Blog - Page 2 of 22 - Michael Dillon

May 15, 2017

Benefits of event-based content marketing

Many marketers can agree that events are powerful tactics that can help increase sales, drive engagement and deepen relationships. However, did you know that the content surrounding events is equally valuable?

Think of this event content as all of the data and information surrounding an event — not just the event name, date and description — but also things like metadata, images and RSVPs. Most of these elements are not currently published, collected or tracked. However, rich event content provides gives a detailed view of your events, and brings your audience much closer to attending.

For marketers, the benefits of event content stretch across the event lifecycle, from search engine optimization leading to increased traffic and attendance to post-event analytics, which will help inform future efforts. Imagine a world where you have all of this content for not only each event, but for the dozens, hundreds or even thousands of events […]

How To Choose the Best CMS for Your Business Needs

When deciding to build a new website, many businesses’ first question is: what CMS should I choose? But picking a CMS isn’t about choosing whatever the best CMS in the market is. Every company’s needs are different and, accordingly, different CMS platforms will be best for different companies.

Many companies also get stuck in the idea of whether to choose a proprietary or an open source solution, or to find a platform that is specifically catered to their industry. Although these can be helpful things to think about, they can also be counterproductive if they take away from choosing the best CMS platform for you . In fact, going for a platform that isn’t an obvious choice for your industry may lead to great ideas you hadn’t considered.

The key when it comes to choosing a CMS is to understand your unique requirements and those of your customers and to pick […]

Don’t Kill Your Audience’s Vibe with These Content Marketing Turn-Offs

As of 2017, the overwhelming majority ( 89% ) of B2B marketers use content marketing in some form. As you can imagine, how well marketers execute their campaigns varies quite a bit.

Or, as The Content Marketing Institute would put it, there are differences in “content marketing maturity levels.” As you can see, a fairly small number (28%) would be considered either mature or sophisticated.

The rest could definitely use some improvement, and there’s a lot of room for growth for many content marketers.

One thing I’ve noticed (especially when it comes to those new to the game) is that many brands engage in tactics that could be considered turn-offs.This doesn’t necessarily mean being unethical or using black-hat techniques.It means unknowingly using tactics that annoy site visitors and slowly but surely drive a wedge between the company and its audience.At best, this results in diminished engagement, a lower follower count, etc.At worst, […]

How to Write Compelling Email Content Customers Want to Read [Infographic]

As consumers, we’re often quick to delete emails that don’t seem relevant to us. So when we put on our marketer hats, we should be thinking about what our customers want to hear more than what our brands want to say.

That may seem obvious, but writing compelling content is harder than it looks.

Luckily, an infographic by Campaigner gives actionable tips on how to write great emails.

For example, 69% of email recipients report an email as spam based solely on the subject line, the infographic says, and it offers six tips for crafting read-worthy subject lines.In addition to the message and the words, focus on the layout of your emails, the infographic suggests. Many people skim emails, so using lists, bullets, and easy-to-read formatting can make a big difference.For more tips on crafting compelling emails, check out the infographic: Join over 600,000 marketing professionals, and gain access to thousands of […]

Steal These 5 Subject Line Tips for Increasing Your Email Open Rates1

121.

That’s the number of emails the average person receives per day, according to a study by the The Radicati Group .

Does this mean that sending email marketing campaigns is futile? Is there simply too much clutter in the inbox for your company to break through? Heck no!

While there is definitely steep competition for attention, a strong subject line will put all eyes on your email. That’s why I’m going to share five stellar examples of email subject lines that you can adapt for your own campaigns to cut through the noise! 1. Create a sense of urgency According to the Email Institute, email subject lines that create a sense of urgency can lift open rates by up to 22% !When a consumer feels a sense of urgency they are compelled to move through the sales cycle quickly so they do not miss out. Brands can create a sense of […]

17 Tricks for Boosting Conversions On Any Landing Page

Your new year’s resolution?

Boosting conversion rates , increasing business leads and achieving success!

You probably know from experience that just driving traffic to your website with content, social media, and paid ads is only half the battle – you either need to get more specialized landing pages, or perfect them so a visitor considers buying.

That means creating an effective and emotionally compelling case that showcases your product or service in the best possible light.Here are 17 tricks to making any landing page convert. Let’s get started. 1. Craft the most compelling headline Research shows that you have 0-8 seconds to capture a visitor’s interest with a compelling headline and landing page. After the eight seconds is up, most visitors leave.The headline is the first thing a visitor sees, ultimately deciding whether or not they want to stick around. When writing an effective headline, you should aim for a mix […]

Is Technology Actually Making Us Less Productive? [New Research]

After working in my role here at HubSpot for almost eight months now, I’ve started to go into autopilot when I turn on my computer every morning.

I open up my email app, my calendar app, my organization and productivity app, my grammar-checking app, my note-taking app, my analytics tool, and my blogging tool.

And that’s only when I first get into the office.

By the end of most days, my browser is full of different tabs, and so many apps and tools are running that they eventually start shutting down of their own accord. When all of these sites, apps, and tools are working, I spend a significant portion of my day using them: to write, to proofread, to extrapolate data, to keep track of what I’m working on, to update notes — all in the name of efficiency.But as it turns out, the tools and apps that we marketers use […]

Why the Future of Marketing Is Curiosity, Not Creation

Since the beginning, marketing has required a balance between analysis and execution. Especially in digital marketing, the cycle of analyze > optimize > execute > repeat is the nucleus of all successful initiatives.

But the age of cognitive marketing has begun, and robot assistants will handle more and more of the creation duties that used to belong to human marketers.

IBM (a Convince & Convert partner) is the forward guard of this movement, with their Watson Marketing suite of tools and APIs powering an increasing number of real-time analysis and optimization opportunities. The IBM Think Marketing portal , for example, uses the Watson CMS to automatically serve up a different mix of content based on what you’ve read in the past. This past weekend gave us another glimpse of marketing’s future, at The Masters golf tournament. IBM is a long-time sponsor of the storied event and provides all the technology for […]

3 Data-Driven Insights to Boost Your Guest Content Strategy

It’s every content marketer’s dream to have a perfect company blog. Imagine your site filled with a variety of content that shares unique and thoughtful insights, from exceptionally written articles to interactive infographics to professional videos. It’s enough to make any marketer swoon.

Unfortunately, even this stellar blog of your dreams isn’t enough on its own to get your brand in front of your full audience. It’s unlikely that your entire target audience already visits your blog regularly, so by posting only to your own site, you miss out on reaching those potential consumers who don’t follow you yet.

Enter guest-contributed content. Guest posting is a natural and effective way to meet consumers where they already are, and it promotes your ideas, raises brand awareness, and, ultimately, increases your bottom line . The Right Way to Contribute Guest Content

There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to get […]

High Traffic Does Not Equal Good Customer Experience

High website traffic is not necessarily a sign of a positive customer experience Just because a webpage is popular doesn’t mean that it’s useful. In fact, it could be getting in the way of a more useful page.

“We’ve recently decided to remove Basic rights at work, the most visited advice page on our website,” Hannah Horton from the UK’s Citizen Advice recently wrote. “It gets 70,000 visits a month and is in the top results for lots of queries about work problems on Google.”

If an organization was judging web success based on volume of traffic they would certainly not remove their most popular page. However, Citizen’s Advice does not measure success that way. It measures success based on how successful people are at solving problems.

The page wasn’t working. Firstly, the data told them that people were not searching for this page but were rather searching for much more specific […]