Tuesday, March 31, 2015
IRS Head Says So Far, So Good For Obamacare's First Tax Season
MOC Watch: Rival to ABMS Gears Up
Medicare at 50: A Shield for Seniors
6 Simple Steps to Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy
Creating a content marketing strategy is no simple task. In fact, 2/3 of marketers feel they aren’t successful with their content marketing. For both small and large businesses, the content you create is the main bridge connecting your brand to your customer.
Last week, the hot topic of the Social Media Marketing World gathering in sunny San Diego was the critical importance of strong content marketing that captures and converts your customer. Captivating, concise, and consistent content is a core part of any brand. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the well-known content marketing hub Content Marketing Institute and author of Epic Content Marketing shared a simple 6-step process to create your content marketing strategy. Although his session was mainly geared toward small, new businesses and entrepreneurs, it serves as a great reminder and framework for big businesses to take a second look at their current content marketing strategy.
Here are 6 simple steps to creating your content marketing strategy:
- Sweet Spot: The key first step to building your strategy is building an audience with a targeted group of people. It is not only about finding the sweet spot of what your audience wants to hear, but also finding the sweet spot of your knowledge and passion, so the content you are creating can connect on a shared level.
- Content Tilt: Because there is such a vast and relentless content overload flooding the Internet, your content needs an edge or a “tilt.” So how do you make your content unique and differentiate yourself from other people out they’re writing about the same topics? When creating content, you should ask yourself: Is this story worth telling?
Your content should be niche. To start, Joe suggests you follow in the steps of every media company and create an editorial mission or as he calls it: A Content Marketing Mission Statement.
In this mission statement there are 3 stages that must be touched on: 1. Define Core Target Audience. You really should only target one. If you target more than one group, you aren’t going niche enough. 2. What will be delivered? 3. The outcome for the Audience. Tip: Add a column to your content marketing calendar spreadsheet called “outcomes”. This will help you define what the audience will get out of the post. - Building the Base: In this step, you actually begin creating your content. You should focus only on one content type, one main platform, having consistent delivery over a long period of time. In this step, consistency is key. Another important thing media companies can’t do is miss deadlines and neither should your brand.
- Harvesting Audience: Building your audience is one feat, but maintaining subscribers is a whole other battle. One of the key metrics you should focus on is subscribers, your frequent flyers. After all, we as brands do not own Facebook or Twitter followers. Subscribers to your blog or email should be your main focus. Next, you should begin building an influencer list. This should consist of a small key base.
However, many marketers make the mistake of thinking that these influencers will become advocates. The key for building this initial influencer list is to use them for reach. After that, you shift your focus on building more authority with your newly acquired eyeballs. - Diversification: Focus on being great at one thing on one platform. Then diversify.
- Monetization: After successfully building your subscribers and you feel confident you have a solid base, then you can begin to think about monetizing your brand. On average, it takes 15-17 months to monetize your content. Your goal in the beginning should not be how to make money. First, build an audience with a targeted group of people. Then, monetize it.
Morning Break: Ebola Patient Improves, Feraheme Warning
Does Your Content Marketing Need a DAM Makeover? [Infographic]
12 Tools to Help You Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Results
Monday, March 30, 2015
10 Questions: Mary Norine Walsh, MD
Doctors With Cancer Push California To Allow Aid In Dying
Don’t Get Caught with Your Pants Down: 3 Steps to Increase Your Search Traffic with Google’s Next Update
Morning Break: Pilots and Suicide, Hep C's Very Big Price Tag
Congressional Panels Probe Opiate Prescriptions At Wis. VA Hospital
How Content Marketers Can Tell Better, More Strategic Stories
Compression Clothing: Not The Magic Bullet For Performance
A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Leads With Your Content Marketing
Direct from the Source: What a value proposition is, what it isn’t and the 5 questions it must answer
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Nephrologists Iffy About Dialysis in Expectant Moms
Videos On End-Of-Life Choices Ease Tough Conversation
PCPs Need to Push Colorectal Cancer Screening
Doctors, Stop Sticking Your Patients So Often
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Mood Disorders Hamper Quality of Life in SLE (CME/CE)
D.C. Week: SGR Fix -- Close, But No Cigar
Sneeze-Catcher Apparatus? That's Improbable!
Indiana's HIV Spike Prompts New Calls For Needle Exchanges Statewide
Friday, March 27, 2015
Tweet of the Week: 'Get Some Patients'
How To Encourage Employee Advocacy on Social Media
10 Ways to Improve Shopping Cart Conversions
How to Boost Your Revenue Through Upselling and Cross Selling
Morning Break: SGR Repeal Train Slows; Fitness and Cancer; Ebola Vaccines
How Millennials Consume News
Senate Follows House In Passing GOP Budget Blueprint
6 Strategic Trends Highlighted at Social Media Marketing World
Social Media Marketing World is back for the third time in San Diego this week. Many of the big names in the social media space are here including Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, and more. A dream for any social media marketer, this event covers every topic from how to take your social media global, to Facebook advertising strategies, and how to get started with your own podcast.
At his opening keynote, CEO of Social Media Examiner, Mike Stelzner, started his presentation with an image of “The Dress” and of course took a poll from the crowd: Blue and black, or white and gold? The crowd was about even for both (I see blue and black), but Stelzner made the point that this is a great example of how we can all be looking at the same thing and come away with something different. It’s important to realize that this same thing can happen with our own social marketing.
Stelzner went on to discuss some of the major trends that we are seeing now in social media, with the main one being video.
1. YouTube is powerful. More than half (56%) of marketers say they want to improve their knowledge of YouTube, and two thirds of marketers plan to increase their use of it. However, Facebook, and even Twitter, are challenging that power. In fact, Facebook is actually degrading YouTube video exposure in the newsfeed.
2. Native video is now the best content to post to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has noted video is a big priority for the channel right now. Video will now automatically be played in the newsfeed, which helps entice people to stop and watch. Facebook now even allows you to embed your videos into your blog posts, similarly to how you can with YouTube.
Twitter, too, has put an emphasis on video, with the announcement of their new Video on Twitter feature in February. This completely changes the game. Brands just went from 140 characters, to sharing 30 seconds of whatever content they want. This is a big opportunity for brands to not only be better storytellers, but also be able to show their personalities and become more human.
3. The new, cool app Meerkat is also taking video on Twitter to new lengths. Taking SXSW by storm, Meerkat is an app that allows you to stream live video to your followers on Twitter. Guy Kawasaki actually used Meerkat to live stream his entire presentation at Social Media Marketing World yesterday.
Although native video is still somewhat of an untapped frontier, according to Stelzner, 72% of marketers plan on increasing their use of video in 2015. So whether you hire a camera crew, or strap on your GoPro, it’s time to make video a priority in your marketing strategy.
Some other social trends that Stelzner highlighted are:
4.Podcasting is growing. With the booming success of the podcast Serial, we are now seeing more mainstream media outlets and big businesses are all starting to create their own podcasts. Even though it’s still a small space with only 9.7% of marketers participating in podcasts, 42% of marketers say that they want to learn more about podcasting, which is up from 28% in 2014.
5.Social reporting and ROI is on the rise. Nearly half (42%) of marketers are now able to measure and report on social ROI. A vast majority (78%) of marketers are able to show that social media increases traffic to their web properties, although 88% of marketers still say they want to know how to improve it.
6.Facebook is BIG for marketers…still. Even though Facebook has changed, then changed again their algorithms for businesses to get their content seen, 51% of marketers still say that it’s the most important social channel. In fact, the use of Facebook for marketing is actually growing, with 62% of marketers saying that they are increasing their use of Facebook in 2015.
What are some of the biggest trends that you’re seeing in social media today?
Online Marketing News: Facebook Flashbacks, Twitter Rides The Carousel, Google Finds Half The Web Is Broken
Spring is Here: Prepare for Wild Weather
Know the Risks and Prepare Your Home and Family
Spring can bring about a mix of wild weather as it’s a time of transition; and depending on where you live you could be affected by: tornadoes, thunderstorms, hail, floods, lightning, heat, wildfires, and even tsunamis if you live by the coast. A few precautionary steps now can help you prepare for weather changes:
- Know the potential hazards in your area and stay abreast of your local forecast at weather.gov.
- Prepare or restock your disaster supplies kit.
- Make sure your mobile phone can receive wireless emergency alerts, or sign up for e-mail or text message alerts through your state or local government.
- Download this free severe weather preparedness guide to learn more about thunderstorms, related hazards and life-saving actions you can take. A plan will prepare you and your family to act in time and help you and those you care about be safe.
If you have time to do more, and want to help your neighbors, consider joining America’s PrepareAthon! This campaign is designed to help you and your community prepare for area hazards through drills, discussions, and exercises.
Senate Follows House In Passing GOP Budget To Balance Budget
The 3 Most Common A/B Testing Problems (And How to Solve Them)
Thursday, March 26, 2015
From the Department of Interior:Here’s some serious cute for...
From the Department of Interior:
Here’s some serious cute for your morning: Two bear cubs holding paws at Lake Clark National Park in Alaska. Lake Clark is home to a diverse population of wildlife, including brown bears. During the summer months, it’s common for visitors to see a gathering of bears along Lake Clark’s Cook Inlet. Photo by Mary Gretchen Kaplan (www.sharetheexperience.org).
Vitamin K Speeds Hip Fracture Surgery for Patients on Warfarin
Is Your On-Hold Audio Irritating Customers? Three Don'ts and Five Do's
Case Study: Modern Marketing Meets Storytelling Comic Strips
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes courtesy of Bill Schilling, B2B marketing director and marketing technologist at Imation, where he leads a revenue-focused digital marketing team responsible for integrating marketing automation with content, website, search, social media and CRM to grow new inquiries, leads and sales opportunities.
Have you ever read a Dilbert comic strip where you laugh, learn and share them with your colleagues? Dilbert creator, Scott Adams shares his top 10 favorite Dilbert strips here, including his all-time favorite below: “Unix Programmers”
Dilbert hilariously portrays corporate culture as a world of bureaucracy and office politics that that stand in the way of productivity, where employees’ skills and efforts are not rewarded and busy work is praised.
Similarly Imation is harnessing the power of storytelling comic strips with high impact messages that speak to our prospects in ways virtually now other medium can, and help them better evaluate the real-world benefits of our data storage solutions in their digital content workflows. This strategy inspires everything we do - from our campaign microsite, advertising and email to how we interact on social media and event.
Powered by Oracle
Dilbert is an engineer cartoon hero that deals with mismanagement in a micromanaged office in Silicon Valley. Our campaign features a Creative Professional audience battling data storage villains living within the digital content workflows in the Communications, Media and Entertainment (CME) industry.
Using Oracle Content Marketing and Eloqua, we’ve created a funny personalized adventure for our audience; it’s about portraying a slice of life (in our case, the work of a Creative Professional) and crafting an entertaining and memorable story (specifically how our Nexsan storage can help them overcome their storage challenges). Through our Nexsan product brand, Imation is a unique position to generate relevant, fun, compelling and highly buzz-worthy content and conversations among geeky and trendy Creative Pros.
Know Your Villains
The Clog- A gelatinous sludge with an unceasing passion for clogging your IT pipeline. Read more about The Clog and Follow The Clog
Deletus Maximus- A cut-throat data center warrior who’s main objective is to make your high-value data ‘no mas’. Read more about Deletus Maximus and Follow Deletus Maximus
Dr. Bloat-icon- A fiend for creating claustrophobic data centers. Read more about Dr. Bloaticon and Follow Dr. Bloaticon
Blending the Art and Science of B2B Modern Marketing
Scott Adam’s Dilbert series came to national prominence because it satirized the social and mental landscape white-collar workers during the downsizing period of the 1990s. Today, Imation’s comic strip campaign comes to life by dramatizing how CME professionals can rely on Nexsan storage to overcome storage challenges imposed by their storage archenemies. It also represents Imation’s first multichannel storytelling campaign that blends the art and science of B2B modern marketing.
Don't miss the opportunity to hear more compelling case study stories in person! Check out the Modern Marketing Mashup networking event coming to a city near you! From Silicon Valley to New York City, register now to join like-minded modern marketers and exchange ideas!
High-Deductible Health Plans Cut Costs, At Least For Now
Morning Break: Icelandic Genomes Sequenced, Indiana HIV Outbreak Declared Disaster
Social Media Marketing World 2015 – What We’re Looking Forward to Most #SMMW15
Is Capitol Hill Ready To Rest Its Near-Annual 'Doc Fix' Exercise?
How to Growth Hack Your Content Marketing [PODCAST]
Mobile Marketing: What a 34% increase in conversion rate can teach you about optimizing for video
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
How to Generate $100,000 a Month from a Brand New Blog
How Copywriting Can Build Your Brand Authority
Are CMOs Poised To Take Over Technology Purchasing?
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Daniel Newman, President of Broadsuite, a company dedicated to helping companies be found, seen, and heard online by tying together paid, owner, and earned media to drive meaningful business outcomes. Newman is the author of 3 Amazon Best-Selling Books, “Evolve, Marketing (^as we know it is Doomed), “The New Rules of Customer Engagement,” and “The Millennial CEO.” He is a regular contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post, a global keynote speaker, as well as an adjunct professor and advisor to some of the world’s largest brands.
Today, most tech purchase decisions are still being made in the CIO/CTO suite. There is nothing new about that. With certain initiatives being handed down from leadership, buying and implementation has always been done in the tech department. However, as the debate around CIO-CMO fusion continues, and as data-centric and customer-centric businesses seek to work faster, issues like shadow IT, marketing-led tech, Big Data boom, predictive analytics, etc. have become hot topics in the corporate space. There is also a brewing suspicion that soon CMOs and other revenue focused execs may be driving more tech buying, app implementation, and adoption than ever before. What will that mean going forward?
CMOs Step into Tech Purchases with Increasing Responsibilities
As tech-focused businesses grow in number, tech-spending is no longer confined within the walls of the IT department. Rather, the trend is shifting towards Line of Business (LoB) executives making tech purchase decisions. According to IDC’s predictions last year, CMOs will hold up to 10% of the total tech budget by the end of 2015. Impressive, but this power increases the responsibilities of the CMO. Not only will they be juggling new ways of reaching customers, new data streams, social media, wearables, mobile access and more. Now, they will add making tech purchase decisions to the list. It is not difficult to see the full plate we’ve placed before them. Begging the question: Are CMOs ready to take such a big bite?
Whether they are ready or not, technology is fast becoming an inextricable part of the CMO’s functions, and they need to participate in making tech decisions in order to determine the ROI for purchases. Moreover, it is practically impossible to manage the wide range of customer touch points across all channels throughout the customer’s purchase journey, extract customer behavior from data-based insights, send effective marketing messages, and finally measure the ROI of all of these actions without technology.
CMO and CIO vs. CMO or CIO
With CMOs exalted to such great heights, even overshadowing the CIO, will CMOs still need CIOs to assist them in making the tech decisions? Or will the CMO manage to take on the responsibility alone?
While some extreme assumptions predict that CIOs might be soon replaced by the CMO, it isn’t the reality that we are currently seeing. A Forrester Research Study says that marketing executives who make technology decisions without the CIO are taking a gamble. Technology rarely works without hiccups, calculating the real cost of a technology is a CIO specialty, and signing a contract without the knowledge of proper SLAs could lead the company to a tech nightmare. For those reasons, it is risky business for CIOs to go it alone.
I feel this whole CMO-CIO discussion should lead to a closer collaboration between the two departments, rather than the scenario where one is feeling more empowered and superior at the expense of the other. In fact, many experts think there is no need for the CIO to be threatened by the growing tech-savvy of the CMO. It should rather be viewed as common ground for forging a powerful partnership between the two.
What is your take on the shifting role of the CMO as it relates to tech buying and the role of the CIO?
Don’t Give Up Until They Buckle Up
By Mark Rosekind, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
When she was a baby, you put her in a car seat. In a few years, you’ll insist she buckle up when behind the wheel. Today, however, she’s a tween; she’s tired of hearing mom and dad nag her about wearing her seat belt. And you’re a little tired of saying it.
But this is the fight worth having. Your tween’s life is at stake.
And that’s why the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have launched our “Never Give Up Until They Buckle Up” campaign.
Traffic safety data tells us that as children get older, they’re less likely to buckle up. Over the past 5 years, 1,552 kids ages 8-14 were not wearing seat belts when they died in a crash, and one in four of those kids were age 14.
This campaign is urgently needed because—as many parents can attest—seat belt use often falls by the wayside during the hectic shuttling of kids to and from school and activities, when running short errands, or when parents are a bit worn down by the daily grind.
And of course, tweens will test limits. It’s how they learn and grow. That’s why it’s so critical that they absorb the message now: the car doesn’t move until everyone in the vehicle is buckled up. After a while, it won’t be a fight; it will be second nature, a lifesaving lesson that they’ll carry with them always.
Put this plan into action with your own tween. And please—wherever and whenever you can— share this important safety message with the people we serve: Never Give Up Until They Buckle Up.
Morning Break: End of SGR? FDA Tackles Homeopathy
Affordable Care Act Makes This Tax Season Painful For Many
A 7-Day Course on Generating Leads with Landing Pages
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Fat-Lysing Agent Makes Double Chin Disappear
How to Nurture Your Leads With Narrative [Infographic]
5 Steps to Personalize Repurposed Content for Your Target Audience #SMMW15
Feds Claim Obamacare Launch Is Hindering Government Transparency
Computer Malware and E-mail Hack Attacks: What to Do Fast
Quick Videos List Important Steps
You may know the experience: Your e-mail account starts behaving oddly, or your computer is slowing down and acting up. You may have been hacked, or gotten a virus. Would you know how to address an e-mail hack, secure your device, and protect your identity?
Watch these two short videos which go over the critical first steps you can take to minimize the damage and get back in control.
Want more information? Visit OnGuardOnline.gov for information on:
Or download this free publication on protecting your computer and personal information.
Morning Break: ACA and Charity Care; More Surgery for Jolie
4 Lessons in Serving Up Customer Success
We recently launched a new and improved Oracle Marketing Cloud Success Program, a complimentary service-based offering, focused on enabling B2B and B2C marketers who use our products, the ability to assess and enhance their marketing performance.
The program is comprised of several services including: Modern Marketing Assessments, Success Planning, Facilitated Discussions and Applied Concept Tours. And in the spirit of true customer obsession, we thought we’d share some of the objectives of this program that you can apply to your customer enablement efforts and programs, regardless of your business model.
- Provide a platform for assessment – A sound Customer Success Program is built on a foundation that enables customers to assess themselves in ways that are meaningful to their businesses.. The Oracle Marketing Cloud Modern Marketing Assessment tool is focused on allowing marketers to measure their marketing maturity with a web-based assessment that guides them through a series of questions about their organization’s current approach to marketing. The assessment calculates the maturity level of a customer’s marketing practices and provides them with recommendations on how to get to the next level of maturity.
- Tailor offerings specific to supporting your customers’ success. It’s critical to offer customers a means of measuring the success of their efforts in terms relative to their activities and objectives, as well as a means of how to most appropriately move forward. The Oracle Marketing Cloud Success Planning service is a series of sessions that help our team learn about a customer’s business objectives and marketing priorities. Armed with that information and the results of their Modern Marketing Assessment, we provide customer’s with a tailored project plan that includes recommendations and action items for the next 6-18 months.
- Be resource-oriented. If knowledge is power, then a helpful Customer Success Program provides resources that hone in on the specific topics your customers need to know more about. Oracle Marketing Cloud Facilitated Discussions offer customers the opportunity to take part in interactive consultations with a Marketing Advisor to focus on their current marketing practices. Customers can choose from close to 40 topics. The sessions are delivered using an online consulting toolkit designed to guide the conversation. These hands-on exercises will help to apply the marketing practice to real world use cases. Check out our menu of topics!
- Provide help. Collecting information is helpful, but it can be challenging to implement those learnings into a solid course of action. Because it’s not always easy to implement a marketing practice, we’ve created Oracle Marketing Cloud Applied Concept Tours. These tours relate to the marketing practices covered in Facilitated Discussions. A Marketing Advisor will show a customer how to take action using their Oracle Marketing Cloud product so that they are better prepared to execute their plans.
All of our Customer Success services are centered on the declared needs and wants of our customers. You spoke and we listened!
To request any of these services, you can contact your account representative or take a look through our new online catalog to sign up!
Are there other tips you’d advise marketers to incorporate into their Customer Success programs?
How 2 Children With Leukemia Helped Transform Its Treatment
Monday, March 23, 2015
If You're Going To Die Soon, Do You Really Need Statins?
Poison Proof Your Home
Protect Yourself and Your Family
Accidental poisoning by common household items kill more people than car accidents each year. Products we use everyday such as medicines, household cleaning solutions, children’s art supplies, makeup and other personal items can be toxic if used incorrectly.
Learn about the dangers and who’s most at risk, how to poison-proof your home, and what you can do if you experience an emergency. Contact the Poison Help Line at 1-800-222-1222 and use this emergency checklist as a guide for what information to give the poison expert on the phone. Keep the Poison Help Line number handy or save it on your cell phone.
The A to Z Guide on Creating a Memorable Brand (like McDonald’s)
Morning Break: Weed Killer Linked To Cancer, The Upside of Ebola
Winning With Authority Rainmaker – 15 Marketing Influencers Define Authority for Marketing Success
Value Prop: How Radio Shack lost its way by losing sight of its ideal customer, Pt. 3
6 Things We All Need to Stop Doing on Social Media Now
Sunday, March 22, 2015
The Revised Approach to Content Distribution
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Anne Murphy, Senior Managing Editor at Kapost.
Marketing—at its core—hasn't changed. It's about cultivating and delivering a strategic brand message, attracting the right people to your business, and turning them into customers. Despite these constants, the way we practice marketing has changed dramatically.
In the past, marketers used traditional advertising to deliver their message and lure a captivated (and less distracted) audience in. Today, marketers are responsible for much more of the buyer's journey to purchase. They must organize their message around buyer pain points and deliver a seamless, engaging experience across every channel and device.
Our strategies for delivering content must continue to shift as we gain insight into what drives success and what falls flat. If you're not constantly testing and tweaking your content distribution strategy, you're going to miss out on new opportunities to drive revenue for your business and cultivate relationships with your prospects.
The Evolution of the Content Pillar Approach
We've discussed the content pillar approach before. It centers on creating of one major asset, breaking it into many derivative assets, and using them to strategically fuel all of your marketing channels with consistent, relevant content. At Kapost, we plan, execute, distribute, and optimize our content-driven marketing efforts around the pillar concept—and so do many of our customers.
But, you need to constantly evaluate and optimize your processes to stay ahead. So when we took a hard look at the pillar approach—at it's success and its failures—we realized there were a few things that needed to shift in the way we approached our strategy.
The revised content pillar approach retains the same foundation. It still focuses on the creation of one meaty asset—like an eBook or whitepaper—that tackles a single strategic theme or buyer need, and is then repurposed into many derivative assets that fuel marketing channels.
But our revised content pillar approach has been tweaked to focus on complimentary (not just derivative) content that aligns more closely with buyer needs and product strengths.
Appetizer, Entree, and Dessert Approach
Our advised model encourages marketers to coordinate and plan an entire, cohesive "meal" for buyers. The concept here is, instead of just one meaty asset, each content pillar should contain three major assets that serve the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. These assets are called the Appetizer (top of funnel), Entree (middle of the funnel), and Dessert (bottom of the funnel).
The Appetizer- The Appetizer is a fun, engaging asset, like a SlideShare or an infographic that serves the top of the funnel. The goal here is to engage a lot of prospects, and drive them toward a related, gated content asset. This type of content is often optimized by channels like your blog and website, social channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and video channels like YouTube and Vimeo, or even used to facilitate conversations with influencers and media outlets.
The Entree- This is your major content pillar asset. The entree piece could be an eBook, a white paper, or a workbook (like the one you’re reading now). Marketers should distribute this content through email or marketing automation, and support it with paid email and online or social advertising.
The Dessert- This is a product-centric asset, like a PDF, video and or demo, that reveals how your product serves the theme in question. This content can be distributed through your marketing automation as part of your nurturing efforts, hosted on video channels or supported by webinar platforms (ReadyTalk, ON24, etc.), and distributed to the sales team to accelerate the deal cycle.
How They Work Together
To put it simply, the appetizer drives to the entree asset; the entree asset directs readers to the product-centric dessert asset.
The key to the success of this approach is to keep the three main assets complimentary. So, for example, the key topic examined in the Entree (your main course) must address a widely accessible and important buyer need (the focus of your Appetizer) and align with the strengths of your products or services (outlined in your Dessert asset). When you get this recipe right, the result is a cohesive content experience from awareness to consideration to purchase.
Every piece of content you create should be buyer-centric, tackling the problems, interests, and questions of your target audience. That's true whether it's an infographic on travel expenses (top-of-funnel content) or a step-by-step tutorial for using an app to find a hotel last-minute (bottom-of-the-funnel or post-purchase content).
The original content pillar approach lacked a hard-hitting, product-focused asset, the content sales team needs to align an insight with a solution, to follow up quickly and strategically, and to approach each conversation with a "Challenger Sale" mentality. With the Appetizer, Entree, and Dessert approach, these three assets are unique to each stage of the funnel, and hit on different parts of your brand story. And, each of these three assets can still be broken into many assets, so you have even more relevant and consistent content to fuel your marketing channels.
For more on how these work together to fuel your channels and support the entire buyer's journey, check out The Multi-Channel Content Distribution Guide. It covers this approach in even more detail, and includes a template to help you organize and test this strategy.
IL-17 Inhibitor Clears Psoriasis More Often
Stem Cell-Therapy Promising Tx for Type 2 Diabetes (CME/CE)
Intimate Questions: Retooling the Health Hazard Survey
Orthopedists' Financial Conflicts Can Hurt Patients, Surgeon Says
90 Years After Its Discovery, No Generic Insulin Sold In The U.S.
Patients Freeze Scalps To Save Hair During Chemo
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Carotid Plaque Prevalent in RA Even With Low CV Risk Score (CME/CE)
D.C. Week: Negotiations Heat Up on SGR Fix; Reboot Meaningful Use
A New Little Blue ... Light? That's Improbable!
Friday, March 20, 2015
Using Customer Data to Inform Your Personalization Strategy
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Ashley Chavez, Director of Marketing at Get Smart Content.
In today’s highly-competitive marketplace, it’s never been easier for buyers to be confused by generic company messaging, lose interest in a product, and move on to a competitor that better understands their needs. Savvy marketers realize that in order to gain a competitive advantage, it is critical to create meaningful connections with their buyers from the start and continue to grow this relationship throughout the buyer’s journey.
The foundation for any great relationship starts with insight and understanding — the same is true for building relationship with your clients and prospects. In fact, your buyers begin to share information about themselves, what they’re interested in, and what their pain points are well before they formally introduce themselves. These insights are often times stored in disparate systems like your CRM, marketing automation platform, website analytics, data management platform, and so on; however, as marketers shift focus to creating targeted campaigns across the buyer’s journey, the ability to integrate systems and unlock this customer data has never been more imperative.
Capturing client and prospect data and using this information to segment your audiences provides the insight needed to identify what your buyers care about and informs how you build relevant messaging, or in other words, a personalization strategy. Personalization involves understanding buyer intent and characteristics and dynamically delivering highly relevant content to them depending on their interests, profile or stage in the buyer’s journey. By providing your buyers with the information that meets their needs, we open the door to meaningful, engaging relationships with prospects and clients alike.
Most B2B marketers are very familiar with audience segmentation and personalization as it relates to marketing automation and email nurturing, but the reality is, very little is being done in early stages of the buyer’s journey to create relevant content experiences, especially as it relates to the experience on the website. Think about that — we’re spending a vast majority of our resources and efforts on creating targeted nurture campaigns for contacts in our marketing automation platform that have identified themselves through a form submission or email open; however, even the highest converting forms on our site typically only see a conversion rate of roughly 5%. Therefore, we’re neglecting to create a relevant experiences for the other 95% of visitors to the website, an audience that needs more attention and relevance to engage and take the next steps in the conversion path.
Many marketers when initially brainstorming their website personalization strategy, immediately envision overly complex models where content is hyper-targeted. While this level of personalization is attainable, you would be astonished to see how even the most basic of targeted messages can have a dramatic impact on your website conversion rates. We encourage our clients to take a “crawl, walk, run” approach and initially establish small goals with dramatic impact.
To learn more on how to use data to inform your website personalization strategy, join our upcoming webinar, “Driving The Ultimate Customer Experience With Predictive Marketing & Personalization,” Thursday April 9th at 10am PST.
Kraft Recalls Macaroni and Cheese Boxed Dinners
What you need to know:
- Kraft Foods Group is recalling approximately 242,000 boxed dinners which may contain small pieces of metal.
- The recall is limited to the 7.25-oz. size of the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Boxed Dinner Original Flavor with the “Best When Used By” dates of September 18, 2015 through October 11, 2015, with the code “C2” directly below the date on each individual box.
For more details on this recall, read this release from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For other food recalls visit foodsafety.gov/recalls.
TACTful Perseverance and a Black Swan Event
Using Customer Data to Information Your Personalization Strategy
Editor's Note: Today's post comes courtesy of Ashley Chavez, Director of Marketing at Get Smart Content.
In today’s highly-competitive marketplace, it’s never been easier for buyers to be confused by generic company messaging, lose interest in a product, and move on to a competitor that better understands their needs. Savvy marketers realize that in order to gain a competitive advantage, it is critical to create meaningful connections with their buyers from the start and continue to grow this relationship throughout the buyer’s journey.
The foundation for any great relationship starts with insight and understanding — the same is true for building relationship with your clients and prospects. In fact, your buyers begin to share information about themselves, what they’re interested in, and what their pain points are well before they formally introduce themselves. These insights are often times stored in disparate systems like your CRM, marketing automation platform, website analytics, data management platform, and so on; however, as marketers shift focus to creating targeted campaigns across the buyer’s journey, the ability to integrate systems and unlock this customer data has never been more imperative.
Capturing client and prospect data and using this information to segment your audiences provides the insight needed to identify what your buyers care about and informs how you build relevant messaging, or in other words, a personalization strategy. Personalization involves understanding buyer intent and characteristics and dynamically delivering highly relevant content to them depending on their interests, profile or stage in the buyer’s journey. By providing your buyers with the information that meets their needs, we open the door to meaningful, engaging relationships with prospects and clients alike.
Most B2B marketers are very familiar with audience segmentation and personalization as it relates to marketing automation and email nurturing, but the reality is, very little is being done in early stages of the buyer’s journey to create relevant content experiences, especially as it relates to the experience on the website. Think about that — we’re spending a vast majority of our resources and efforts on creating targeted nurture campaigns for contacts in our marketing automation platform that have identified themselves through a form submission or email open; however, even the highest converting forms on our site typically only see a conversion rate of roughly 5%. Therefore, we’re neglecting to create a relevant experiences for the other 95% of visitors to the website, an audience that needs more attention and relevance to engage and take the next steps in the conversion path.
Many marketers when initially brainstorming their website personalization strategy, immediately envision overly complex models where content is hyper-targeted. While this level of personalization is attainable, you would be astonished to see how even the most basic of targeted messages can have a dramatic impact on your website conversion rates. We encourage our clients to take a “crawl, walk, run” approach and initially establish small goals with dramatic impact.
To learn more on how to use data to inform your website personalization strategy, join our upcoming webinar, “Driving The Ultimate Customer Experience With Predictive Marketing & Personalization,” Thursday April 9th at 10am PST.
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Taxpayer ID Theft: Use IRS.gov to Verify Your Identity
The IRS stops and flags suspicious or duplicate federal tax returns that
falsely represent your identity, such as your name or social security
number. If the IRS suspects tax ID theft, the agency will send a 5071C letter to your home address. If you receive this letter, verify your identity at idverify.irs.gov or call the toll-free number listed in the letter.
If you are a victim of state tax ID theft, contact your state’s taxation department or comptroller’s office about the next steps you need to take.