Measuring the ROI of content marketing
Despite a huge surge in adoption of content marketing, measuring the business impact or calculating the ROI of content marketing is complicated.
“How do I calculate content marketing ROI” is one of the questions I get the most from people wanting to start with content marketing. Often, when it comes to content marketing, marketers are struggling to build their own business case internally.
With this post I want to demystify the field of content marketing ROI, and provide some practical help on how marketers can measure things that have a quantifiable impact on the results of the brand.
In this post I cover the following subjects:
- what is important to measure?
- how do I select the right metrics and KPI’s?
- how can I setup a dashboard? how do you calculate ROI?
Are you ready? Here we go !
Non-obvious Digital Trends for 2017
Predicting digital trends is something many bloggers turn to as we move from an eventful 2016 into the new year.
When this type of content hits my inbox, I’m interested, but also often disappointed. The digital trends usually are a repeat of the obvious trends like “mobile is still hot”, or declaring the year 2017 as the “year of virtual reality”. Or they hit me at the other side of the spectrum: the predictions are way too futuristic or advanced for any brand to adopt and monetize in a single year, or a couple of years from now.
Most trend predictions are useless, because they aren’t really objective. They are often self-serving, meaning the vast majority of them has some type of product or strategy to cash in on this hot trend.
Coincidentally, I recently discovered a book written by Rohit Bhargava, that has some strong foundations that build against the idea of these obvious trends.
It covers a methodology to uncover trends, which makes an interesting read. In this blog post I want to cover that methodology, and link that to modern marketing and content marketing strategy building. Read more 
How to Create and Execute a Content Hub Strategy?
Online competition is intense. Soon, great content is only going to make it to page 3 of Google. Bigger competitors have more content and better content. And bigger budgets to promote that content.
To compete, you need to focus on a topic, and keep focussing on that topic to create a compounding effect. A content hub, along with a content hub strategy, helps you to focus on a topic, by publishing focused content on a central place.
This blog post covers some fundamental questions that need to be answered to build your content hub strategy:
- What decisions you need to make before starting a content hub.
- The concept of a content hub, and the different types of content hubs (branded and native),
- a special case: e-commerce and content hubs.
- and how to run a content hub operation.
Let’s get started! Read more
(Slideshare) The New Role of Sales in a Digital World
Repeatedly the death of salespeople has been announced in the last 50 years. Each time, sales people survived. Why? Because they evolved.
The digital evolution has changed how organizations conduct business.
By 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationship with a business without talking to a human being. The buyer is also more informed than ever thanks to the abundance of online content, and now has the upper hand in negotiations.
Sales organizations and sales people must evolve.
In this blog post, and Slideshare, I want to share with you my opinion about how sales organization can evolve, and how they can redefine the role of the sales in a digital world. Read more
Best-Of-The-Best Marketing Ebooks of 2015
Marketing is changing rapidly. Some say it has changed more in the last 5 years than it did in the last 500 years.
Responsibilities of CMO’s are also increasing due to the shift in buyer behavior and the fast changing world of marketing technology.
We may very well be entering a golden age of marketing, but this is not coming without some cost.
That cost is visible as a whole new learning curve for marketers, who are starting to have to be more and more technical. And on the other side you have technical people, who are having to learn more marketing.
Modern marketing leaders, or aspiring modern marketers must learn to master the discipline of lifelong-learning by continuously reading, studying and experimenting in an ever expanding field of marketing expertise.
Today, like I did in 2014, I want to provide you with a selection of the best marketing ebooks that have been created in 2015. These marketing ebooks are part of my way of lifelong learning, and I want to share some of the best that I found in 2015 with you.
(if you are not interested in the little personal story that follow, just scroll down to find the list of best marketing ebooks of 2015 !) Read more
How to Create a Unique Content Marketing Culture?
A culture of content goes far beyond enabling and empowering content creators outside of marketing.
A culture of content is an organizational environment and attitude that embraces and evangelizes the importance of content marketing and internal knowledge-sharing across the entire enterprise.
A business that achieves an internal culture of content is one that inspires employees—not just those in marketing—to create content for both internal and external consumption. If brands want to succeed as publishers long-term, their commitment to storytelling has to start with their company’s culture.
The question is: how do you do that? In this blog post I want to take you through a number of steps that introduce a genuine culture of content. Read more
What to do when everyone has Thought Leadership Content?
The problem with thought leadership is that the term ‘Thought Leadership’ is overused, abused, and can harm your business. Let me explain…
In many cases people refer to it as ‘thought leadership content’, which in essence refers to the act of publishing material that tries to position you or your company as a thought leader.
I think that is a very limiting view, and incomplete as a thought leadership content strategy.
Lately I have been increasingly “fed-up” with the vast amount of ebooks and webinars thrown at me, with great sticky titles, and sometimes even great authors or speakers, but with low or mediocre quality in the end.
I think it is the fault of inbound marketing. No, let me rephrase that: It is the fault of everyone jumping on the inbound marketing band-wagon, and executing poorly. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with inbound marketing. It can work really well, but only if you understand- and execute it properly.
Organizing for the Digital Customer Journey
Organizations in B2B and B2C increasingly need to organize for the digital customer journey.
It’s no secret that the buying behavior of customers is increasingly influenced through digital content consumption and digital interactions using smartphone apps, tablets, social media and now als wearables.
Baby boomers, generation X and millennial spend more time consuming content, up to 20% hours a week, according to a new study “The Generational Content Gap”, in which Fractal and Buzzstream surveyed over 1200 people about digital content consumption.
Companies need to respond by understanding this digital behavior, and rethink the organization. Internally, and externally. From a marketing perspective this requires a different type of marketing.
I usually call it modern marketing these days, because it’s difficult to cover this subject in a couple buzzwords.
But it boils down to:
- applying modern digital marketing tactics,
- a culture of digital optimization,
- building a digital marketing technology backbone, and finally…
- a new type of organization with new digital roles in the marketing department.
That’s a lot of change. Where do you start?
What is the initial spark that sets this change in motion?
What is Quality Content that Really Works?
“We buy our blog posts 500 EUR a piece” he told me the other day. “What kind of blog post are that?” I asked. He was buying 10 of these blog post a month, on average 500 words per blog post.
Aaargh.
That’s probably the worst approach this marketing manager could take towards content. The output he gets by aiming for 500 words articles is just horrible. It’s usually a “one-pager”, with one single meaningless graphic, pulled from a stock-photo website. Others might tell you that you need 1500 word articles, because these are going to make you end-up higher in search-engines.
I say, that’s crap. Don’t believe them.
Blog Post Summary
In a world filled with content, and decreasing user attention, this kind of simple approach to content is just not going to cut it.
With this post I want to show you, “once and for all”:
- what content quality really is about,
- how Google treats good and bad content quality,
- how consumers and customer in general spot quality content,
- how long quality content should be,
- and finally how you can get organized for content quality.
Now let’s get started, and explore the world of quality content…
(oh, this starts to feel like a rant, but don’t worry, this is not going to be a rant!)
Building the Best E-Commerce Content Marketing Strategy
What do panda’s have to do with content marketing and e-commerce?
How to survive in a digital world that allows shoppers to compare pricing, find excellent advice on products, and where Google is calling the shots?
Predictive search and search technology is advancing, with Google and all major social media networks are becoming more and more sophisticated in banning low quality content and classic SEO tactics.
Buyer behavior is changing rapidly. Shoppers consult more and more sources before buying, and they become more educated in how to do that.
How do you make the difference to your buyers?
This blog post will run you through some eye opening facts and examples from multiple industries, on how content marketing plays a role in e-commerce strategy today. And it will provide you with some practical insight on how to start building the best e-Commerce Content Marketing Strategy. Read more
