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Research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs indicates content marketers with a documented strategy are: Much more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing Far less challenged with the many aspects of content marketing Able to justify why a higher percentage of the marketing budget should be spent on content marketin

Consider documenting one or more of the following goals as a starting point for your strategy: Improve brand awareness Increase engagement Generate more website traffic Expand the email list Increase marketing ROI Achieve higher customer retention, loyalty and referrals

A buyer persona reveals what prospective customers are thinking and doing as they weigh their options to solve a problem.

That all makes sense given separate results from the same survey indicating that 71% of company marketers plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year.

Content marketing edges SEO (65%) and email marketing for engagement/retention (also 65%) as the most popular digital channel tabbed for a budget increase.

Other digital channels and disciplines to get a budget hike this year include social media investment (for engagement/retention – 62%), mobile marketing (for acquisition – 61%), and social media investment (for acquisition – 61%).

The primary reason we’ve seen our best open rate climb ever upwards has been an ever-increasing focus on list hygiene.

It’s natural that curiosity-based subject lines would become more powerful as the inbox gets more crowded.

Scarcity, on the other hand, is a powerful tool but is best used conservatively as its impact diminishes the more it’s put into play. And while scarcity is a great driver of sales, it is often less effective at driving your overall open rate up.

Most of your content is getting lost in the shuffle. Recycle it! Let the customer’s social activity tell you what they prefer. Engagement in social is good, but not if that’s all you get. Some top brands have made the transition to acting like publishers with dedicated internal and external teams cranking out content.

Top tactics used by savvy publishing brands are: Storytelling – high quality engaging content on an going basis Infographic Creation – relevant lists and how to’s Visual Content Marketing – compelling visuals eBook Creation – great for lead generation eMailer Personalization – targeting with relevance and being the information / education source Content Curation within an Industry – keep people coming to you because you find what’s hot and important to your customers, making it easy for them to keep current Webinars / Pod Casts / Google Hangouts – establishes authority Slide Share Presos – extends your corporate social graph and thought leadership Case Studies – SEO value and high share currency Videos to Motion Infographics – video is growing

Brands have a need for smart content routing and unique displays which enable them to maximize customer engagement and experience at every touch point, increasing site participation, and garnering higher social share just begs to get fracked.

what are some of the things you can A/B test with your influencer marketing campaigns? All the same things you test in your other channels…

xperiment with different types of content and track which resonates best with their audience for your goal. For example, images may drive better social engagement, while videos are better for leads and signups. Alternately, you may find certain content performs better on some channels over others.

Don’t forget all the types of content you have at your disposal – podcasts, live stream videos, tweets, Instagram Stories, webinars, long-form blog posts, short-form blog posts, and much, much more.

Product update emails are one example where content and product teams must harmonize for a successful outcome

Product updates should be written for your true fans. That’s not to say that others won’t find them interesting, but information about a product isn’t a lead-gen tool or a sales tactic – it’s fuel for an already burning fire.

CMO Jeff Hennion said it's more cost-effective to drive people there via email, direct mail, or even TV ads that show a link to the Facebook fan page.

A ComScore report last July said 32% of P&G's internet display impressions were "socially published," most of which occurred on Facebook.

Facebook ads need a clear message, a promotion or call to action to be effective. "Delivering traditional brand-building or product messaging simply doesn't work. At all," he wrote in an email.

You can see that the highest open rates occurred with four-word length subject lines and the lowest open rates were tied to nine-word length subject lines. But the click-to-open rates didn’t correlate, meaning high open rates did not correlate to high click-to-open rates.

The winner was seven words for overall engagement. And if you write a subject line with eight words, well, you’re in for a shock! It’s nearly half the performance as subject lines with only one less word.

Personalization is shown to increase open rates for most users, and may work well when combined with targeted automations such as birthday deals and post-purchase follow-ups.

try to communicate the benefits of your promotions, or call attention to specific deals.

Subject line researcher shows you the effectiveness of different keywords. Search for a word or phrase, and we'll compare your terms to all subject lines ever sent through MailChimp. Then we'll list related terms and phrases, and use a 5-star rating system to show you how each one performed.

A solid lead generation strategy does both, Craig Rosenberg, author of the blog Funnelholic, told me. The appetite for content online is insatiable so marketers would be wise to indulge the public with registration-free content, Craig says. “I do believe that if people are addicted to content without the reg-path and you path stuff, it better be remarkable.” Rosenberg says the “vast majority” of your marketing funnel should be free without asking potential clients for personal info. Save the registration forms for further down the funnel where more research-heavy content like whitepapers resides.

Chris Jablonski, author Emerging Tech blog on ZDNet, who provided the following formula: 10% to 20% fully gated content, 20% to 30% name and email only, and 50% to 70% completely free.

1. Overestimating the Importance of Facebook Pages

2. Caring Only About Numbers of Fans

3. Thinking You’ll Get Enough Fans from Your Email Lis

About 1 in 5 respondents said they have used Twitter in conjunction with a TV campaign. Promoted Tweets are the most popular of Twitter’s ad formats among respondents, used by about twice as many as promoted accounts, and by roughly three times as many as have used Twitter Amplify. Respondents’ primary goal for Twitter advertising is to build awareness and sentiment for their brand, with significantly fewer claiming as their main goal driving traffic to their websites, building followers, generating sales leads, selling products and staying in touch with customers.

58.6% share of respondents said that their Twitter budgets represent new spending. Those reallocating from other media are most commonly turning to offline (17.6%), online display (16.6%), email (12.3%), search (10.8%) and TV (9.9%) for funds. (Similar data concerning the constitution of online video and social media budgets can be found here and here.)

7 in 10 respondents – execs at marketers, agencies and media companies – use Twitter as a marketing channel, only a minority (46.5%) of those are spending on advertising on the platform. By comparison, a previous survey from Ad Age (covered here) found that of the 83% using Facebook, almost three-quarters were buying ads.

Deep linking, in simplest terms, is the ability to link to a specific page inside an app. It’s very much like a Web URL. Each app has its own structure.

, iOS 9 will also introduce a seamless in-app search experience, and according to Apple, “improve its discoverability by displaying your content when users search across the system and on the Web.”

developers will be required to add code to their markup to allow their app content to be found in Spotlight search, and even more language to facilitate their Web URLs to seamlessly open app content