Why Content Marketing Is King

When it comes to marketing strategies, content marketing has just been crowned king, far surpassing search engine marketing, public relations and even print, television and radio advertising as the preferred marketing tool for today's business-to-business entrepreneur.

Late this summer, HiveFire, a Cambridge, Mass.-based internet marketing software solutions company, surveyed nearly 400 marketing professionals about the state of the business-to-business, or B2B, market, and discovered that marketers are retreating from traditional marketing tactics such as search marketing and have made content marketing the most-used tactic in their brand-enhancing tool box. Fact is, according to HiveFire's B2B Marketing Trends Survey Report, twice as many B2B marketers now employ content marketing as they do print, TV and radio advertising, according to the survey.

So what exactly is content marketing? It's the creation and publication of original content -- including blog posts, case studies, white papers, videos and photos -- for the purpose of generating leads, enhancing a brand's visibility, and putting the company's subject matter expertise on display. HiveFire's researchers found that an impressive 82 percent of B2B marketers now employ content marketing as a strategy in their marketing programs. Coming in at a distant second place is search engine marketing at 70 percent, followed by events at 68 percent, public relations at 64 percent and print/TV/radio advertising at 32 percent.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said driving sales and leads was the top marketing goal of their organization, followed by boosting brand awareness and establishing or maintaining thought leadership (both at 35 percent). Another 28 percent said their primary goal was to increase web traffic and 24 percent said it was to improve search results.

Part of the popularity of content marketing is its ability to generate qualified leads while engaging prospects in a branded environment without busting the budget. Nearly half of the content marketers interviewed said they dedicate less than a third of their budgets to such marketing expenditures. In addition to frugality, B2B marketers also believe most of their customers and prospects are online, which is why they're focusing their marketing efforts on the Internet.

Finally, the survey shows that "content curation" -- which is defined as the process of finding, organizing and sharing content -- continues to gain strength as a top marketing strategy, up 17 percent from six months ago. Seen as a way for marketers to fuel their marketing programs, content curation does have its problems. Nearly 70 percent of content curators say lack of time hinders their efforts, with 66 percent saying a lack of original and quality content is a major drawback. Another 38 percent say difficulty in measuring results is the stumbling block and 37 percent say lack of staff to do the work is the hindrance.

Despite these issues, the survey makes clear that content marketing is only going to become more important going forward, whether you market to other businesses or to the public at large.

5 ways Expert Marketers Use To Always Get Paid For their Time

By Rich

That might be hard to hear. But if you want to move through these situations with grace (and encounter them less often) you have to stop placing blame — and start making it a policy to get paid for your time.

Sound impossible? It’s not. Here’s how:

1. Take full responsibility

The most important thing you can do is stop being angry at the prospect for asking.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If you were given the choice between getting a new computer for free or paying for the same computer, you’d pick free every time — and you’d never think about the company who doesn’t get paid for the sale. Why would you?

I know free is my favorite price for everything.

It is your prospect’s prerogative to ask for your time for free. Let me say that again — it is their prerogative to ask.

In fact, they’d be missing a golden opportunity if they paid for something when they didn’t have to. You can’t blame the prospect for taking the smart route.

You’re also missing the subtle compliment that goes with being asked for advice.

When someone asks you for your time for free, be grateful that they view you as someone who can offer valuable advice. Gary Vaynerchuk constantly says how grateful he is to get thousands of emails a day — he doesn’t take it for granted that every one of those people thinks that he is worth taking time out of their life to write to him.

Everyone asking for your time is already “sold” on you to a degree — they must be or they wouldn’t be asking you for more! Instead of viewing them as a dead-end cheapskate, see them as someone who is so invested in you that they’ll either be a potential client or a source of referrals.

2. Clearly establish your service offerings

Sometimes people ask you to work for free because you haven’t given them anything to buy.

When I offered CRM integrations or media buy placements I didn’t have any packages for ongoing support. I charged clients a per-project fee, and considered the project done when the client signed off on the design.

Invariably, people would contact me after the project was officially “over” with some tiny request — things that literally took 5-10 minutes of my time. Crafting a new invoice for this small request seemed silly, yet all of these requests were starting to seriously eat up my time.

I started to feel like I had to provide free service for life for each one-time purchase, and I felt like people were taking advantage of me when they asked for these small favors.

Looking back, I can see that they weren’t taking advantage of me. The issue was mine. I should have had a clearly-defined ongoing support package to offer in response to those requests.

That would have made things clear — either you had purchased my ongoing support or you hadn’t. As it stood, everyone was in the grey zone.

If you don’t like people asking for your time for free, but also don’t have any sort of well-defined offer in place to charge them for that time, the blame falls squarely on you.

3. Decide what you’ll give away …

What are you willing to give out for free?

This is where content marketing is your friend, because you offer plenty of valuable free resources like your blog or newsletter.

It also may be appropriate to do brief introductory phone calls, or host one group in-person session per month for people who are interested in working with you.

Whatever it is for your business, get clear.

For the record, you do not have to offer any time for free. It is possible to get hired without any kind of free consult beforehand if you do a great job building the relationship ahead of time with your content marketing. In my business people sign $5,000 contracts with me without any kind of free introductory consult.

4. … but don’t assume that free advice is all they want

We often make the mistake of assuming that someone isn’t willing to pay just because they ask to “pick our brain.”

Again, they’re asking because we all love free. That doesn’t mean they’re unwilling to pay, it means they’re hoping they won’t have to.

They’ve expressed interest in learning more from you, which means they are a potential client and should be treated as such.

Remember that you are in business here, which means that you exchange value for money. Don’t let “free” become your default mode. It is your job to take the lead.

If you lead them down the free path that’s exactly where they’ll go. Lead them down the customer path instead.

5. Respond with confidence

Here’s a script for how to handle someone asking you for coffee or lunch to “pick your brain”:

I’m glad to hear you’re interested in getting deeper into this. The next step is my one-hour consultation. Would you like me to tell you how that works?

Notice that you’re asking permission and putting the prospect in the driver’s seat.

You’re also using the clear service offering that you established in step two. You’re not explaining why you’re charging, because there’s no need: your time is valuable. That’s a given. Even if you’re not used to thinking of it that way yet, get used to responding to these queries as though you are.

If they want to hear more about your consult, that’s great! You have the green light to sign a new client.

Some people will backpedal and start saying they’re tight on money. Here’s another script you can use in that scenario:

I completely understand, you have my card so just get in touch with me when you’re ready. You can also take a look at the articles on my blog if you’d like some more general advice that can tide you over until you’re ready to embark on this project.

What you don’t want to do is hedge, waver or discount. Stand firm with full respect for your business and you’ll find that the prospect will share that respect.

Hold firm and freebie requests will fall off

You’ll notice that the people at the very top seem to struggle with this topic less, even though they get the most requests.  Does your attorney or accountant charge you for their time?  Naturally you should do the same for your clients.

Why? When you’re clear and confident in what you offer, paying for your time becomes the natural progression.

Get clear, get confident and start being honored by those “freebie” requests. That’s how you become an expert that always gets paid for their time.

Make More Money with Marketing Metrics

Do you measure the results of your marketing tactic? You should. Knowing which marketing endeavors pay dividends will save you time, money and effort by allowing you to focus your marketing budget on tactics that work. Learn how to measure the effect of your marketing efforts to make more money.

Do you know how effective each of your individual marketing tactics is? Many small business owners market in a vacuum. They spend money on brochures, advertisements and web sites with no real way to tie specific results to specific endeavors.

If you are unable to associate leads and sales with the specific marketing efforts that generate them you have no way of knowing what is working as an effective marketing mechanism and what is not.

The money you invest in marketing your company is precious. In order for you to maximize your marketing dollars you need to know the results individual marketing efforts generate. When you know the results of your marketing tactics you can make intelligent decisions about how to better allocate your marketing budget.

For instance, if you concurrently run a direct mail campaign, a search engine advertising campaign and weekly ads in industry periodicals without some method to discern results you will not know which effort generates the lions share of any new business.

If you don’t know that your direct mail campaign yielded 90% of your revenue with a 2% response rate, you are powerless to make the wise decision to reinvest in the direct mail campaign and make changes to or drop entirely the other campaigns. What’s more, if you can figure out how to double the response rate of your mail campaign, you can nearly double the revenue your marketing campaign without spending money on search engine marketing and periodical advertisements.

Measuring your marketing results will help you save money by allowing you to eliminate unproductive marketing tactics and at the same time, will help you make more money by allowing you to reinvest in productive marketing tactics.

Do you have a method for measuring the effect of your marketing?

Here are four tips for gathering the information you need to make wise marketing investment decisions.

Use a Database

Start by designing a database to keep track of individual marketing efforts and the leads and sales they generate. Make sure you include fields to track the dates of your campaigns, campaign descriptions, the number of leads generated and sales made. Once you have a central storage location for this information you will be able to make queries to glean the information you need to make wise marketing decisions.

Ask Questions

When you or your staff speaks with a prospect on the phone make sure you ask how they heard of your business; was it a referral or an ad in the local newspaper? It’s such simple way to gather valuable information many small business owners overlook it.

Be sure to ask your prospects how they heard of your business.

Make It Easy for Your Prospect to Help You Make it easy for your prospects to properly identify the marketing piece to which they respond. If you have multiple phone lines into your office you can easily accomplish this by assigning a unique phone number to individual marketing efforts. This way, you or a staff member can ask what number your prospect dialed or, if you have the right phone system you can look at the phone to see which line the call is on.

Data Entry Should Be Easy Too

Once you or a staff member have garnered the information you seek from your prospect, make it as easy as possible to have this information to be entered into your database system. If you employ a staff, make certain everyone is up to speed on your latest systems. Training is a must.

Move Your Marketing Forward

The idea is to gather as much information as you can about which marketing mechanisms generate the best (and worst) response, who is responding and why they chose to respond.

Skills And Qualifications Required Of A Sales And Marketing

A good sales and marketing manager formally needs to possess an MBA degree and numerous skills. However, an MBA degree alone does not ensure that one would make a good manager too; the skill set is sometimes more important. Negotiation, communication and interpersonal skills are a must for a good sales and marketing manager since marketing and sales is all about winning people and convincing them. 

 

You do need to have an MBA marketing formally, but if you have sufficient practical experience and these skills, you are likely to do better than someone with a degree.

Types of Marketing Jobs

Marketing consultant jobs may include the market research managers and product development managers. The development of the company’s marketing strategy will be paramount to the person seeking this type of career. They must estimate what the demand for a product is and what potential sales markets will be interested in this product. Working with advertising and promotions managers they find the best way to promote the company’s product/products and to make it attractive to potential buyers.

Event marketing jobs will include the planning and implementation of promotional events on a regular basis. Holiday events, activities within the community, and promotional days for the company will be a few of the responsibilities of the event marketing jobs. If the company is large or small the public image they project is extremely important to their image in the community. Often the events they plan are for the public to see exactly what the company is all about and be made aware of their role in the community.

Sales and marketing jobs may require the holder of this position to travel. The meetings which are sponsored by industries involved in this type of business may be a requirement of the job, not an option. They may travel nationally, regionally, or locally. Sales and marketing is an extremely important part of the company for which you work. This is a position that must be handled correctly or the company could actually lose millions of dollars. This is especially true if the company for which you work is a national company or global company.

Fashion marketing jobs are another example of the high paying marketing jobs that will be available for you to decide on when making your career choice. This marketing job will require the employee to promote the fashions that are being produced by the company for which they work. Generating interest in the many new styles that come out and setting trends is part of the job. Many companies combine the fashion merchandising, fashion, marketing, and fashion buying all into one job because they do not have the resources to hire a different person for each job.


Advertising marketing is another of the many job titles that fall under the high paying marketing jobs. This is also an extremely important position to the company. If there were no advertising there would not be the high interest that is shown for the company’s product. The information must be put out and dressed up to make the public or retail associations aware of the company and their merchandise.

When working in the marketing field, most of your work will be done in the office environment. However, certain parts of the marketing field may require travel a large amount of the time. Job transfers are another of the benefits of marketing because often there will be openings in the regional offices for those who have a good general knowledge of the company.


Education 

The education that is required for marketing jobs will depend upon the position you are thinking of training for and the company if you have one in mind. The typical employer will want either a bachelor’s degree or a master’s. The course work should include:
Business law
Management
Economics
Accounting
Finance
Mathematics
Communication
In addition to the skills and education listed above the successful candidate for the job will also have to take course in:
Advertising
Business administration
Public affairs
Public speaking
Political science
Creative and technical writing
Many of the high paying marketing jobs are filled with people who already work for the company and have take the incentive to work their way up the ladder of success. They may have taken advantage of a company paid education plan and were placed in an internship within the company. Or they may have taken the classes themselves and applied for the position when it became available. Often company’s that do not offer the courses themselves will pay tuition reimbursement for their employees.

Other qualifications a company may be looking for can be a familiarity with word processing applications since computers are a very important tool when it comes to marketing. The ability to speak more than one language does not hurt your chances for obtaining one of these positions either. If you are looking for a position in marketing, you should have great powers of persuasion when it comes to speaking and communicating orally. This will include within the company and outside of the company.

The successful marketing job, no matter what part of the company it is for will often lead to top executive advancement. Another consideration is the experience and knowledge could allow them to open their own business. There were about 583,000 marketing jobs as of 2006. Almost every type of company has a marketing job in one form or another.

This job is expected to increase at about average but there will be a lot of competition for the top paying jobs. The expected increase is to be about 12% between now and 2016. This is the average growth rate for many other types of business. The salaries ranged form just under $100,000 for marketing managers. The amount paid for these high paying marketing jobs will depend upon location, the type of job, the experience level, and education levels.