Digital Damage

Digital ads could be alienating B2B buyers, says Julie Ogilvie, senior research director at Sirius.

Because the ad units are tiny and compete in cluttered environments, B2B marketers are resorting to intrusive techniques that may be damaging their brands.

Ogilvie cites three:

Retargeting. "The idea behind retargeting is solid," she says. "However, in execution it can become annoying if the ads are popping up for months on end or are appearing in inappropriate environments."

Clickbait. Digital ads sporting sensational headlines "almost always disappoint in terms of what is delivered." The disappointment is reinforced when retargeting is used.

Native ads. Digital ads dressed as editorial content can also annoy and disappoint. Although buyers will respond, "many people still end up feeling deceived by messages that appear to be one thing but turn out to be another."

"In all these examples, people have come to feel that they are being tricked or harassed by advertisers," Ogilvie says.

Techniques like retargeting, clickbait and native advertising generate impressive response rates, she admits.

"But response rates do not always equal conversion rates—or revenue. And there is still the question of short-term vs. long-term gain. Brands are about building relationships and trust with our audiences."

You need not worry overmuch you're alienating your whole audience.

While you may be angering Boomer and Gen X buyers, the majority of Millennial buyers have installed ad blockers.

Please Disturb

Sadly, most "social selling" merely amplifies sleazy selling.

You see it on LinkedIn daily, as an ever-swelling spam tsunami floods your homepage.

Although they do themselves no favors, the buffoons behind the flood damage their brands more than themselves. Where they once had opportunities to drive away only handfuls of prospects in the past, now they possess a weapon of mass destruction.

It need not be that way, says LinkedIn strategist Kristina Jaramillo.

Social selling experts insist social selling is a lead-gen "volume play," Jaramillo says.

But it isn't.

Social selling's purpose should be lead qualification and nurturing.

"The focus should be on prospect development," Jaramillo says.

Simply posting about your product, your team, yourself or even your industry doesn't make you relevant to buyers.

You have to drill down to value; and, on LinkedIn, that comes in form of challenges to the status quo.

You need to publish "disruptive" content that drives changes in thoughts and actions, and, most importantly, "give prospects a reason to change," Jaramillo says.

Sales' Secret Weapon

There's a time to groom and a time to go for it.

If you only groom prospects by sending them emails and posting cute pictures on social media, you'll wind up the dateless wonder on prom night.

Sales' secret weapon isn't so secret.

It's not even a weapon.

It's your phone.

Selling is all about engaging prospects in conversation. Social media can do that, but only in a shallow way.

If your outbound marketing doesn't spur lots of inbound phone calls, then you're just marketing. You're not selling.

So if you want to sell, pick up the phone for at least an hour a day and dial. You won't reach many prospects, so leave voicemail messages. Here's mine:

Hi, this is Bob James… 202.641.5131. Hope your day’s going better than mine. Look, I need money to pay for my art classes every Saturday… so I’m hoping you’ll hire my ad agency. Bob and David James… at BobandDavidJames.com.

Rinse, repeat.

You might also follow every call with an email or LinkedIn connection request.

If you need more guidance, read Dan Pink's remarkable book, To Sell is Human.

It's up to you to build your own pipeline. To do so, you must set aside at least an hour a day for outbound prospecting on the phone. Build your brand in the other hours.

5 Reasons Your Content Stinks

Only 6% of B2B marketers say they're "sophisticated" content marketers, according to Content Marketing Institute.

The rest worry their content stinks.

Content can stink for 5 reasons, says Alicia Esposito of Content4Demand:

Your copy stinks. Is your copy clear, concise and captivating? Or foggy, flowery and forgettable? I often see content marketing misfires mostly attributable to poor writing. The substance is great; how it's conveyed, anything but.

Your design stinks. Is your content engaging? Or merely an eyesore? Don't underestimate the importance layout, colors and images have in lead generation.

Your promotion stinks. You can’t just hit "publish" and expect leads. "Content needs to be supported by a multi-channel promotional strategy that includes email, social, digital advertising and other tactics," Esposito says.

Your choice of channels stinks. You also have to pick the right channels to amplify your content. Maybe your target audience prefers LinkedIn over Twitter, or your industry's trade magazine over The Wall Street Journal. "It’s not just about promoting your content to as many people as possible," Esposito says, "it’s about promoting your content to the right people."

Your UX stinks. Is your content swiftly and easily navigated? Or do you often send audiences down a rabbit hole? Don't let things like misleading images, hidden calls to action, and broken links frustrate prospects.

Before you rip and replace your content, figure out why it stinks.

"There are a lot of factors that influence your content’s results," Esposito says, "and there are a few questions you can ask to ensure you’ve covered all your bases before you go back to the drawing board."

How to Succeed at Blogging without Really Trying

Want to make your blog "a machine for lead generation?" It's easy, says Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group:

Craft Your Hook. "The average time someone spends on a post is a whopping 37 seconds," Brenner says. Create a strong opening, so they'll  spend at least that much time on your posts. "Try asking a question, leading with a beguiling fact or statistic, or just going all out, guns blazing at the beginning and present the reader’s problem and answer all within the first three sentences." A highly personal opening hooks readers, too.

Write Long-Form. Readers unwilling to spend more than 37 seconds on your post are tire-kickers. Write for the readers who are qualified leads. "They are more likely to take action after reading." Long-form posts generate nine times more leads than short-form posts.

Use Many CTAs. Pepper your posts with calls-to-action. Add links that direct readers to more resources. Remember: they may never get to your punchy closing.

Post on a Schedule. When you post regularly, you boost your Google rankings and give readers a reliable resource. "Your readers may even come to expect a new post, seeing it as something to look forward to while waiting for the bus or stopping by their favorite coffee shop for a work break," Brenner says. "Don’t rob people of their blog reading rituals because you post intermittently."

Use Visuals. Add more emotion to your posts with visual content―and not just photos, drawings, videos, and infographics, but illustrated CTAs. "Illustrations will help your readers know how they can take that all important next step to download content, sign up for your special offer, or in any other way become a lead."

Satisfy Readers. Your efforts are for naught, if your content doesn't inform readers and inspire them to read further. Be sure readers "are confident that when they need more information on your business’s niche subject, they know where to turn for more―your blog," Brenner says.

A Merging State of Mind

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

― John Donne

In Pre-Suasion, psychologist Robert Cialdini describes a seventh principle of persuasion: unity.

When customers come and act together, Cialdini says, they become more likely to buy.

"Co-creating" exemplifies the principle in action.

When a new fast-food restaurant asked prospects to assess its business plan, those asked for "advice," rather than "opinions,” or “expectations,” were more likely to eat at the new restaurant.

The use of the word "advice," in effect, invited prospects to co-create the restaurant. That triggered a gratifying sense of tribal togetherness.

"Companies struggle to get consumers to feel bonded with and therefore loyal to their brands," Cialdini says. "It’s a battle they’ve been winning by inviting current and prospective customers to co-create with them novel or updated products and services, most often by providing the company with information as to desirable features.

"However, within such marketing partnerships, consumer input must be framed as advice to the company, not as opinions about or expectations for the company.

"The differential phrasing might seem minor, but it is critical to achieving the company’s unitization goal. Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s. Providing an opinion or expectation, on the other hand, puts a person in an introspective state of mind, which involves focusing on oneself. These only slightly different forms of consumer feedback—and the nonetheless vitally different merging-versus-separating mind-sets they produce—can have a significant impact on consumer engagement with a brand.”

The Return of the Native

At a workshop on ad retargeting I recently attended, a well-seasoned colleague dropped the word "advertorial" in conversation.

My response: "I bet that's something no Millennial's ever heard of."

Before The New Rules of Marketing and PR ushered in the era of "brand journalism," advertorials were a staple of B2B advertisers and publishers.

And they still are—even more so. But today we call them "native ads."

A wolf in sheep's clothing, a native ad is meant to trick the reader.

The term "native" implies the ad has infiltrated the flock.

It says nothing about its clothing—its look and feel.

But that's misleading, says ad salesman Rich Rosenzweig.

An ad isn't "native" just because it's commingled with non-branded content, Rosenweig says. It's native because it disguises itself—and doesn't "interrupt" the reader.

"An ad unit is native only when it matches the look, feel, user path, and quality standards of the editorial content to which it’s adjacent," Rosenzweig says.

Artless native ads—non-skippable video ads, in particular—backfire, because they interrupt readers.

"Poorly executed native ads wind up tarnishing both the advertiser and the publisher; an unexpected interruption contributes to ad blindness, ad avoidance, and ultimately, ad blocking," Rosenzweig says.

Publishers are more to blame than advertisers, because they've dropped all standards.

"The relationship between branded content and the editorial feed is very much in flux," Rosenwieg says, "with different publishers taking wildly different approaches to how they position one against the other."

If publishers don't adopt a few reader-friendly standards soon, they're likely to drive them all to safer pastures.

How to Measure Content Marketing Success

Measuring your content marketing success is easy, digital marketer Barry Feldman says. Just apply these 10 metrics:

Website traffic. Use Google Analytics to determine how many people visited your site, where they came from, and which pages they went to.

Subscriber growth. Monitor your headcount, because email is "your most important play for staying top-of mind with prospects," Feldman says.

Search rankings. Gauge your rankings with Google Analytics, with the goal of reaching Page 1 for any relevant search.

Time. Digital channels are unique, because they allow you to monitor "engagement" without fancy studies. You want visitors to dwell on a page for as long as it takes the average person to read the content there.

Social media followers. Far from being a “vanity metric,” audience size indicates whether the content you publish has appeal.

Social media shares. Social sharing is often automated, and people routinely share content without reading it, so shares don't mean much. But they do loosely correlate to website traffic and search rankings, so are worth your attention.

Links. "Measuring links will help you to gauge the traction your content is gaining," Feldman says. Inbound links indicate your content's cool. To measure them, set up a Talkwalker Alert.

Click-through rate. Click-through rate (CRT) is the be-all, end-all, because "marketers who earn high CTR will win regardless of the channel." CTR proves you've won the competition for people's attention.

Leads. Leads are paramount; but, remember, a lead's more than a subscriber. A lead has to "raise her hand" by registering for an event, requesting a demo, downloading a brochure, or taking some similar step.

Feedback. Comments come in many forms: social media updates, shares and direct messages; blog comments; emails and phone calls; form submissions; and reviews. Taking comments into account helps you improve your content.

Covfefe

Blogger Josh Bernoff has discovered the meaning of the word "covfefe" in the president's famous and now-deleted Tweet.

"Here’s what the word 'covfefe' means: It means 'I am a crazy person,'" Bernoff says.

"This president is not a master manipulator of media. He is a wacko with little grasp of reality that says the first thing that comes into his mind. That is the meaning of 'covfefe.' It’s a variant of 'crazy.'"

Many critics of the president have reached a similar conclusion.

But do typos imply the writer is dotty? Or are they, as sociologists argue, joyful centerpieces of digital writing?

"Digital writing is inherently playful, first of all, because the medium, the computer, invites participants to 'fiddle,' and to invoke the frame of 'make-believe,'” says Brenda Danet. 

"When this frame is operating, participants understand and accept the meta-message 'this is play.'”

Digital writing's hallmarks, Danet says, are four: haste, ephemerality, interactivity, and freedom from the "tyranny" of paper. In essence, digital writing is just like kibitzing, a stream-of-conscious game people play. There, like lots of nonsense, typos are the rule.

So do typos ever matter?

They do, in my book, when they riddle public-facing communications, because they open you to ridicule.

Ridiculous people (and brands) aren't merely hacks: they're clowns. 

And clowns aren't trustworthy. 

Clowns can even be scary. 

Or covfefe, if you prefer.

The New New Rules of Marketing and PR

Either write something worth reading or
do something worth writing about.

— Benjamin Franklin

David Meerman Scott galvanized marketers a decade ago with The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

The book still makes everyone's list of "all-time favorites."

Scott's advice was premised on a sudden realization: gatekeepers had grown irrelevant.

If marketers only thought and acted like journalists, and exploited the popularity of websites and social media channels, their messages could "go direct" to customers.

Revolutionary thinking in the day.

But times change, the tragedy of the commons is inescapable, and rules wear out.

Content Shock is now Public Enemy Number 1.

The new new rules of marketing and PR are:

1. Don't create content. Create content customers want.
   
   
2. Don't create buzz. Create products that create buzz.

5 Keys to Content Marketing Success

Sadly, 6 in 10 content marketers can't measure success.

Measuring success requires that you establish goals and KPIs, says DMG's Gordon Plutsky:

Reach. How many people does our content touch? Measures include page views, social impressions, newsletter opens, etc.

Engagement. How many people read our content? Measures include clicks, PDF downloads, video views, etc.

Sharing. Do people share our content? Measures include shares on social networks, forwarding of links, forwarding of newsletters, etc.

Conversion. Do people raise a hand? Measures include list sign-ups, form completions, webinar sign-ups, sales inquiries, etc.

Revenue. Do people buy anything? To measure sales, you must code your inbound tactics and import the attributions to your CRM system—a process that defies even the most practiced marketers.

Feel daunted? View success as a "comprehensive strategic plan rather than a ream of numbers," Plutsky says.

Blogs Top Choice for Lead Generation

Search Engine Journal asked 230 marketers which content attracted the most leads.

Their top choice: blogs.

Four in 10 marketers (41%) named blogs the best content for lead generation (their second choice was white papers (14%)).

If blogs are indeed the best content for lead generation, shouldn't you learn how to blog effectively?

I'd suggest you begin by choosing a form. Two schools of thought prevail:

Long form. Andy Crestodina recommends 1,200 to 1,800 word posts. Google likes long posts, and readers are more apt to share them than they are their short cousins.

Short form. Seth Godin recommends "microcopy," because we live in "the age of the glance."

The choice between the two comes down to your goal:

• Are you aiming to be perceived as an authority? Then long is your best bet.

• Are you aiming to bolster awareness? Then short's your best bet.

Whichever form you choose, I'd suggest you next decide on your beat. What subjects should you cover? 

The choice is obviously most influenced by whatever you sell, but should also take into account competitors' and trade publishers' blogs (you want to be distinctive). And you should be able to crystallize your beat readily:

• We simplify fire-science breakthroughs

• We go inside SaaS marketing

• We promote faster LMS adoption

Lastly—whatever beat you choose—learn how to write readable posts.

Every post you write should be succinct, useful, insightful, startling, newsworthy, and entertaining. Every post should aim to change readers' lives; or their preconceptions, anyway. And every post should omit puffery. Save that for sales calls.

If you want to improve your blogging skills in a single day, sit down and read Bill Blunder's The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.

Content Marketers: Are You Running a Greasy Spoon?

I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards.

― Don DeLillo

Content Marketing Digest describes the difference between the work of an SEO consultant and that of a brand journalist as "the difference between a greasy spoon diner with a broken dishwasher and a five-star restaurant."

You not only handicap, but harm, your brand when you make SEO your content marketing goal.

Feeding your tribe Michelin-star morsels should be your goal.

SEO-focused content marketing tarnishes your brand, says content marketer Roman Kowalski, because the consultants who practice it consider content "just a wrapper to contain the backlink." That mindset "leads to the creation of articles that don’t measure up to journalistic standards."

Consultants who focus on SEO are also hoodwinking clients, Kowalski says, by pretending they can still just swipe other brands' content; have a student in India rewrite it; run the keyword-stuffed abomination through Copyscape; and generate Google juice. The days when that tactic worked have passed. Google is wise to it. The best you can hope for from the tactic are for a few backlinks to appear on some bottom-feeder's website. And you'd better pray no client reads your content.

More effective, Kowalski says, is to create original content customers might read―and enjoy. Like case studies, research reports, how-to manuals, insight papers, or opinion pieces.

Most effective is old-fashioned PR―the creation of well-researched pieces that would pass traditional editorial oversight by mainstream and trade media outlets.

"Creating this type of article is far beyond the domain of the SEO consultant," Kowalski says. "It requires the unbiased eye of a trained journalist who also has the mind of a marketer.

"The goal isn’t just to drive traffic―it is to provide useful content and to engage the audience.

"As search engine algorithms grow more sophisticated every year, marketers will have to continuously adjust their strategies to shift from simply capturing eyeballs to capturing mindshare."

Yours Truly

Tonight and every weekday night, Bob Bailey in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account, America's fabulous free-lance insurance investigator...

— Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Serial proved crime pays—and that podcasting deserves every marketer's attention.

One in five Americans listens to a podcast every month, according to Pew Research, and broadcast-quality production has never been easier (or cheaper) since Tascam introduced MiniStudio Creator at The NAB Show last month.

"Time-shifted radio," podcasts attract loyal followers and forge rich connections.

Podcasting on a regular basis (as content marketing expert Mark Schaefer does) is a brilliant way to enrich a blog; and podcasting from live events will amplify any brand's presence.

The podcast-listening experience is unique in social channels: audio is intimate in a way video and images are not.

Content literally lodges in your head—the spot where brands want to be.

Marketers, furthermore, can enhance their podcasts with supplementary content and commentary, and track leads from specific podcasts by including custom URL callouts.

Still not sold? Consider three more facts:

• Podcast listeners spend an average of 4 hours a week listening to podcasts, according to Edison Research;
  
• 70% of podcast listeners are Millennials, according to Nielson; and
  
• Podcast listeners are twice as likely to follow your brand as the average social media user, according to Edison Research.

Content is Everything (or Why CMOs Fail)

Content is king.

— Bill Gates

CMOs tend to survive only a tad over two years.

There's a reason. While they're supposed to be leaders, most are overpaid closet organizers.

Instead of generating demand, they busy themselves with rearranging the company's "digital assets," so salespeople and customers can find them.

Big Data is their latest space-saving gadget. With it, they can go to town again rearranging the assets, this time in hyper-segmented, algorithm-based bins.

Meanwhile, salespeople still spend 40% of their time compiling their own deal-closing content, and 60% of customers think Marketing's content is crap.

CMOs, I have news for you: Marketing isn't logistics, or distribution, or document management. Marketing is content. And content is everything.

If you want to succeed, focus on quality content:

1. Know the buyers
2. Understand Sales' pipeline
3. Create content aligned with both

What are you waiting for? Your next pink slip?

Want More Business? Activate Availability Bias.

Today, my business partner and I will send 43,000 prospects an email, something we plan to do every month.

We hope to land new business right away as a result.

But we're really counting on our monthly email, one day, to activate prospects' availability bias.

Availability bias is a flaw in thinking. We all have it. It's activated by a recent event that grabs our attention.

For example, we're much more likely to fear our kid will be groped by a teacher after learning about such an incident from the news. We overreact by overestimating a groping incident's probability. We remove our kid from school for a week.

Availability bias savaged air travel after September 11, even though the probability of a terrorist attack was miniscule. Availability bias is also the reason people believe vaccines cause autism, which of course is nonsense.

As a rule, we overweigh evidence that readily comes―that's easily available―and that has grabbed our attention recently. That's because the evidence is easily retrieved from our memory.

Essentially, we're all lazy thinkers.

In sending our email, my partner and I assume at least a few of those 43,000 prospects will need our magic in the next several months.

And when that thought crosses their minds, there our names will be―at the top of the memory stack.

Superman was a Content Creator

We often forget a significant fact.

When disguised as mild-mannered Clark Kent, the Man of Steel worked as a reporter for the Daily Planet.

HAT TIP: Thanks go to content creator Matthew Grocki for reminding me Superman was a content creator.

Content Marketers, You are Not a Committee

Why are most corporate blogs mind numbing?

They're the products of committees.

Every post is the same. Safe. Sanctioned. Sanitized.

No one owns the content, so it's uninspired and impassionate.

If you want to improve your corporate blog, find employees who love their work and ask them to contribute (if you can't, you have a bigger problem than a boring blog).

Give them one, simple instruction: You are not a committee.

Then get out of their way and watch what they do. You'll soon have a much better blog.

As Mark Hamill recently told the audience of Content Marketing World, "Follow your own inspiration. If you find something engaging, find a way to repurpose it through your own prism. Believe in yourself and trust your instincts."

 You are not a committee.

Spam. A Lot.

Wasting the time of the audience is damaging the medium itself.

― Derek Harding

Email marketers, take comfort: 7 in 10 customers prefer to receive your content by email, rather than through social media channels, according to EveryCloud.

But that doesn't mean customers won't report you as a spammer.

Nearly half of all emails are spam, EveryCloud says; and because they are, your customers are steeled for a fight.

On any given day, 45% might report your email as spam, because they think you send too often; 36%, because they don't remember subscribing; and 31%, because your content seems irrelevant.

Spam isn't customers' only source of frustration, says EveryCloud.

Customers in general think marketers put them on too many lists, and have no patience for their fine-print advisories about name-use.

What can you do to avoid annoying customers? The answers are self-evident:

• Send great content
• Send it infrequently
• Be clear about your name-use

Stories are Elementary

IBM's supercomputer Watson is named after the company's first CEO.

But the Watson we remember and love was the storyteller.

It's elementary.

Stories stick.

Content's just content.

Now that IBM's Watson can publish content better than any human, the marketer who can't tell an arresting story is dead meat.

Sadly, that's the majority.

If you're publishing content without telling stories, it’s time to reboot and retool.

The silicon Watson can now publish content better than you can.

But how do you tell a story?

You don't patchwork data, as this tale does:

Acme will save 40% of its IT infrastructure costs over the next four years by migrating to a cloud solution. Acme is a small company without IT staff. Before our team migrated its users to the cloud, Acme used a single Domino server, which served up mail and one application, as well as a Traveler server for six mobile devices. Our team migrated all of the users from the on-premise Domino solution to a standalone cloud solution. This also included moving the six Traveler devices. Each user was reconfigured to connect to the cloud servers and provisioned with a clean mail file, as well as given a local copy of his or her old mail file to use as an archive. In addition, the one application (a vacation calendar) was moved to the cloud. In order to do this, we set up a user called vacations@acme.net and had all vacation requests sent to this account. Administrators were then able to go in and approve or deny them. In addition, all users can now view the vacation calendar to see who is in or out on a given day. With a small operation and no in-house IT support, Acme wanted to get back to “doing business” instead of “supporting business.” The cloud solution lowered its costs by eliminating the yearly licensing of Domino and decreasing the onsite footprint of servers.

What should you do, instead?

• Give us a character we can care about
• Give us a drama with a narrative arc
• Give us details that help us imagine what happened
• Spare us unnecessary facts
• Give us insights, new perspective, and a call to action

In short, give us a story:

One of America's most known and respected anvil makers, Acme is a small business whose profits were at risk due to recurring IT costs and poor vacation planning. Ironically, the company's IT needs were simple―email and a sharable vacation calendar―so simple, in fact, the company had no IT staff. But it did have two servers that needed babysitting, and which occupied an office that a key salesperson coveted; plus a $10,000 a year software license―and no sharable vacation calendar. Our team helped Acme move to the cloud. In doing so, we equipped every employee with email and gave everyone access to the vacation calendar, so employees can now plan their work around others' absences. As a result, Acme's two servers are history; the $10,000 annual license is history; a top salesperson now has the office she so desperately wanted, instead of a cubicle on the plant floor; and the company is running a lot smoother. Acme will cut IT costs by 40% in the next four years! Would you like to do that? Give us a call today.

See the difference?

It's elementary.