you don’t have anything to offer? Guess again! Here are over 20 methods to get JVs with almost anyone.
Offliners: Tough time getting in the door? Here are 5 simple services you can offer that will have brick and mortar businesses begging you for more.
Persuasion: Top 20 tactics for quickly and easily turning prospects into buyers using the Jedi mind tricks of master hypnotists. (Your prospects won’t stand a chance!)
Fiverr: How to earn $500 or more per week doing simple little things that require almost no skill.
Facebook: How to make a killing on Facebook with a $50 budget and zero experience.
Free Marketing Tips: How to completely differentiate yourself from every other offline marketer out there and show your clients how to make far MORE money without spending a dime on advertising!
Niches: 50 niches that are just begging to be exploited. We’re talking low competition and high profits.
Listbuilding: How to continually build a red hot list of buyers without ever selling a single product (Ingenious!).
Webinars: The step-by-step system anyone can use to host profit-pulling webinars – even if you don’t have anything to sell and you hate speaking!
Podcasting: Don’t just do any old podcast – design yours to become a non-stop money maker with these 25 little known techniques.
Your fresh, created from scratch, monthly content contains an Introduction, Resources, Extra Pull Out Supplement, an Epilogue and all the Latest News and internet marketing Techniques and Methods in one place (Again this is NOT rehashed info – this is timely, relevant and will keep your readers’ attention!)
Getting your content onto Amazon Alexa is equivalent to using Twitter in 2006 or Instagram in 2010. There’s more opportunity available than any one business can handle! Think of Alexa and voice-first marketing as a “land grab” for marketers equivalent to Thomas Jefferson purchasing the Louisiana territory for 3 cents per acre.
Flash briefings are short, informative pieces of recorded audio containing news, tips, advice, round ups or how to information on any topic. Simply ask “Alexa, what’s the news?” or “Alexa, play my Flash Briefings” and your device will play your flash briefings while you’re waking up, having breakfast, taking a shower, or relaxing at home…
without reading blogs, emails, social media or running Google searches! What if you could create your own Flash Briefings and have new listeners (and your current audience) find them in the Alexa App? With your own Alexa channel and Flash Briefing Skills in the Alexa store, people can add it to their device and start receiving your audio content in just hours from now.
If you have a product or service that people want, then Flash Briefings will put you in front of your dream audience, without any of the usual competition.The best part?In addition to educational tips you can inform your listeners about special promotions, affiliate products, daily-deals, and lead them to any webpage to build your list and make money.
The 30 Second Money Tip is a Flash Briefing Skill that previously failed to generate leads as a Podcast and blog. But, it got 100,000 downloads in its first 8 months as a Flash Briefing Skill…
reaching 1000 people a day, in their homes, on autopilot!
In the past, you’d have to pay BUCKETS of cash to reach this number of people on Facebook, Google, LinkedIn or Instagram each day.
It would take you months to build an email list of 1000 people and only 20% of them would even open your emails!
Your rapid shortcut to creating and publishing traffic-getting,
sales-creating Alexa Flash Briefings…
… without any coding, ever! Skilexa is a cloud app that allows you to build an audience using Alexa faster and easier than ever, with zero coding. Begin uploading content to Skilexa to make into a Flash Briefing to send to Amazon. These can be short, helpful tips in the form of text paragraphs, audio snippets and more. The best part is, you don’t need to create the content from scratch. Curate text or audio from previous blog posts, podcasts, and more using built-in content creation tools inside the app.
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As someone who’s been marketing things online for about a decade, I can tell you first hand that the fear of marketing is real. It prevented me from growing my business in the earlier stages, and it still does from time to time.
It also held me back from taking on client work for YEARS.
But thankfully, I also learned that I’m not alone. In fact, most marketers can probably tell you at least one or two things that cause them anxiety when it comes to marketing. Here are 5 of the most common.
1. Can I actually market?
The kind of SEO results you want to be able to send to a client.
Maybe you’re looking at all the shiny emails in your inbox, trying to figure out how email marketing works, how SEO works, and it just seems like it’s too much. So you think to yourself, “I can’t do this.”
One of the biggest fears for marketing newcomers was echoed by Margo Aaron, founder of The Arena, the first virtual coworking space for solopreneurs.
“I hear from marketers all the time and it’s their biggest fear: Can I actually market?
They develop niche expertise, like design or editing or SEO or headlines. But actually getting more customers into a funnel or increasing sales (or just awareness) for their clients – that creates impostor syndrome.
I definitely had this when I was consulting. It’s part of what’s been so fun about being on my own, I get to control the entire funnel and can actually judge my chops on their own merit (whereas with clients, you might control the website copy or design, but you’re not responsible for sending it traffic).” – Margo Aaron
Let’s get this straight. No one is born out of the womb knowing how to market. It’s a skill that we all have to learn, and it’s possible. It’s also always changing.
You don’t even have to go back to business school (unless you want to) because the internet is a goldmine of marketing resources. Find a course that teaches digital marketing skills or hire someone who can help you and teach it to you.
The other thing is that doing things for other people is HARD. I don’t care if you’re doing copywriting or mowing a lawn. Sure, I can mow my own lawn, but if somebody else is paying me for it (and paying me well), can I do it to their satisfaction? Maybe not.
The problem is that many people get stuck in the learning phase. Why? Fear. Every time you learn something, go try it out and see if it works for you. This is the only way that I know of to truly learn and get over fear and the imposter syndrome that many entrepreneurs suffer from.
2. I’m a spammer
“That they’re one of those spammy marketer types that everyone not so secretly HATES.” – Kaleigh Moore
I get it. You don’t want to come off as the person spamming everyone’s inbox or be the person behind the website with all the pop-ups. But there are tactful ways to get people’s attention without annoying them.
Take for instance the businesses or person whose emails you can’t wait to read when you see them in your inbox. You don’t roll your eyes but instead, you’re excited to read them. What sets them apart from everyone else? TRUST.
They offer value, they delight, they sound like real people. They teach you something new or interesting. They are not pushing a sale every time they send you something.
When you give – whether that’s offering tips, resources free guides etc., and you are consistent – people will naturally show up at your doorstep when you have something to sell because by then, you’ve already won their trust.
And remember: attract, don’t chase. Chasing is what you do when people are running away. Chasing is what causes us to look for tools to do our jobs for us.
3. I want this tool to do my job for me
“If I buy this tool, it’ll put my marketing on autopilot.” – Me for my entire career, including the horrible purchase below.
But seriously, am I the only one who bought this?
If I asked you to write out the top three marketing “tools” you’ve wasted money on, you’d probably have to think for a second. Not because you don’t have three, but more because you have over ten and you’re just trying to rank them.
We’ve ALL bought tools hoping they’d do our jobs for us: make starting new relationships, getting sales, etc. easier.
The great thing about marketing in the 21st century is that there are many tools to help us automate tasks. We can schedule Twitter or Facebook posts for several weeks in advance or program promotional materials to be sent out automatically.
But this doesn’t mean we should try to put all our marketing on autopilot and pray for the best, especially when you’re just getting started.
No current clients or customers? You don’t need an outreach tool.
No social media followers? You don’t need a post scheduler.
In both of the above cases, you just need to start talking to people.
Most of the people trying to sell you on the dream of entrepreneurship are also trying to sell you some sort of product or tool. You don’t need them.
The world of marketing is always changing which means the strategies you use today will change next year or in less time, so while automation helps, it’s best to devise a strong strategy and keep yourself aligned with it.
And even with the right tools, the human part of marketing is absolutely necessary. Trends change, algorithms get rewritten, comments need responses, but what will set you apart from the rest is you. Your unique voice and perspective is a huge part of your marketing strategy whether you know it or not. And it cannot be replaced by any tool.
4. I’m just selling this to make money
“Depending on which side of the fence they fall on… That they might be selling something to get a financial leg up rather than something they’re 100% passionate about. Which, by the way, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but sometimes I think those of us who don’t want to be a ‘sleazy marketing person’ go too far to the other side and think everything we sell has to save the world”. – Caroline Zook, Wandering Aimfully
The reason why many marketers struggle with this one is that subconsciously or consciously, we’ve been taught money is the end all, be all. Whether you believe that or not, it still doesn’t dismiss the fact that we all need money to survive.
I realized this was true when I got on the email list of a famous joint venture (JV) marketer. He’s famous for setting up big affiliate programs and bringing a ton of affiliates on board.
Ever see a big launch where it seems like everybody was promoting a product? That’s probably him behind the scenes. But, what I didn’t realize is that most of the people promoting the product had never even seen it.
He’d sent out videos and slide decks and landing pages that told you all the giveaways they were doing for top affiliates and how to set up your affiliate account, but when I asked to see the product…
he told me it wasn’t even done being produced.
I asked how people could be promoting it without ever seeing the product and he could not, after five more emails, understand why I’d have a problem with that.
Authenticity matters more than ever in marketing so next time you promote a product (or even your own product) consider whether it’s making the world better for other people, or just yourself.
5. I wouldn’t buy what I’m selling
That’s right, many marketers aren’t even sure about the prices they charge their clients. One marketer confessed he still struggles with pricing. Asking for $10,000 for a consulting agreement when he wouldn’t purchase that himself is a weird paradox for him. He KNOWS that the training he’d provide or the work he’d do is part of a larger six-figure budget in both cases.
“Even though I’d never buy this for myself, it’s still priced correctly. Yep. They’ve budgeted for exactly this. It’s priced at or below market it’s a good option logically but the emotion is what it is.” – Kade Dworkin
There are two main reasons why marketers feel this way:
Lack of confidence in their own skills.
Confusion about what the market rate is.
In order to overcome the first one, you must remember all you’ve accomplished in order to get to where you are today. This means the number of years you worked in a related field, the number of years you spent in school, or even just the soul-searching part of your life that brought you here. Those were all not easy things to get through but I don’t have to tell you that. Factor this in when you are coming up with your prices.
Second, If you don’t know what your competitors are charging, you’re missing out on crucial information. Find out what they’re charging. Do this for several people and you’ll have a good idea of where your rates should be, which should help you stop questioning yours.
You need to know that there are people in need of the skills you have who are willing to pay for it. Do not water down your commodities for clients who will not appreciate it.
The bottom line
Business marketing can be scary especially if you’re just starting out, but don’t let the professionals who’ve been in the game a lot longer scare you. Everyone had to start somewhere and just like any skill, the more you do it, the easier it gets.
Amazing talents or products do speak for themselves but in our overcrowded market today, you need to do marketing to lift it up, otherwise, no one will be able to hear you.
The best piece of advice I can offer is this: continue learning, and try what you learn.
Don’t be afraid to admit and confront these confessions.
That’s the only way you’ll truly get over your fears. Just remember that your skills and talents are unique and someone is looking for them. And when you find those people, charge what you’re worth but also deliver the heck out of the results.
Forbes calls him a top influencer of Chief Marketing Officers and the world’s top social marketing talent. Entrepreneur lists him among 50 online marketing influencers to watch. Inc.com has him on the list of 20 digital marketing experts to follow on Twitter. Oanalytica named him #1 Global Content Marketing Influencer. BizHUMM ranks him as the world’s #1 business blogger.
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Fear is like sex, sweet onions, and a seven-day road trip: Once the stink gets on you, it’s hard to shake. And, when it comes to the marketing strategies used and the content created by most organizations, that stink is so overwhelming it drives their audience toward any alternative that seems even remotely bold.
How do you gauge the influence fear has in your approach to marketing, communications, and content?
It’s relatively simple.
Do you make decisions about marketing, communications, and content based on:
Unwritten industry norms?
A desire to appeal to every possible audience?
A reluctance to be the first?
An avoidance of anything remotely controversial or political?
A lack of faith in your marketing and communications team?
A lack of knowledge about (or worse, judgement of) modern, diverse cultures and generations?
The way you’ve always done it?
An unwillingness to avoid making anyone angry?
A worry that you’ll look, feel, or get called stupid?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, fear is playing a big role in your marketing and content creation.
Fear can be useful. For example, that guy who made the documentary where he canoodled with grizzly bears before being eaten by a grizzly bear could have used a little more natural fear encoded in his DNA.
But you aren’t canoodling with grizzly bears.
You are running a business.
In business, fear is the fastest road to irrelevancy.
And irrelevancy is failure.
To better understand how fear leads directly to irrelevancy in your marketing and communications, take a broader view of the word “content.” That word means more than just Instagram posts, videos, and blogs.
Content also includes movies, books, music, and art.
Using that definition, think of the content that forms big parts of our shared cultural history. Think Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, every Motown record Berry Gordy ever produced, “This Land is Your Land,” every painting Frida Kahlo ever painted, The Catcher in the Rye, every book Toni Morrison ever authored–all part of our shared history.
Combined, all the great works of content like the ones mentioned above represent an immeasurably small percentage of all the content produced, period. But the content we remember? The content that changes all of us collectively, and each of us individually? Behavioral change is the goal of any marketer, and content that succeeds in changing behavior–regardless of whether it is a great novel or a thirty-second commercial–is fearless.
Always.
Every time.
The same is true for your organization’s marketing and communications strategy. The only way to succeed as a marketer is to be heard, and the only way to be heard is to be fearless.
Finally, being bold and being fearless do not justify using Gandhi’s voice to sell Hyundais during the Super Bowl. That sort of “fearlessness” is just cynicism with good cinematography.
Plus, everyone knows Gandhi would never drive a Hyundai Accent.
The man was a revolutionary.
And revolutionaries only drive the all-new, redesigned Hemi-powered Dodge Ram.
Before I co-founded my company, Masthead Media in 2012, the practice of content marketing was very much experimental. Very few people outside of the still-nascent industry had even heard the term before, and it was virtually impossible to find a single class–let alone a full certificate program–that focused on content marketing.
Today, content has become an essential way that brands connect with audiences and its a compelling career field with ever-growing income opportunities. Because there’s so much interest among would-be students, several companies (and at least two universities) have begun offering courses designed to prep the next generation of content marketers.
If you’re looking to make a career transition, or simply want to expand your skills as a marketer, here are six programs you should definitely consider.
While I wasn’t able to find a university that offers a full-degree program in content marketing (I predict that time will come soon!), NYU’s School of Professional Studies does serve up this eight-session in-person course that focuses on the strategic planning side of content.
In addition to traditional lectures taught by an instructor, you’ll hear from real-world speakers who are actively working within the content industry and break out into smaller groups to work on projects.
During the course, you’ll learn how to align a brand’s goals with specific kinds of multimedia content, repurpose content to maximize its value, and use analytics to tell if your efforts are working. One hidden benefit to attending this course (where I’ve a been a speaker) is networking opps: many students already work for major brands and are in class to sharpen their skills.
The T Brand Studio (the branded content unit The New York Times) is renowned for executing groundbreaking campaigns with major advertisers such as Delta, Netflix, Adobe, BMW, and GE. Together along with the School of the New York Times, T-Brand is sharing its extensive knowledge of content marketing with students through this five-course online certificate program.
This beautifully shot digital program details the specific tools the T-Brand Studio uses to create high-quality native advertising (a specific element of content marketing) on behalf of brands. Taught by current and former T-Brand Studio staffers, the courses include “Story Mining and Strategy,” “How to Tell Brand Stories with Video,” and “Thinking About the Other Side?” a video geared toward journalists looking to make the switch to from journalism to branded content.
I’ve been turning to HubSpot for years for well-written, insightful articles teaching every aspect of inbound marketing and customer relationship management. Considering the emphasis that the inbound marketing company puts on education, I’m not surprised they developed an 11-course, 32-video series design to teach students the fundamentals of content marketing. What’s amazing is that you can watch the courses online in a single afternoon: It takes just 4 hours to view them all (the related quizzes will take you a little longer)
The Hubspot course will help you learn a basic framework for producing goal-oriented content on a consistent basis, and to create (and repurpose) content designed to please both people and search engines. It’s a great way to learn or brush up on the fundamentals of content marketing before creating and executing your own strategy.
Even if you’re getting into content marketing because you’re passionate about words, it’s critical to understand how to use the numbers to help you tell a better story. No platform is more widely used to do exactly that than Google Analytics. Most major brands use GA to track how customers are interacting with their content–but content teams don’t always know how to interpret the numbers and use them to make strategic changes.
If you want to make use of all of that incredible data, take full advantage of Google Analytics Certificate program. The course is the gateway to learning how to set up analytics on a website, customizing the numbers and information that you’re viewing, and staying on top of changes Google is making to the program. The videos and quizzes are super short–and you can come back to where you left off during your last lunch break viewing. For those looking to transition careers, having a GA certification on your content marketing-focused resume is a major win.
Okay, I’m officially obsessed with LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com), which I originally begin using to amp up my skills as an amateur photographer. Now I know it has a lot to teach me about content marketing, too.
The site (and related app) offer thousands of individual videos and full courses focused on every aspect of content marketing, from SEO Keyword Strategies to Marketing on Instagram to Becoming a Thought Leader.
Because I watch these videos and courses on my commute (and can’t stream content while underground on the subway) I love that I can download and watch them offline. It’s also really nice to see comments and rating from other LinkedIn users which gives me a good sense of whether any individual class or course will be worth my time.
Cost: Starting at $25/month or free with LinkedIn premium memberships
SEO is one of the trickiest aspects of content marketing to master–but doing so is crucial to ensure the content you spend hours and hours perfecting will actually be discoverable by a wide audience.
Udemy offers an easy beginners course (2.5 hours of video, 7 hours of audio), to help you learn how to add valuable keywords, tags, and search engine vocab into your brand’s or clients’ content. You’ll also get a stronger understanding of how to write content with search engines in mind, and check out SEO case studies from the AARP and Southwest Airlines.
Udemy offers plenty of other content marketing courses, which, like LinkedIn Learning, feature ratings and comments to help you hone in on the course that’s right for you.
Cost: SEO training is free; most courses starting at $11
Are we missing any other great Content Marketing courses or degree programs? Please let us know on social @mastheadmedia.com
Marketing technology continues to evolve, with a new tool or platform debuting seemingly each week. While marketers seek to provide benefits or value for your digital transformation or marketing strategy, it can hard to pinpoint what you need — and how exactly to go about it, due to having so many options to choose from.
With so much to do within B2B marketing — including more research, segmentation, and personalization — marketers’ available time seems to be shrinking by the minute. This leaves you with a dilemma: either expand your marketing talent pool or invest further in technology.
The answer is to add marketing automation, which may enable you to add more talent later. Here’s why there’s genuine value in embracing marketing automation — beyond simply allowing you to do more with fewer resources.
What Marketing Automation Can Take On
While marketing automation can’t — and shouldn’t — tackle every task on a marketer’s plate, there are plenty of ways automated tools can give marketers more time and focus for the most important aspects of their jobs.
1. Effective Marketing Task Management
Let’s start with one of the most compelling reasons for investing in marketing automation: These platforms and tools help you organize and oversee many tasks that are often complicated and time-consuming.
For example, with CRM platforms, you can automate social media posts, content marketing and email campaigns, forms and landing pages, segmentation, lead management, and more. Automating these tasks helps you stay on top of attracting and nurturing leads, capturing critical data, and even engaging with your target audience and customer base.
Because there are so many inbound and outbound strategies, platforms, channels, processes, and information, marketing automation can help you do the heavy lifting, fill in skills gaps, and provide a way for you to focus on high-level creativity, planning, and engagement.
2. Integration Capabilities
Marketing automation brings so many aspects of your marketing strategy and technology together through seamless integration. This includes a marketing automation platform’s ability to work with your CRM platform, content management system, and more. You’ll get more out of each of these systems together than if you had them separate and doing their own work.
Bringing them together allows you to use the data from one area to influence another, removing data silos in one fell swoop. Attribution and customer journey tracking can also be made easier with integrated systems. Having real ROI can directly impact your budget and spend in real time.
3. Balancing Out Competitive Advantage
There was a time when a small business had no way to compete with larger companies’ marketing efforts — the size of the smaller team and budget was dwarfed by the enormous resources of these larger enterprises. In this way, marketing automation was a game changer, allowing a marketing team of one to go head-to-head with a marketing team of 50, thanks to automated tools that do the work of many.
A lesser-talked-about benefit is that access to these kinds of resources heightens a smaller company’s professional appearance. Professionalism and access to sophisticated resources can result in a company gaining an opportunity — and a lack of either can eliminate that chance.
4. Increased Accountability
The powerful technology within marketing automation platforms provides a clear picture of what’s working and who’s working. The software provides insights into the leads captured and what’s been done to turn those leads into sales. There’s no escaping the findings of such software, pushing all departments to be accountable for their actions.
Overall, this can effectively raise performance levels and results. It can also eliminate redundancies or overlapping efforts.
5. Multichannel Targeting
With thousands of customers all using different channels and often switching when and where they can be found, it helps to have automated tools that can do the tracking and outreach for you. You can use these tools to target them with a cross-marketing campaign for email, text, and social simultaneously.
6. Enhanced Customer Experience
At first, it may be hard to imagine that the act of automating interactions, thanks to software and tools like chatbots, would improve the customer experience over adding more human interaction. However, customers enjoy how it easy it is to get information when and where they want it. A human touch is warm, but it can also delay.
Plus, being able to personalize a user’s website visit and send behavior-related emails that match her mood will further engage a target and make her feel good about interacting with your brand. A company I worked with added behavior-oriented tracks for visitors who searched specific terms on its site. Based on how the user phrased her request, she’d be placed in a “funny,” “straightforward,” or “gentle guidance” category. This personalization resulted in a 22 percent higher click-through rate for emails, no small feat.
7. Upsells and Cross-Sells
The increased amount of data from marketing automation can give you more insights into how and what you can sell to target audience members. Besides telling you what needs to be done, marketing automation software can handle upsells like reorder reminders, personalized product presentations, and gift guides.
The software can provide campaigns related to other products that each customer might be interested in based on previous orders and interests (think of Amazon’s suggested products). This requires no extra effort from marketers but may capture additional revenue from loyal customers.
No More Cold Calling and Guesswork
With such detailed data that includes everything you need to know about your target, you can stop guessing — and making cold calls. Instead, you’ll have marketing content delivered when a target wants to see it, containing relevant information only. Plus, you’ll be able to track and monitor the actions taken by people after each interaction.
You’re constantly looking for ways to improve your marketing efforts and meet changing customer expectations, and marketing automation enables you to do that. Knowing precisely what needs to change can help you respond more quickly, minimizing any impact on your audience’s experience with your brand. If you want to reach your target audience in a relevant way, you have to embrace marketing automation — or fall behind.
Are you in the process of starting a new business? Need help choosing a colour palette that represents your brand values? Hannah Robinson Design share their guide to choosing your business colors in this infographic. These are the shades they recommend you need to choose: Bold Complimentary Neutral Dark Light Check out the infographic for…
