The Innovative Marketer's Blog

B2B content marketers are charged with getting more qualified prospects to consume their helpful content and moving them down their automated sales funnel.  You can tell when the right people are finding your content, such as your blog, by looking at the conversion rates on your top-of-the-funnel offers. Assuming you have built strong calls-to-action into your blog articles, which lead to contextually aligned pieces of premium content, you will see your traffic and conversions moving up and to the right.  As you examine the conversion rates for organic search—search engine traffic that actually converts to leads—you will always be confronted with the fact that about 40 percent of your organic traffic has hidden source data or SSL traffic, meaning that you do not know what search term that person used to find your content (See screenshot below).  Yes, you know these people are arriving via a search engine, but Google will not release information on what terms they were searching for to find your content.  So, how does Google decide what source data gets hidden from you in analytics?  Anyone that is signed into Google will have hidden source data, which means that this mystery segment will continue to grow with every new Google application.  This is quite scary, right?

The role of a marketing agency has become relatively simple: create quality content. Clients look to you to increase sales.  However, they are constantly frustrated, since every tactical internet marketing solution they knew to be successful in the past is being phased out by ever faster developments in technology. I find this focus on "tactical marketing solutions" to be my number one challenge when talking with clients. To be a successful "business grower," which all of us should strive to be, we must help our clients embrace sustainable growth strategies, rather than allowing ourselves to be subject to increasing costs per click, expensive email lists and strategy busting search engine algorithm updates. Today, sustainable internet marketing strategies boil down to one thing: quality content, not quality tactics.

In today's competitive business world, the strategic use of information technology has become an integral part of every business plan—especially within sales processes and marketing campaigns. Historically, consumers have relied on direct mail, newspaper ads, Yellow Page ads, local television and radio spots to discover local products and services.  With the modern state of widespread internet use, consumers are now increasingly turning to search engines to seek out local products and services.  

Have you been the victim of content theft?  Unfortunately, the more popular your content and the greater its visibility, the more likely it is to be stolen.  Finding your meticulously researched and high-quality content masquerading as original on someone else's blog or website is without doubt very vexing.  What can content creators do to safeguard against content theft or mitigate the damage after the fact?  It is critical that Google recognize you as the rightful author of your original content so that your search rankings do not suffer.  You do not want your content getting mistakenly branded as counterfeit or spam. 

Pinterest is really popping.  It has quickly become one of the fastest growing social networks.  According to a recent Pew study, 15% of American internet users are on now Pinterest—just barely trailing Twitter at 16%.  Pinterest recently launched pages for business—allowing commercial use of the network.  With its aim to “connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting,” it could be a great addition to your content and social media marketing.  

There is a lot of noise about the royal reign of content, the rise of context, the death of SEO and the supremacy of social media.  Perfecting your game in any one of these disciplines—while neglecting all else—could lead to the downfall of your company.  What is of paramount importance to understand is that all facets of inbound marketing are essential and integral to each other.  Without context, content falls flat.  Without excellent content creation, SEO is of no use to you.  Winning in social media will not get you very far, if you do not have a helpful, engaging and information-rich website that demonstrates industry thought leadership.  Social media should be used as a lure.  Your prospects will quickly swim away to find value elsewhere, if you fail to provide it.  A complete inbound marketing strategy is the answer, because it addresses all your marketing needs in a strategic and holistic way.  Think inbound to make your company a destination for industry best practices, dazzle your prospects, convert more leads and amplify new business.

Success in online marketing now calls for more than traditional SEO tactics and the creation of run-of-the-mill content.  Dynamic, original and engaging content is what the marketplace demands for nearly all industries.  The quality and social capital of content is now playing a major role in marketing industry discourse.  To achieve a highly trafficked website and increased new business, you must get on board with the essential goal of creating relevant, valuable, engaging, impactful, information-rich and highly shareable online content.  Achieving high rates of social content curation—social sharing—is becoming increasingly vital to SEO and the ranking of search engine results pages.  To improve SEO, increase website traffic, garner more lead conversions and ramp up new business, you need to find a way to distinguish yourself and your company via content marketing—to stand out from your competitors.  Become content royalty with these five best practices.   

Excellent content creation and social media success are closely linked and integral to each other.  The quality and social capital of content is becoming increasingly important.  To achieve a high-performing website and generate new business, you need to create online content that is engaging, high-impact and highly shareable.  The goal of high rates of social content curation—social sharing—is becoming increasingly more important to SEO.  Each time your content is shared via social media, it gets a stamp of approval—increasing its reach and amplifying your opportunities for increased traffic, lead generation and enhanced SEO.   Once you create excellent, highly shareable content, you need to maximize its social exposure.   

Looking for a few sure-fire ways to attract website visitors in the New Year without stooping to spam or black-hat techniques? Give as many of the of the following 10 tactics as you can, a try:

With the New Year drawing closer, many people are carefully considering their New Year’s resolutions.  Effective blogging is integral to a successful inbound marketing strategy, and high-quality, relevant and information-rich blog content will continue to wield significant influence in 2013.  No matter what industry you are in—whether your organization operates in the business-to-business or business-to-consumer space or as a non-profit or educational institution—you should definitely be producing engaging blog content.  Each thoughtful blog article is a public demonstration of your thought leadership and professional insight and a rich avenue for higher lead generation.  Commit yourself and your company to some blogging New Year’s resolutions.  High-quality business blogging has serious value, so start 2013 off right by taking your blog and business as a whole to a higher level.