Emerging Baptist Business Blog: content

Friday, March 10, 2017

Is Your Content Marketing Designed for the New Customer Journey?

Thanks to the rise of the internet, the explosion of social media and the development of mobile technologies to feed these two innovations, the customer buying journey has become much more self-directed. According to a Forrester, 74% of business buyers say they conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase.

As a result, content marketing has emerged as an incredibly effective way to arm consumers with the information they seek and need, increase brand awareness, enhance engagement, and ultimately inspire action and conversions.

But content marketing isn’t about creating and sharing as much content as possible. It’s about creating quality content that allows you to be the best answer, whenever and wherever your audience is searching. And understanding today’s customer journey will be paramount to your content marketing success. Below is a great illustration from Forrester on the many intricacies that journey can entail. As you can see, it’s not an easy, neat sales funnel these days.

Photo Credit: Forrester
The bottom line? Your content marketing efforts have to be optimized in a way that allows you to reach your customers and prospects at multiple touch points during their journey.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Working Together in Perfect Harmony: Digital Advertising + Content Marketing

Content marketing has emerged as an incredibly effective way to arm consumers with the information they seek and need, increase brand awareness, enhance engagement, and ultimately inspire action and conversions. Lee Odden likes to say:

“Content isn’t King. It’s the Kingdom.”

But the kingdom is crowded. According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProf’s 2016 benchmark reports, 88% of B2B marketers and 76% of B2C marketers say they use content marketing.

With so many marketers in the content marketing game—many of them creating and publishing new content daily—competition is stiff. In addition, evolving algorithms for social media news feeds and search engine results make it even more difficult to get the right eyeballs on your content.

So, what’s the solution? How can you get that great content you’re creating in front of your target audience?

Awesome Business Facts

Two news headlines published on the same day last September summed up the U.S. economy perfectly: “U.S. Median Income Lowest Since 1995, “ and “Ferrari sales surge to record highs.”
Growth in America’s energy output since 2008 has surpassed that of any other country in the world, according to energy analyst Daniel Yergin.
Cambridge Associates estimates that 3% of venture capital firms generate 95% of the industry’s returns. It adds that there is little change in the composition of those 3% of firms over time.
The average new American home was 1,535 square feet in 1975 and 2,169 square feet in 2010, according to the Census Bureau.
According to a study by four economists from Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Vanguard, “the number of investors who check their accounts drops by 8.7% following a market decline compared to a market increase.”
The 100 largest public pension funds alone have $1.2 trillion of unfunded liabilities, according to actuarial firm Milliman.
According to a study by Environics Analytics WealthScapes, the average Canadian household is now richer than an average American household for the first time ever.
From 2005 to 2012, total student loans outstanding increased by $539 billion, according to the Federal Reserve.
Fortune magazine published an article titled “10 Stocks To Last the Decade” in August, 2000. By December 2012, the portfolio had lost 74.3% of its value, according to analyst Barry Ritholtz.
Since 2008, Americans have donated $19.1 million to the U.S. Treasury to help pay down the national debt.