5 Ways to Optimize Your Content Marketing

Is your content marketing strategy falling short, or not living up to your expectations? It may be time to optimize. Creating valuable content is a good start, but there are other aspects to consider. Planning the ins and outs of both your current and future content marketing strategy is the only way to ensure success.

Sound overwhelming? Don’t panic – here are a few simple tips to consider.

Switch it up. Don’t get stuck in a rut –producing diverse content is the easiest way to keep your audience active and engaged. Exploring new ways to format and present your content also keeps you current and interesting in the eyes of your audience. Step outside of your comfort zone – don’t be afraid to try something new.

Produce quality over quantity. Mass producing content may seem like a great way to generate clicks, but in the end, people will see right through you. Practicing thought leadership and strategic planning makes your content more credible.

Put yourself in their shoes. Take a walk in the shoes of your target audience and use social listening techniques to keep current about what they are saying. The best way to understand what they’re looking for is to view your content through their eyes and have a clear understanding of their thoughts and opinions.

Take it up a notch. In the world of content marketing, you’re always competing with someone. In order to stand out, you need to make an impression on your audience – and sometimes this includes paying for a service such as paid search or advertising. Consider multiple options for promoting your content – the possibilities are endless!

Think about user experience. The format in which you present your content is just as important as the content itself. The experience users have while viewing your content is crucial – if they aren’t impressed, they may not return. Design accordingly.

For content marketing and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

Source

Drive Consumers To Your Brand

Consumers like excitement, and as marketers, it’s our job to stimulate that excitement within every aspect of our brand. We’re constantly implementing new techniques to improve our social media, advertisements, and overall messaging to get people talking.

Here’s the thing we often forget – consumers don’t always know what they want – in fact, many people rely on what someone or something tells them first before forming their own opinion.

In a marketer’s ideal world, new customers would come to us because they’re actively seeking our product or service. Obviously, this is not always the case. Customers tend to seek out brands based on second-hand information; they “heard” it was popular, expensive, high-quality, etc.

So how can you make sure your brand is intriguing the type of customers you’re looking for? Simple: understand the customer decision making process:

1. Customers aren’t experts. You know your brand inside and out, but not all of your customers do. So how do they formulate educated opinions? If your brand gets people talking and has a lot of positive feedback, new customers are more likely to explore what you have to offer. Maintaining a positive, memorable public perception of your brand could be the difference between making it big and falling short.
2. Money talks. Brands are associated with value. For example, in the customer’s mind, high quality = high price and low quality = low price, even though this isn’t necessarily true. It’s important to price your brand accordingly – you don’t want customers to under/overvalue what you have to offer, and you don’t want to target the wrong market.
3. Words, Words, Words. They go a long way, and more importantly they stick. Potential customers will associate your brand with words you use in your slogans and advertisements, so choose wisely! You want people to remember positive words and phrases, not negative ones.

Creating and maintaining a successful brand is a lot of work, but by understanding what goes into your customers’ decisions, you’re able to better tailor your image.

For branding and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

*Source: BrandingStrategyInsider.com

Marketing as a Science

In this digital age, many marketing campaigns are comprised of several online tactics – search engine optimization, targeting advertising, pay-per-click advertising, social media, etc. So, it is not unreasonable to say that marketing has become very scientific. 

Here are four principles to marketing as a science:

-Data-Driven Decisions Making

-Empirical Pattern Recognition & Model Building

-Controlled Experimentation – Hypothesize, Test, Refine

-Cross-Pollination of Ideas from Other Scientific Disciplines 

What do you think – is marketing more of an art or a science?

For full-service marketing, contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024. 

Reference: http://selnd.com/103YgSz

4 Questions to Consider Before Sending a Press Release

A good press release can be like free advertising for your company if it gets published. But for every newsworthy press release a reporter reads, they see about a hundred bad press releases. So before you send that press release to your contact list, here are four important questions to ask:

-Will anyone care about this?

-Does my press release cover new ground?

-Have I already issued a press release about this?

-When is the event occurring?

For public relations, and all other marketing services, contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024.

Reference: http://bit.ly/148XQD1  

Tips for Reaching Your Mobile Audience

More and more, marketers and advertisers are seeing their target audience interact with their brand through mobile engagement. It’s not surprising since most people use their smartphone, tablet or other mobile device to access on-the-go information.

Since we know that our targets our using their mobile devices to access our content, it’s important to keep it optimized for mobile. Here are a few tips to do so:

-Be more thoughtful with your posts
-Add value to the mobile experience – don’t make them navigate too much
-Design for mobile first
-Test different mobile platforms and know the differences
-Analyze traffic

To effectively integrate a mobile strategy with your overall marketing campaign, contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024.

Reference: http://bit.ly/ZqTB02

Social Media Errors to Avoid

With so many outlets to push content, and so many topics, social media isn’t always a formulated tactic. Successfully executing social media within your marketing plan requires fresh content, new ideas and the willingness to take risk. With so little rules about what you can and can’t discuss on social media, there’s a lot that can go wrong.

In fact, there are plenty of common errors that brands often make, including:

-Taking on too much. Instead attempting to be involved in every trend, target differently on various networks. For example, post pictures and infographics on Flickr, Instagram and Facebook; share thought-provoking articles on LinkedIn and Twitter.

-Using the same social media profile for both professional and personal. It’s OK to have personality in your professional posts (tone of voice, etc.), but keep overly personal opinions, pictures, quotes off of professional profiles. Sharing your opinion on an emotional topic with your network of work professionals or coming from your brand, can diminish your credibility as a thought leader.

 -Not planning how to convert engagement into business. People may like or share your posts from time to time, but are they engaged enough to use your services? Drive social media audience to specific landing pages so they will be more likely to convert to a customer or client.

-Posting only company updates. If your audience thinks you are always selling through social media, they will stop enjoying your posts. Share some company updates, but also be sure to comment on trending topics and industry-related articles.

-Thinking one size fits all. Just because most companies have a Facebook and Twitter, doesn’t mean that those have to be your most popular social media networks. Think about your goals – if you’re primarily business to business, LinkedIn may be a better place to focus more of your social media energy on.

For social media marketing, and all other marketing services, contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024.

Resource: http://prdaily.com/Main/Articles/14060.aspx  

Content Marketing is a Priority for B2B Marketers

Content Marketing. Are you sick of that buzz phrase yet? Well don’t be because it’s here to stay – for now. In fact, according to this article, content marketing is a priority for marketers as we end this year and enter the next. This article says that 9 out of 10 marketers are actively using it, with B2B content marketers using an average of 12 tactics – an increase from 8 in the past couple of years.

And if you’re nervous about trying content marketing, you’re not alone. According to this report, producing enough content is the biggest challenge marketers (64%) are facing as far as content marketing. View more infographics and the link to full report here.

Jump on board with content marketing by contacting Sagefrog Marketing Group! Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024.