• Everyone knows that content marketing is important. It seems everywhere I look there is lots of discussion about it. Content marketing provides a number of things to your company’s visibility on the internet. It helps
• to establish credibility
• to get noticed
• to help attract the search engine results
• to present your marketing message in a way that is helpful to your potential clients and customers.

Not sure what is content marketing? Let’s break it down simply first:

Content – articles, stories, tweets, headlines, information, photos, videos – all focused on a specific topic of interest to a company’s intended target audience. (My favorite for B-B marketing are case studies and white papers talking about positive solutions to problems. My least favorite – when people forget and post something political.)

Marketing – the effort to attract the target audience… as well as inform, influence and persuade the audience to feel, think and do. (Take action- call, email or click.)

Everyone has an opinion it seems, but here are some links to thought leaders in the content marketing space:

Joe Pulizzi, a key leader of the content marketing movement and founder of  the Content Marketing institute has an awesome blog all about Content Marketing.

Mack Collier, content marketing innovator and Social Media consultant offers solid advice for marketers and companies working on their messaging strategy. (Thanks Mack for your recent email reminding me again not to post anything political in my social media feed because I’ll make 75% of the audience mad at me. It is a good reminder!!)

JHB from the UK offers this cool infographic cocktail recipe for Content Marketing:
Other thoughts on the subject:
Tips for a Rock solid Content Marketing Strategy
Content Marketing Trends for 2017
Why 2017 is the year of Content Marketing?

Stay tuned – I’m working on the next article about the content marketing editorial calendar. Got a tip or tool? Send it to me and maybe I’ll feature it in the article!

The post Why Content Marketing is So Important to Your 2017 Online Visibility appeared first on Branding and Marketing.

In talking with a business owner the other day, the question came up: “What’s the difference between branding and marketing?”

In my opinion the two concepts are intertwined and dependent on each other.

Branding and marketing are very connected. It’s difficult to market a brand that doesn’t fulfill the positioning. And to brand a company with supporting the branding with marketing provides no action.

Positioning can be thought of as the brand promise. It’s the expectation of fulfillment by the target market. Does the company/product meet expectations?

Marketing can be many things, but tactics are usually the most pervasive part of marketing. Communication. Promotion. Advertising. Public Relations.

Difference between Branding and Marketing

Here are some ways to look at the differences:

• Branding gives the positioning. Marketing provides the efforts.
• Branding is the foundation and should precede any marketing efforts.
• Brand is how people perceive and feel about your company/product. Marketing is focused on identifying, educating, attracting and persuading.

Brand promise. Marketing tactics.

I think that these two short phrases really oversimplifies it! However if someone is just getting started with their marketing program, keeping it simple can help!

It’s easy to get carried away with explanations, detail and examples… going too deep down the whole Marketing/Branding rabbit hole can make a business owners eyes gloss over.  Especially when they are just wondering, so how does this help me improve sales?

Can you quickly down your company’s brand promise and list your top 5 marketing tactics?

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We are almost halfway through 2018. Are you on track with your marketing calendar?

Marketing activities should have been set up to support your sales goals.

What worked during the first half? What didn’t?

If you haven’t done your measurement lately, you may want to measure the results from your 2018 marketing activity now. Knowing what works for your business is great information for your marketing strategy.

Tracking information about your marketing activities helps you understand how customers find you. Are you keeping your marketing programs up-to-date? What is a waste of time and what is delivering results?

Hopefully you already know which key performance indicators are important to the growth of your business.

Does your marketing plan include reminders and measurements for:

• Website visits? Updates to your plug-ins, themes and SSL certificates?
• Google organic results? Keywords SEOed on your website? Is your company coming up in results?
• Social media likes, followers, and members?
• Which social media do your customers participate in?
• What was your most successful blog post or social media campaign? Do you know why?
• Number of press releases issued, picked up and shared?
• How many people used your contact us page?
• New product inquiries? Where did they come from? Did they turn into sales?
• What about clicks on your landing pages, squeeze pages, affiliate links?
• How many new email addresses did you add to your mailing list? What industries and categories?
• How many speaking engagements completed?
• Newsletters written, emailed, opened, clicked?
• Trade shows walked, attended, exhibited, breakout sessions attended, presented?
• Webinars developed?
• Podcasts published, downloaded, length of time listened to, number of reviews and stars, distribution channels?
• YouTube videos published? How many people subscribe to your channel?
• Book sales?

Perhaps you never formally created a marketing calendar in your success plan. Now is the time to get started. Create a marketing calendar for the second half of the year now. so that sales in your business runs like a machine.

By having your marketing plan in place, you’ll know what is a good opportunity for marketing… and what is a real money waster.

Not sure how to get started?

Your company could probably benefit from a marketing consultant to get your plan in place. You’ll find having a plan that is strategically designed to support your overall sales and marketing goals will provide much better results than just trying to execute some marketing efforts.

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