Author: Dorie Clark

an hour ago

Don’t know what product or service you should be selling? That’s actually fine, says Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and author of the new book Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses.

“In most cases [early on], you don’t have the product or service right, anyway,” he says.

Instead, he recommends that entrepreneurs “flip the model on its head” and build an audience first, and only then figure out what to sell them.

 

Read More at entrepreneur.com

Author: Jennifer Grazel

In getting their messages in front of their target audience, financial services marketers face many challenges: ranging to government regulation to the rise of fintech to increased customer expectations. These challenges, however, haven’t stopped financial services marketers from embracing content marketing — and specifically content marketing on LinkedIn.

Many leading financial services marketers are using the LinkedIn platform to reach their audiences. Introducing “The Content Marketing 50: Financial Services Edition.” In this infographic, we’ve identified the 50 most effective financial services brands when it comes to using the LinkedIn platform to engage, educate, and inspire their target audience.

 

Read More at business.linkedin.com

Author: digitalmarketinginstitute.com

Ireland’s small businesses have far lower digital skills than other organisations, according to our recently published Digital Skills Report. We tested the skills of 622 marketers with a set of 52 questions across the core digital marketing disciplines of SEO, PPC, Email, Display, Social, Mobile and Analytics. The result? Small businesses scored a shocking 25% lower than medium-sized businesses and 22% lower than start-ups.

It makes sense: small business have less staff, fewer resources and often lower budgets.

 

Read More at digitalmarketinginstitute.com

Author: Jayson DeMers

When you think of SEO, what do you actually think about? If you were going to “practice” SEO, what would you be doing? Would you be writing content? Analyzing your performance? Engaging with your audience on social media?

Modern SEO is a complex, multifaceted collection of different sub-strategies, nearly all of which can function independently on their own as a way to boost brand visibility and build customer relationships. As a quick example, content marketing is a necessary strategy for SEO, but even without a deliberate SEO process, it can be valuable in terms of increasing customer engagement and building brand trust.

 

Read More at searchengineland.com

Author: Steven MacDonald

Email is the undisputed king of B2B marketing.

For lead generation, 87% of B2B marketers’ use email marketing to generate new leads, while 31% of B2B marketers’ cite email marketing as the channel that makes the biggest impact on revenue.

In terms of return on investment, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that email marketing delivers a $40 return for every $1 spent.

It’s numbers like these that makes email marketing so valuable. But, how are you using email marketing for your business? And what email initiatives will you focus on in 2016?

 

Read More at superoffice.com