Content Marketing Today

Dean Piccirillo Makes a One-Person Blog-powered Website Look like a Major Corporate Presence Online

Building a solid business blog-powered website is challenging for all of us. But it’s even more difficult for anyone who lives in the financial services universe.

Because financial services professionals must adhere to strict compliance regulations, they must be very careful about what they say and how they say it.  Dean Piccirillo a principal in HBK Sorce Financial, LLC, manages to convey relevant and compelling information while maintaining essential compliance.

Even more impressive is the quality of his own site's design which manages to be simultaneously newsy and professional. To build DeanPiccirillo.com, Dean used a WordPress theme called Live Wire that can be significantly customized for the needs of an individual business.  Perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that Dean did almost all the work himself. Although this may be beyond the capabilities of many of us, it shows what a non-technical businessperson can achieve using the power of a tool like WordPress.

Effective content marketing online drives LifeinBonitaSprings.com to number four on search rankings.

You might think that Realtor.com, Yahoo real estate, the Yellow Pages, either of the two local newspapers or all of the big area real estate companies would trample an individual realtor on Google. But, you’d be wrong.

In fact, when you search for "Bonita Springs real estate" in Google, you pull up a total of 557,000 results. But, standing at an impressive #4 is LifeinBonitaSprings.com. That's the blog powered website of Chris Griffith, a realtor with Downing Frye real estate. It's worth noting that, although Downing Frye is a successful, well-established local realtor, their company website doesn't show up until page 3 of the listings.

Although Chris gets a terrific ranking, does that translate into business for her? You bet it does.

Chris says that she currently gets more than 90% of all of her real estate business directly from the Internet. Just five years ago only half of her business came from the Web.

Great Advice from Singapore Blogger and Coach Celestine Chua on Kick Starting Your Business

We all tend to go overboard with any important trend. We get so excited about what's brand-new that we forget about the tried and true. So it is with inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing.

Celestine reminds us that outbound marketing done right, particularly in the form of smart public relations can make a measurable and almost immediate positive difference. 

The concept behind inbound marketing is that you engage in a lot of information creation activities that will pull in folks who are interested in what you have to say. Business blogs and participation in social media such as Twitter and Facebook enable you to offer content that prospects volunteer to consume.

Obviously, I believe in that. Witness the existence of Content Marketing Today and the blog post you’re currently reading. But, as Celestine emphasizes, that's only the first part of the equation that should also include smart outbound marketing.

Influence them with information well before they are ready to buy from you.

I have written before about the many differences between a traditional website and a blog.

Your website typically provides timeless information, while your blog provides timely information. Moreover, your blog becomes more important as you keep adding more and more content that is relevant to your prospective customers.

But a case study about a consulting company, De Novo Strategy, from Bernie Borges' new book, Marketing 2.0, suggested a new nuanced but critical reason for the power of a business blog.  It boils down to the fundamental difference between the purpose of your website and of your blog.

Your website must necessarily be designed so that when your customers are ready to research the purchase of products and services, they will find everything they need to know to make a positive buying decision on your site.

Your blog has the opportunity to reach those prospective customers earlier in the process. The best blogs provide a continuous stream of information about topics, issues, and problems that are specific to a well defined market niche. This would apply equally to content marketing or a segment of the banking industry.

As we begin an initial search for information in a particular niche, we probably have no intention of buying anything from anybody. At that moment in time, we simply want to become better informed in areas that matter to us, either professionally or personally. We are looking for information. We are not looking for a vendor.

A banking market website without a blog--loser. With a blog--winner.

Miss Lucy's House of Holidays understands how to segment its customers and deliver targeted messages as part of a consistent content marketing campaign.

Like many small retailers, Miss Lucy's has a limited marketing budget. Unlike many small retailers, they have a very clear understanding of their ideal target customer and know how to conduct carefully segmented e-mail marketing.

Their elegant shop focuses on high-end product lines and unique gifts which are centered around a holiday theme. Throughout the year, and for a wide variety of holidays, they continually redecorate and refocus the design of their store. Among their collections are Swarovski Crystal, Waterford Crystal Crabtree & Evelyn and Christopher Radko.  They complement their retail efforts with exquisite holiday decorating of homes for affluent customers. This side of the business is so popular that they are booked two years ahead.

Since their founding in October 2006, they have experimented with a variety of marketing that included print advertising, TV advertising, radio advertising, direct mail--and most persistently and effectively e-mail marketing. Today, they do almost no traditional marketing.  They have instead focused their efforts on e-mail marketing.

Here's why that works so well for them:

How a small PR firm built an abbondonza of buzz for a Florida client with a house to sell.

Big ideas can trump big bucks.  This is especially true in the new Internet-powered world of public relations. 

Savvy marketers with minimal budgets can get pervasive press coverage that would have been impossible five or 10 years ago.  Just ask Tina Haisman, Southwest Florida PR professional, who was able to generate an astonishing amount of TV, radio, and print coverage far beyond Florida borders. 

Tina's challenge was to help a Southwest Florida homeowner that needed to sell his multimillion dollar mansion in a very tough real estate market.  The homeowner knew that he needed to reach well beyond his local market for likely buyers of his luxurious home.  So, he cooked up the idea of a $1 million coupon that would be offered to anyone who bought his house.

She began with a traditional public relations approach of assembling a list of a hundred or so media contacts that might be open to writing about the unique coupon idea, particularly in the area of real estate.  She would then plan to e-mail reporters and follow-up with phone calls.  For decades, some variation of this proven approach has worked well to get news coverage.  But, without a lot of time, a big staff, and a big-budget, she could expect good, but limited success.

Instead, motivated by the client's reiterated push for' buzz', Tina decided to make a big bet on a social media press release approach via PR Web.  This enabled Tina and her client to reach and influence a global audience with minimum effort and maximum impact.

How They Use Secret Shoppers to Catch Their Team Members Doing the Right Thing.

If you are looking for great basic meat and potatoes cooking in a casual atmosphere, you can't do much better than Five Guys Burgers and Fries. While working on a client project, I had the opportunity to learn about the way they operate their restaurants--and how they think about their customers and their employees. 

The company launched with a single restaurant in the Washington, DC area in the 1980s and expanded conservatively through the use of 100% company owned outlets until very recently.  The family that owns Five Guys were concerned that they could not maintain a high level of customer experience if they were to expand too far or to move into franchising.  Ultimately, they did make the move but have worked very hard to ensure excellence in every one of their restaurants whether company owned or franchised.

AC Transit's Dedicated Site, ACTForMe.org, Paints a Brilliant and Loving Portrait of the Benefits of Public Transit

AC Transit operates a very sophisticated bus transportation system in the San Francisco Bay area, handling more than 65 million passengers annually in an area covering 364 square miles.  That's pretty impressive. 

But what really impressed me is the fact that they also make excellent use of the web to tell a story that turns taking the bus into the obvious transportation choice.

When you make it obvious to your customers how you can help them, you will grow your revenues.

Some of the smartest people I know run very small companies in the business-to-business market.  They are dedicated to helping their customers succeed.  In one-on-one discussions with customers and prospects, they make it clear how they can help.  That's terrific.  And it generates sales.  But it's just a start.

I am convinced that white papers--and their first cousins, e-books-- can extend that in-person knowledge sharing and trust building to the entire world.  A great example is a compelling white paper from The Result Source, called, Cold-Calling 2.0: The Next Generation of Prospecting.

The Result Source, is a small company based in Toronto, Canada that works closely with businesses who need to generate leads which will translate directly into revenue.  Its owner, Marguerite McLeod-Fleming, is a veteran of IBM and other large sophisticated organizations.  She is able to apply her understanding of the importance of process to lead generation for small organizations.

What Cold-Calling 2.0 does so well is to explode the myth that cold calling doesn't work anymore while demonstrating a repeatable process that will generate sales cost effectively.

Phillywordsmith, Emily Sheetz, puts Google Docs to work with a simple, but engaging online slide show for her small business.

There’s plenty that I love about the web. Discovering new people from whom I can learn is one of the most rewarding.

Recently, I lucked onto the PhillyWordsmith blog and wrote about her powerful conceptual construct for drilling down to your brand’s core promise: And Then What? The Question to Ask, Ask, and Ask Again to Get to Your Product’s Soul

Now, I found something else that’s pretty cool on her site. Emily shares representative samples of her creative stuff with a simple slide show built with the basic Google Docs application.  She doesn’t even bother with the Google presentation application.  The link sits right up top on her blog so you don’t have to hunt for it.  Here's why it's so effective for a microbusiness like Emily’s.