Here are The Marketing Automation Alert’s best marketing automation-related articles curated today, Wednesday, 3/20/13. Receive a daily summary of The Marketing Automation Alert directly to your inbox. Subscribe here (your privacy is protected). If you find this valuable, please share by using the links below:
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Featured Marketing Automation Article
From www.slideshare.net – Today, 8:55 AM
“Today I’m giving a presentation at the Marketing Operations Executive Summit on agile marketing. Given the tremendous disruption in marketing and business today, I truly believe that embracing an agile approach to marketing management may be the single most valuable decision an organization can make.”
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
To date, the DEFINITIVE guide to Agile Marketing. If you wanted to know what it is, how it works, what you need to do, then this deck is it. BONUS: Scott Brinker also provides a detailed write-up that accompanies this deck.
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LinkedIn: Do New Offerings Make It the King of B2B? – B2B Digital Marketing
From b2bdigital.net – Today, 8:50 AM
When LinkedIn introduces a new advertising option, as a B2B advertiser, you should pay attention. These two new offerings are some of the most interesting recent introductions for both B2B content …
Summary…
Use Your SlideShare Content in LinkedIn Ads
Now you can promote your SlideShare content on LinkedIn with both the benefits of advertising on LinkedIn (including excellent targeting options) and content posted on SlideShare (including sharing and engaging). You can even include, in typical SlideShare fashion, lead capture within your content.
Target Advertising Across the Web Using LinkedIn Data
Now, as part of a partnership between LinkedIn and Media6Degrees, you can use LinkedIn’s audience profiles to target your audience across the web. The strength of LinkedIn’s profile data makes this one of the most interesting new online targeting options for B2B marketers in quite some time and one worth paying attention to. If LinkedIn makes their audience data available to additional partners, this could become the new standard for audience targeting in B2B.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Your LinkedIn marketing continues to grow in importance.
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Organizing For Content – Marketing Land
From marketingland.com – Today, 8:36 AM
How should organizations organize for content? Are brands really publishers? Very few have hired people with “content” or “editor” in their titles.
Yet, more and more companies are producing content like crazy. Also, multiple websites. Large corporations have tens of millions of visitors to their dot-coms each month, perhaps 5-10 million email subscribers. Then, there are blogs, YouTube channels and multiple social media channels on social networks.
If you’re producing content, start asking yourself these questions…
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
If you’re responsible for content creation, you’ll want to click through to view a list of questions that you can use to audit your content creation process (way too many to scoop here). It is a complete, thought-provoking and probably process-shifting series of questions.
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The Definitive Content Marketing Formula – Search Engine Journal
From www.searchenginejournal.com – Today, 8:41 AM
“Content Marketing has been remarkably exposed over marketers’ activities the last couple of years. However, companies seem to struggle upon the development of profitable content marketing strategies.”
Conclusion…
As a result, given the fact that this formula can effectively match to the online marketer’s expectations in order to build successful content marketing strategies, the overall rationale of this process can be absolutely complied with their needs. A combination of content marketing and search engine optimization tactics, all applied to this formula can fill the gap and improve the search organic visibility of particularly e-retailing websites. However, I want again to stress out the need of focusing both to the general image of the process and to each individual step separately, as both of them are equally important for the development of successful content marketing campaigns.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
If you’re relatively new to the content marketing process, this article will be of value to you, covering the basics associated with content research, creation, distribution and metrics. Simple and easy for the beginner.
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10 Secrets to the Perfect Webinar – ClickZ
From www.clickz.com – Today, 8:21 AM
Position your brand as a thought leader and build your funnel and grow your social footprint with the perfect webinar.
Summary…
Here are 10 best practices for making yours a success:
- Select the right speaker.
- No speakerphone.
- Have multiple presenters and show their photos.
- Start five minutes after the hour.
- No bait and switches.
- You do have something to present.
- Your video won’t play. For what it’s worth, I’ve had my best experiences showing videos on webinars using the ON24 platform.
- Share case studies and category-specific information.
- Use a ringer. [Have] a plant from your team on the call who can ask you an interesting, non-softball question to get the ball rolling.
- Close the loop.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
We’ve done hundreds of webinars, and there are many other nuances, but these are the basics. We’ll add, however, the importance of dry runs, which benefit you from speaker presentation to technical troubleshooting.
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Aberdeen View: Social Selling Powers B2B Success
From www.midsizeinsider.com – Today, 8:30 AM
Practical Perspectives for the Midsize Business. Brought to you by IBM.
Synopsis…
Collaborative selling
[The] most effective sales teams utilize collaborative applications, generally integrated into the CRM, to facilitate a virtual water-cooler environment and encourage user-generated content that helps add to the overall tribal knowledge of the enterprise. As a result, sellers more effectively tap into the collective wisdom of a larger circle of knowledge.
Intelligence-gathering
Research Fact: the Best-in-Class are 90% more likely to use “Predictive social intelligence: using current data about prospects / customers to highlight most likely repeat purchasing patterns,” compared with other companies. The form factor of this informal user-generated content is often of benefit to sales reps seeking to end-around the polished and scrubbed pronouncements of corporate PR teams. Even better, it creates the opportunity to cut through red tape via…
Direct messaging
We repeatedly hear in about scenarios in which a prospect does not answer the phone or e-mails but responds quickly to a direct message. I’m sure that many of us have a love-hate relationship with our inboxes – and perhaps someday direct messages will become more annoying than they are now – but today, this communications modality is fresh and new enough to make it the communications channel of choice between seller and buyer personas. Try it a few times; you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The Non-Salesy SME
[A] wise sales professional will actually not make a sales pitch within their social networks, but rather become a subject matter expert whom their prospects and customers come to associate with helpful knowledge. The easiest way to do this is to simply re-tweet (curate) the content that the product experts, engineers, or intellectual leaders within your organization are producing; there is little need to create fresh content, given the remarkably easy curation tools within social networks.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
We wouldn’t necessarily call this social selling, rather, how to use social media to enhance the B2B sales process. Q: does your sales process incorporate social media as a sales tool? Does your sales training? Click through for more explanation behind each point.
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Event Marketing Giveaways That Work | Forrester Blogs
From blogs.forrester.com – Today, 7:57 AM
Excerpt…
Consider:
1. If the swag connects back to your brand message enough to be worth offering at all: The $2 bill test; Company branding; Value alignment.
2. How valuable and useful the swag is for your intended audience: Usability; Interactivity; Durability; Portability.
3. How practical the item is logistically: Unit cost; Reusability; Portability.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Just this graphic alone is very useful when evaluating your choice of tchotchkes. (We disagree with the term Swag: one has Swag, one doesn’t give away Swag. On the other hand, the giveaway, if done right, is not a tchotchke or worthless piece of crap.) The full interactive tool is available for Forrester subscribers.
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Marketers Eager for Facebook Hashtags – ClickZ
From www.clickz.com – Today, 7:59 AM
Excerpt…
Love them or hate them, hashtags are reportedly coming to Facebook – sometime – and most marketers couldn’t be happier.
Although there has been no official announcement or comment by the social media giant, the long-rumored idea of Facebook incorporating hashtags – the ubiquitous # symbol used on Twitter to make certain keywords or topics searchable – gathered momentum late last week after “informed sources” told The Wall Street Journal that the company is indeed serious about the idea. The sources reportedly told the WSJ, however, that the move is not imminent.
The tags could also give community managers, frustrated by perceived lower organic reach caused by Facebook’s new algorithms, the prospect of regaining some audience attention. And hashtags could also serve as important tools for cross-platform marketing campaigns, according to Steve Birkett, marketing associate with the Esvee Group, a marketing and web services consultancy in Brooklyn. Users could also post promotional hashtags on their pages if they so choose, as they do on Twitter.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Scooped as an FYI for you, something to look for down the road.
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How to create the perfect infographic – Econsultancy
From econsultancy.com – Today, 7:45 AM
Once a fun and useful way of presenting data in an easy-to-digest format, infographics have been overused to the point that their reputation is close to ruin.
Topline…
The five basic steps are:
- Find some data. Infographics require useful, accurate data, so you need to search online to find it.
- Sort the data. Check through the data to make sure that it’s high quality and relevant to your topic.
- Arrange the data. Use the data to create a narrative.
- Present the data. You need to create a readable infographic that guides people through the data.
- Share the data. Get the infographic out there so people start linking back to your client’s site.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Each step is explained within the article, and on the heels of the adjacent HBR blog scoop, you’ll want to click through to review.
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20 Do’s & Don’ts for Clickable Calls-to-Action – HubSpot
From www.slideshare.net – Today, 7:49 AM
Familiarize yourself with these 20 critical CTA do’s and don’ts so you can create marketing calls-to-action that get visitors clicking.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
The deck is self explanatory (and very useful). If you want more detail, go to the HubSpot blog.
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Marketing Research Chart: Marketers’ list growth tactics | MarketingSherpa
From article – Today, 7:29 AM
In this week’s chart, we learn about the types of tactics employed by organizations to grow and expand email lists.
Q: Which of the following tactics is your organization using to drive email list growth? Please select all that apply.
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We’ve Reached Peak Infographic, and We’re No Smarter for It – HBR Blog
From blogs.hbr.org – Today, 7:42 AM
It’s time to acknowledge the shortcomings of infographics as much as we celebrate their upsides.
Key snippet…
It’s time we acknowledge the shortcomings of infographics as much as we celebrate their upsides. That’s harder to do now that infographics have exploded as a cottage industry within design. The boom began in 2006 with the launch of GOOD magazine, my former employer, which emphasized infographics from the start and was named a National Magazine Award finalist for its work in 2008. Fast Company and Wired entered the game. Today, entire design studios are dedicated to creating these illustrative data dumps.
Since leaving my job earlier this year, I’ve had the opportunity to create infographics on a freelance basis for several publications. When I speak to potential clients, I often realize that they’re more interested in churning out the form than in telling a story. An idea without supporting data; a list; a business plan; a resume — none of these are infographics, no matter what they’re labeled. And even if the data exists, just because you can create an infographic doesn’t mean you should.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
We’re seeing the same: infographics created for the sake of infographics. They play an important role so long as they are built with the same degree of detail as any other content marketing piece, e.g., we toil over white papers, but do we toil to the same degree over infographics. Sidebar: we’re still waiting for B2B comic books (not kidding!).
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Content Marketing For SEO – What You Need To Know [INFOGRAPHIC] – Sekari
From www.sekari.com – Today, 6:59 AM
Content marketing is an essential element of any successful SEO campaign. In this infographic, we reveal the facts any figures behind content marketing.
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