David and Goliath: How Small Players Beat Out the Big Banks
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in the National Mortgage Professional Magazine. We are re-posting it here because the advice has value for any small- or medium-sized business (a David) competing against giants in the same industry (the Goliaths, aka the Big Fish). With mega-banks continuing to dominate the mortgage industry, the smaller players […]
Interactive Content and Quizzes: An Overview
Editor’s note: Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Josh Haynam, the co-founder of Interact, a fast-growing platform for creating responsive quizzes that help you generate engagement and capture leads. Follow Josh on Twitter @JHaynam. In 2013, the most viewed articles for the New York Times, TIME, and National Geographic were not articles, but pieces […]
Duplicate Content, Curation, and – What’s a Rel=Canonical?
It’s a cold, hard world for a search engine. People ask you for guidance; you scan millions of pages for them, give them the best results you can find, and they never say thanks. You’re treated as a functionary, ignored until they need you again. (Sniff.) Still, it’s an engine-eat-engine world. You’ve got a job […]
Bootstrap Buyer Persona Building in 4 Steps
“Buyer, Buyer, Buyer.” You can’t take to two steps in any direction in the marketing thought leadership landscape without hearing how important and central the buyer is, and how important it is to develop a “buyer centric” approach to demand generation. Why all the hullabaloo around the buyer? Well, because it’s true: Keeping the buyer […]
6 Copy Starters for Emails & Letters
Copywriting – what you say and how you say it – is still one of the most important disciplines in marketing. Sometimes just getting started is the hardest part. The first sentence of copy is critical for grabbing attention. It sets the bait for hooking scanners – who become readers – who then turn into […]
The Future of Content Marketing: Five Technologies Content Marketers Can’t Ignore
Scott Abel, aka “The Content Wrangler,” is a well-respected content strategist. He’s also a lively presenter, able to draw crowds for industry events including Content Marketing World, Localization World London, Adobe Day, and LavaCon. If you’d like to pick up a little Wrangler Vision without having to book a flight or stand in line, here’s […]
Top Online Marketing Power Words (Hint: Free Is King)
Every year-end brings pundits’ lists of words to stop using. In pop culture and ordinary conversation, “awesome” and “literally” seem to top the lists (again) this year. In business, Jeff Haden took us to task for describing ourselves (or our companies) on our websites or in social media using words such as “world-class” or “motivated” […]
6 Content Marketing Insights from Joe Pulizzi
Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute was in our town last week, speaking to a Meetup group about content marketing. (Thank you to sponsors Content Strategy PDX, Social Media Club PDX, and Babcock & Jenkins). After a bit of palaver on the state of marketing (prognosis: marketers are doing okay and if we keep […]
A Content Marketing Strategy Using Paid, Owned, and Earned Media
“Content marketing” is a perhaps the fastest-growing marketing tactic being used today. While it’s definitely become mainstream, there are lots of issues around how to create it, how to manage it…even how to think about it. The Content Marketing Institute has a new study, “B2B Content Marketing 2014: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends–North America”, that shows […]
What Is Nudge Marketing?
Rand Fishkin of Moz visited Portland tonight to deliver an interesting talk: “The Nudge Is Mightier Than The Sword.” Rand’s presentation borrows from the behavioral economics theories of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, a book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and employs “choice architecture,” a concept holding that you can affect […]
Which Customer Emotions Drive Business Results?
We like to think that we make decisions – and that our customers make decisions – for pragmatic reasons. What’s the shortest link between two points? What’s going to deliver the most value? Who’s offering the best prices? Those factors certainly do count in business decisions, but there’s much, much more. Over at Beyond Philosophy, […]
Guidelines for White Papers and Case Studies
Carolyn Goodman, president and creative director of Goodman Marketing Partners, Inc, defines content marketing as “creation and distribution of original content that has perceived value in order to positively position your brand in the minds of your prospects and customers.” Along with Cyndie Shaffstall, the founder and CEM of SpiderTrainers, Goodman recently presented an Act-On-sponsored […]