Top tactics for developing effective marketing content from Marketing Sherpa

Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2011 in Blog | 21 comments

Most of our LuCorp Marketing clients have been through re-working of their content, sometimes 2-3 times a year for better positioning and messaging.  We truly feel that a website’s content is to be “living and breathing” and needs to be changed out, added to, and developed to better fit keywords for SEO purposes and for customer interaction.  Websites are no longer  just “brochures” online, they are the online voice of the company.  This article and chart really proves what is important to marketers when it comes to developing effective content.  Thanks Marketing Sherpa!

by Jen Doyle, Senior Research Analyst

The most effective tactics for developing marketing content

Repurposing and reformatting existing content 64%

Encouraging customers to submit testimonials and case studies 53%

Recruiting authors internally from other departments 48%

Outsourcing to a consultant or agency 27%

Utilizing social media to encourage brand advocates to produce content 20%
Many organizations have a library of marketing content at their disposal, including press releases, blog posts, whitepapers, etc., and this content typically only reaches a small percentage of an organization’s target audience. This is why repurposing and reformatting existing content has been rated as the most effective tactic in helping organizations develop marketing content and messaging.

Recruiting authors internally from other departments can be a tactic that is not always well-received by individuals outside of the marketing department. Despite the sometimes challenging task of recruiting new authors, 48% of B2B organizations still find this to be an effective tactic.

Outsourcing to a consultant or agency has not been rated as a highly effective tactic. Developing marketing content requires an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the brand and its target audience and at times, this can be difficult for a consultant or agency to acquire. Only when an organization finds a consultant or agency that is a good fit for their organization can this be an effective means of producing marketing content and messaging. (Note from Cindy, LuCorp Marketing:  “It is our job to be a good fit for you to produce effective marketing content and messaging.”)

For additional research data and insights about B2B marketing, download and read the free Executive Summary from the MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Rep

Customer Experience Strategy – A Must for Companies to Survive!

Posted by Cindy on Apr 12, 2011 in Blog | 74 comments

Yesterday I attended the sellingpower.com Sales & Marketing Leadership Conference at the Scottsdale Princess and was struck with the theme reverberating throughout presentations  - retaining customers, delighting customers, adapting to the new customer, winning over you customers, connecting, service, producing buyers, listening, transforming….all where discussed.  Some stand-out’s where the LinkedIn presentation from Brian Frank, Head of Global Sales at LinkedIn.  He didn’t share much new, but it was a great reminder to use all of LinkedIn’s tools.  I for one, readjusted my profile and sent some new requests to connect.  Of special note from his presentation was the Recruitment Tools:  http://talent.linkedin.com/Recruiter/?campaign=27&keyword=linkedin%20recruitment&gclid=CI3N74vSl6gCFQkMbAod3GvPBg

Also, Lior Arussy, Founder of Strativity Group(author of “Customer Experience Strategy”) presentation was exceptional.  He drilled into several stories on compelling customer experiences  and had all of us wanting more!  Mr. Arussy is one dynamic speaker and brought home what all companies should do – provide memorable experiences that delight and establish profitable experiences.  ”Stop selling and start delighting”.  This was a dynamic session that re-established my mindset that our customers deserve our attention and to always deliver more!

Always like to tell when Google adjusts the Search Engine

Posted by Cindy on Feb 25, 2011 in Blog | 9 comments

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

It’s worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we’ve received from thePersonal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits.

So, we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results. We’ve been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we’re working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results.

To start with, we’re launching this change in the U.S. only; we plan to roll it out elsewhere over time. We’ll keep you posted as we roll this and other changes out, and as always please keep giving us feedback about the quality of our results because it really helps us to improve Google Search.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer

Google on “Does Google Use Data from Social Sites in Ranking?”

Posted by Cindy on Dec 22, 2010 in Blog | 77 comments

Great video from Google on “Does Google Use Data from Social Sites in Ranking?”  Yes they do, but in a limited way (for now!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhwPC-5Ub4&feature=youtube_gdata

Outsourcing Your Blog Writing

Posted by Cindy on Nov 8, 2010 in Blog | 129 comments

By Cindy Woudenberg and Wendy Rubicam
Lucorp Marketing and Rubicam Writing

Business owners may wonder why they need a blog in the first place, and why they need to keep their blog content fresh.  If you are busy running a business, you probably don’t have time to sit down and write about your business every week.  You may know your business inside and out, but what will prospective readers find interesting?  What type of content will help your business stand out?  How can you use your blog content to build a deeper relationship with your customers?