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The Measure of a Brand: Content

mixer-medium_1280Marketers have a couple major hurdles to overcome: generating traffic and leads, and proving the ROI of marketing activities. According to a HubSpot survey of 4,500 marketing and sales professionals, these were the top two challenges agreed upon by 65 percent and 43 percent of respondents.

To address these challenges, successful companies are turning to marketing automation (MA) software, which is also known in some quarters, aptly, as “lead generation software.” While MA is certainly a boon to marketers—helping them to shorten the sales cycle and close deals more quickly—it is only as good as the content it supports. Continue reading “The Measure of a Brand: Content”

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Five Reasons Why Marketers Outsource Content Production

People often ask me why marketing departments hire third party content vendors to write business articles for their websites, blogs and social channels. Why not just keep the process in-house?

outsource-1345109_1280As I explained in a recent blog post, many marketers hate writing. Plain and simple. And even if you do love to write, it can be a huge hassle — especially when you have to do it week in and week out.

Here are five common reasons marketers outsource content:  Continue reading “Five Reasons Why Marketers Outsource Content Production”

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Leaky Pipes, Trust and Content Marketing

ThinkerWhen we moved into our new home, my wife and I knew that there was ample work to be done. While the house was structurally sound there were enough bullet points on the inspection report that I could reasonably argue it qualified as a fixer-upper.

But many of the aesthetic touch-ups we wanted to tackle had to be put on hold when we discovered that both our showers were leaking water into the first floor. Having just moved in, we didn’t know how long the problem had persisted, and we wouldn’t know the extent of the damage until we cut into our sheetrock to diagnose the problem.

Continue reading “Leaky Pipes, Trust and Content Marketing”

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Are We Still Arguing More or Less in Content Marketing?

qualification-543661_1280Maybe I’m getting old or have been in the content marketing business too long, but are we really still arguing whether more or less content is the issue—vs. the value of the content itself?

Content marketers: Your goal is to write—or have your in-house staff or outsourced content producers write—succinct content until you’ve made your point/concluded your argument with reasonable premises and so forth. This is the well-established standard for good writing. Even Shakespeare told us that “brevity is the soul of wit.”

Continue reading “Are We Still Arguing More or Less in Content Marketing?”