Content Marketing Today

How to Get Started on Cheap and Powerful Customer Studies

Unless you understand your customers, you risk  painful marketing missteps.

Because we know that effective content marketing depends on a thorough understanding of your customers, regular research should be a core component of your content marketing strategy. 

Of course, it's possible to do way too much research.  That's when you wind up with the paralysis by analysis situation.  But, most small to midsize  companies suffer from too little research and too much gut feel. That's when some very bad decisions get made.

The good news is that even very small companies with tiny budgets can now conduct high quality research that would have been affordable only for multimillion dollar companies just five or 10 years ago

Although it is possible to spend vast amounts of money on research conducted by high profile research organizations, it is much easier than you might think to conduct valuable research on your own.  Today, numerous online tools make it simple to create and deploy research studies--and that even provide guaranteed numbers of recipients.

How to Get Started on Your All-Important Customer Research

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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.

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You Must Persuade Me to Act or Your Beautiful Promotional Piece Will Sleep with the Fishes

I was perversely inspired to write this because of a recent gorgeous direct mailing I received from local French restaurant.

They did a lot of things right. There was some beautiful photography that captured the essence of this charming little bistro. They described how the restaurant and its cuisine were uniquely appealing. They shared some impressive awards and recognitions for their excellence. They included their Web address. And, they even provided a little map that showed me exactly how to find it.

There was only one thing missing. But it was the most important thing: They failed to make me an offer that would entice me to dine at the restaurant. In fact, there was no offer at all.

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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.

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A Great Product with a Terrible Name Will Sink. A Great Product with Terrific Name Will Soar.

Think Google. Think Bing. Think Kleenex. Think Nike.  But most of all think carefully before you attach that all-important brand name to your shiny new product.

That’s the essential advice from Caitlin Randolph of BrandBucket.com in this guest post. BrandBucket teaches companies how to build new brands with a bang by choosing just the right name.

6 Keys to Turning a Terrific Idea into a Successful Product by Leveraging Just the Right Brand Name.

For many start ups, naming a new business or product is even harder than coming up with the perfect name for your firstborn child. By the time your idea is ready to become a product you may find yourself in desperate need of a great brand name. But you may also find yourself a bit too close to your baby to give it the perfect brand name.

We know how hard and how important it is to develop that name so let us shine some new light on the naming of your future brand.

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Kathy Saenz of Neighborhood America Shares What It Takes to Make Video an Effective Content Marketing Tool

Even a micro business can use video effectively to communicate with its customers online. But, as we amateur carpenters know, you can wind up with a mess instead of a masterpiece unless you understand how to use a potentially powerful tool well.   In that spirit we’re happy to can share with you six terrific tips for using video successfully from talented Southwest Florida professional, Kathy Saenz. We recently caught up with Kathy, who is Neighborhood America's corporate communications manager, for a brief interview on the best ways to communicate with video. Kathy's unique background as a university trained former TV producer and reporter taught her what it takes to tell great stories in our short attention span world.  She has been able to help Neighborhood America add  video communications to their core marketing capabilities. When it comes to using video effectively, Kathy and her company really get it.

Here Are Kathy's 6 Secrets to Video Success for Small Business:

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You must be clear on what you do and how your customers will benefit

I became aware of the Metwell website as a result of a promotion they had sent me via Twitter. Their website is full of unintended ironies as they offer online marketing advice which the website appears to ignore.

It's also a good example of a website with a pretty good layout that is undercut by a lack of focus and a serious shortage of relevant and compelling content.

I found it hard to understand exactly what Metwell does or how they could help me after a quick--and then a more in depth--visit to their website The company seems to know content is important because their site attempts to provide a lot of content, at least on the surface. But they misunderstand the essence of content marketing by failing to make their content relevant and compelling to prospective buyers.

Here's what I find to be most problematic:

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Inspiration from ‘Visual Blogger’ Mark Smiciklas of Intersection Marketing

It's hard to make things easy. And, it's even harder to be amusing at the same time.

But the very best visuals take a complex idea or series of connected ideas and make them instantly understandable. Just the right visuals make those ideas even more memorable when they are funny as well. In the case of the Intersection Marketing blog from Mark Smiciklas, he manages to do both consistently. Read More

The Paradigm is Shifting. Remodel Your Marketing Now.

Marketing rules are changing all around us. The winners in this new world will be the early adopters who understand the new breed of buyer, take advantage of better and cheaper technology, and deliver problem-solving content.

It's time for marketers to replace traditional publishers. Make sure you aren’t the last one on your block to make the transformation.

Here’s what you need to do and why:

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How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers

In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy. In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,' has gone from obscure to fashionable. When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed in the past two years. For example, the number of visitors to our website who arrived because they had done a search for 'content marketing,' has increased by a factor of 10. I'm delighted that content marketing has come out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Even so, for most small businesses, developing a content marketing mindset and a strategy to follow just does not come naturally. Fortunately, the fundamentals of a successful small business content marketing strategy are much more commonsensical than you might think.  In fact, they build on what have long been best marketing practices.  Even those content marketing elements that require a new mindset have a simple and compelling logic that even the smallest business can grasp and adopt.

Here are the six steps that can put you on the path to an effective content marketing strategy:

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