Modern Consumer’s Buying Behavior Has Changed: Has Your Marketing?

5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … Skip Ad > >

I so hate this drill, especially when I hop on to YouTube to watch a Tom Cruise video. I literally despise these pre-roll ads. These ads are so annoyingly right in my face.

I didn’t log in to YouTube to watch a father scolding his son for losing his laptop and then the son buying a refurbished laptop from a popular ecommerce website (Ad Name: “As Good as New”). Though I’m an online shopaholic but at my own convenience and desired time. I mean I don’t love that shopping portal enough to come in between Tom Cruise (virtually) and me and hamper my video-watching experience like that.

I hate such brands that do NOT seek my permission and expose me to their marketing messages hundred times a day. This triggers a barrage of questions in my mind about their marketing strategy (and their marketers in particular!).

I feel so fortunate as a marketer in my career to have seen traditional marketing getting redundant and less effective in the last decade and subsequently wiped out by permission-based marketing in last 2-3 years. According to an Adobe study, marketing has changed more in the last 2 years than in the last 50 years.

As marketers, we need to acknowledge and respect the fact that with technology adoption gaining pace with each passing day, people are are getting better at blocking out these interruptions.

• TV ads…We’ve TiVO/DVRs to skip advertisements. I so love Netflix’s House of Cards, free of advertising.
• Radio ads…Users have XM/Sirius Radio/Pandora/Spotify to cut their advertising reach
• Unsolicited (cold calls)…Fortunately, we’ve national Do Not Call Registry.
• Spammy emails ….I routinely employ spam filters.

As a matter of fact, a large number of organizations are still not convinced about the merits of permission-based marketing for two reasons:

• Their otherwise expensive outbound methods have fetched results for them so far. So new approach means new risk to revenues. And, not many are risk takers.
• Permission-based marketing requires investment in terms of resources, effort, time and money. And, most of all, PATIENCE for long-term rewards.

So, such brands resort to “spray and pray approach” and thus still do “batch and blast” email campaigns and pray for leads online. And when the results do not pour in, it feels like as depicted in the picture below.

I love this brilliant quote from Dharmesh Shah, cofounder HubSpot

“Market unto others as they would market unto you” –@dharmesh#INBOUND15

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) September 9, 2015

The bottom line is that people are now wary of traditional outbound marketing messages and adept at blocking outbound marketers out. Netizens now learn about and shop from brands in a new way – through search engines, blogosphere and social media sites.

To be successful in today’s times, we need to match our marketing mannerisms to the way our prospects gather information and shop for our products.

How?

Generate leads through #Inbound marketing and target customers with relevance marketing.

Options for marketers:

Marketers either need to adapt to the changing shopping behavior of customers or risk extinction. Only mantra for success: GO #inbound

— Raina (@rainamtrivedi) October 24, 2015

Does Content Live in a Silo? Hell NO!

The whole marketing industry is going crazy behind Content Marketing these days. But what actually content marketing is? Does it make sense to say that it’s a strategy to use content for great marketing results. But that’s not what it is.

Content does NOT live in silo. It only fetches results for businesses when used in combination with other marketing channels and innovative marketing practices. It’s one of the planets of the vast inbound marketing solar system. Confused? Read further.

Content can fall flat on its face (or be ineffective)  if NOT used with:

SEO – Many marketers think content marketing is all about creating more content and the easiest way to do that is through regular blogging. However even great content can deliver no value, if it goes unnoticed or if your target audiences are not able to find it. SEO is a surefire way to ensure that your remarkable content gets found and read by the right set of people i.e., your target audiences. Marketers should ensure that the helpful content that they create must be optimized well for keywords used by their target audiences to locate certain products or services on search engines. That’s how content attracts organic traffic.

Social Media – With social media euphoria gripping humans across all age groups, geographies and business sectors, almost every brand wants to tap this huge real estate and engage with their target audiences across varied social media channels. For enhanced content reach and visibility, it needs to be distributed imperatively across relevant social media sites (only those where your target market hangs out frequently). Popular social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. are the online avenues, where readers love to share the infotaining content that you create. Hence as a smart marketer, make it easy for them to do so by integrating social media sharing buttons in each content piece that you push out on the Web. Not only does it increase your content’s reach or effectiveness, but can also help you engage with your target audiences easily and help them address their challenges with your useful content. If your content succeeds in solving their challenges/pain points, no wonder these readers can also become your brand evangelists. So keep feeding them with awesome content on their most favorite online destinations!

Email marketing – Some businesses see email marketing as the most powerful tool in their marketing arsenal to connect with their contact database. Email can really help your content get out there and grab many more eyeballs. Without email marketing, your content’s reach is constrained drastically and can make all your content creation efforts go waste.

It’s damn simple. Content forms the beating heart of your inbound marketing strategy but ONLY when it’s used along with other channels (a few of them listed above!). Don’t sandbox your content. Give it wings and let it soar high and wide to cover the complete horizon of your target audiences.

 

 

 

Master Business Blogging Fundamentals for Improved Marketing Score

2013 is here. It’s time to think BIG. My flag of New Year resolution is furling high. This year, I aim to be the best inbound marketing talent around. Well, that’s not going to happen in a nick of time. It’s a tough cookie. But I will try.

Business Blogging: Let us master the basics together

I’ve put all my marketing ducks together in a row. And, I start with one of the most critical pieces of inbound marketing methodology- Business Blogging. Tapping and prodding the concept from all corners possible, I hereby present to you some quick tips to master business blogging fundamentals. So if you’re angling for a role of a business blogger at your organization, read on.

Business blog is a long-term marketing asset. Relevant and engaging content is one of the core components of a business blog. Corporate blogging directly correlates to better marketing results. Trust me on this one!

A good business blog is one that is rich in content, well optimized and well promoted. If you happen to get the remarkable content for your blog written frequently  half of the battle is already won. Now comes forth the seemingly challenging task of blog optimization.

Blog Optimization. How do you do it? Simple! To provide your business blog with extended reach beyond your normal readership, follow these simple steps.

Social Media Sharing: Add social media sharing buttons either on the top, bottom or left of your blog post thereby making it more shareable.

Visually enticing images: Add captivating image, graphics or infographics to your blog. Remembers, visual content charms readers more than sheer text chunks.

Well-optimized Blog titles: Master the art of crafting stellar, optimized blog titles (8-9 words or fewer). The post title should be simple, direct, intriguing or even newsworthy. Support your content with numbers, cues and facts.

Formatting: Format your blog adequately to make it more readable and engaging.

Contextual CTAs: Treat your blog like a real estate platform for the placement of contextual call-to-action tabs, in-text or sidebars.

Actionable: Write a succinct blog post with actionable steps and clear takeaways.

Entertainment: Make your story interesting and entertaining by adding metaphors to it.

If you have proved yourself a rock star in blog optimization, you’ll find blog promotion way easier. What do you need to do?

Hunt for guest bloggers: Find guest bloggers, influencers or experts in your network and explain them the benefits of co-marketing partnership as they would get exposure beyond their base subscriber count and also inbound links.

Social Media Sharing: Make your blog more shareable by getting some prominent social media sharing buttons added to your story.

Website Banners: Treat your blog like a platform to place some top-performing marketing offers as banners. You can also place your blog link as banner on different pages of the website such as “Home” page or “About Us” page.

Cut a video: You can also make an entertaining video covering your whole objective behind your blog and some funny moments while putting it up there.
Business Events: Don’t miss out on an opportunity to turn the heads of your audiences to your blog, if you are out there on a podium for a corporate presentation at any business event. This can surprisingly drive in a huge amount of traffic to your blog.

Email Signatures: Go for digital branding and include your blog link to your email signature in all external and internal communications. Encourage all your colleagues also to do the same.

Blog Directories: Submit your blog to top 50 blog directories on the Web and sit back to enjoy all inbound links flowing in and fetching authority for your blog.

Happy Blogging in 2013!!!

So…these were a few business blogging fundamentals from me. That’s all from me as of now. Have some more business blogging techniques in tool chest? I’d love to hear them all. After all, I’ve to live up to my New Year’s resolution.

Happy Blogging!!!!