How your 2015 marketing strategy is going to be different

Content marketing strategy: end to end solution

With 86% of organizations using content marketing as part of their strategy (Survey: Content Marketing Institute), most companies realize the importance of having a marketing strategy and have an integrated approach to how this is executed.

Ensure that you facilitate content efforts from ideation to publishing while tracking its usage and performance across the entire customer journey.

Be creative, out-of-the-box and brave enough to do something different. One of the biggest complaints of content marketing is that it is too much the "same" and not enough uniqueness from one content marketing strategy to another.

Set goals and post often and consistently

Incorporate:

- social media content (excluding blogs)
- eNewsletters
- articles on your website
- blogs
- in-person events
- case studies
- videos
- illustrations and posts
- infographics
- online presentations
- webinars/podcasts/webcasts
- microsites
- publishing: ebooks, emagazines etc

Measure through:

- website traffic
- sales lead quality
- higher conversion rates
- sales
- sales lead quality
- SEO ranking
- time spent on websites
- inbound links
- qualitative feedback
- subscription growth

Hire the best person for the job. A journalist will be great at writing eBooks and stories, while a blogger will produce the best blog content and a copywriter will write the best advertising content. Too often companies look for a one size fits all approach and fail miserably!

Education

It's been the rise of the educator with many businesses finding not only the benefits of becoming educators and drawing their target audience in on this premise, but they see it as a lucrative revenue add-on. With a highly competitive and versatile marketplace, many companies are looking for a competitive advantage and if you are able to provide that through education and developing first-stage relationships with customers in this format, it is proven that your new students are more likely to buy from you based on your expert positioning.

Self Adoration

Everybody has taken a selfie at some stage and if you say that you haven't, its most likely that you are lying or at the very least have participated with someone else pressing the button. There is a reason why senseless postings of girls and boys doing fairly much nothing of any substance draws millions of viewers - people are addicted to finding out what others are doing. In 2015, it's sad but true - you do need to show a little self adoration, sharing the people behind your business and their lives with your prospects and customers. The human psyche has unveiled a thirst for getting to know you and those who hide behind the shield will most likely become absent from the mindsets of your customers and someone else may just take your place. Instagram has become one of the most hotly contented B2B marketing platforms on the planet, with many believing that it will take the crown from LinkedIn. Watch this space!

Video and Storytelling

Telling your story through video can be powerful but it also can be a turn-off. While no business can afford to not incorporate video in their marketing efforts, it is important that you allow for those who don't wish to use bandwidth on a 30 second video and find it frustrating that they cannot turn it off. Note the number of news channels who tried forcing readers to watch video who have lost audience share.