Last week, my N6A colleagues and I had the chance to attend DigiMarCon East, a summit of industry leaders to discuss the latest in digital marketing, media and advertising. As communications partners for some of the fastest-growing martech, adtech and ecommerce companies, it’s important for us to keep a finger on the pulse of the biggest trends impacting our clients’ businesses, especially during a time of massive upheaval and transformation across all sectors. 

Based on everything we learned, these are the top trends impacting this space. 

AI will usher in a new era of marketing innovation—if implemented properly.

Over the last few months, generative AI—especially ChatGPT—has unleashed a flood of discussion and experimentation. Its rapid advancement has marketers pacing to catch up and unlock its potential. 

If executed properly, AI helps marketers analyze massive amounts of data in real-time and make faster decisions to optimize campaigns. With the ever-dwindling sources of third-party data, it’s important for marketers to harness the power of first-party data in order to increase targeting efficiency and campaign ROI. AI has the potential to execute these robust functions in order to deliver exponential success. 

By freeing up the manpower required to analyze data effectively, AI gives time back to marketers to focus on the creative aspects of their craft. These include developing stronger visuals, drafting compelling copy and building strategies that flex their creative thinking. Most importantly, they’ll be able to do this with a data-backed process, as they will have access to more in-depth and accurate recommendations that will help them fully refine their work. 

Despite the rapid advancements, AI still has a long way to go before it can fully automate core marketing and advertising processes. That means communications professionals will continue to provide core creative and strategic value. 

Brands can’t afford to ignore the creator economy.

Over the past few years, TikTok has brought creators and influencers to the forefront of the industry conversation. While social media platforms and the dominant voices on them have been a mainstay in marketing strategies for quite some time, success looks quite different in the TikTok era. Instead of glossy, idealized Instagram posts featuring carefully curated aesthetics, more consumers are responding to the chaotic authenticity of short-form content on TikTok—which has had social media incumbents like Meta and YouTube snapping at its heels. Short-form video content is expected to generate billions in revenue for all these platforms in the coming years.

In addition to TikTok, brands should be looking toward other companies that are attracting more influencers and heavily investing in infrastructure to utilize them. Amazon, Spotify and Roblox are among the few that are leaning toward this strategy and are expected to compete heavily with the mainstay platforms in the coming years. 

Most importantly, brands need to invest thoughtfully in creative strategies that fit the format of these platforms instead of applying the same formats and calling it a day. Consumers expect brands to cater to their content consumption preferences and will write off those that miss the mark. 

Data mastery is more critical than ever.

The marketing and advertising industry has been roiled with setbacks and budget cuts due to the unavoidable influences of the economy and have shifted focus to smaller, targeted initiatives. This has increased the reliance on martech solutions that offer robust analytics capabilities to optimize campaign performance. Companies in this space are seeing a sharp rise in demand despite the economic headwinds and have the opportunity to capitalize on this unique situation. 

In addition to analytics, technologies like Web3, metaverse and blockchain should also be looked at closely by marketers as immersion, attribution security and privacy are becoming key to engaging consumers. While financials may not allow for much experimentation right now, marketers should still be paying close attention to what’s working with these technologies in preparation for when budgets return to normal. 

The road ahead won’t be any less bumpy for companies in the marketing and advertising space. In fact, it’s likely that new trends will have pros playing defense and chasing the next great opportunity. However, with the right strategic thinking and hypersensitivity to ongoing shifts, growth and innovation will always be achievable.

The post These 3 Trends Will Define Marketing Success in 2023 appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Despite the many skills that the marketing program at Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business has equipped me with, the thought of a real-world internship was daunting. It is one thing to sit in a lecture and learn, but now I had to put my knowledge and skills to use. 

Four months later, I know I made the right decision. I’ve acquired confidence, knowledge and skills that I never picked up in the classroom. This internship is the foundation of my career and I could not have asked for a better company to experience it with. Working at Studios has provided me with the skills and training needed to find my place in the marketing industry.

Here are three reasons this internship was the perfect fit.

1. I’ve done meaningful work and gotten real-world experience.

On one of the first days of the internship, Head of Studios Valerie Leary told me I would be on client calls with the rest of the team. After hearing about some of my friends’ previous internships, I was shocked I would get to participate in client meetings. 

What started as taking notes with my camera off (because I was unsure if the client cared to see an intern) soon turned into presenting a client with analytics for one of their social platforms. It is clear that Studios is committed to fostering my professional growth by allowing me to contribute in a meaningful way.

I have done everything from researching influencers, completing competitor audits, creating and scheduling social media content, updating reports to finding video footage. My two favorite tasks are conducting audits and creating social media content. I enjoy diving deep into our clients and their competitors’ platforms to identify market trends and optimization opportunities. Through an audit, one learns what strategies prove successful in the long term and integrates them into our clients’ content calendars.

2. The welcoming company culture made me feel at home.

I quickly learned how important it is to find an agency that values you. The anxiety I felt coming into the internship quickly turned into excitement after just my first day. The welcoming environment, one-on-one calls and email greetings eased me into the position. When I was welcomed into Slack, many people reacted with the party emoji. I was featured in a company email and I got a shoutout during the staff meeting. I was treated as a colleague from the start. 

And this team knows how to have fun! During the last week of January, I helped put together games for N6A Day, which celebrates our founder Matt Rizzetta’s decision to start the company in 2010. I had so much fun putting together a PowerPoint with 2010s trivia. I also helped put together a baby games trivia for a colleague’s baby shower. The N6A team always jumps at the opportunity to incorporate fun into the work day.

3. I’m on the path to the career I want.

Prior to beginning my role here, I did not know where I was headed in my career. I picked my major because I enjoyed the marketing principles and strategy classes I took sophomore year. 

This internship has taught me that I want to become a marketing manager. I am a creative, action-oriented individual. I enjoy brainstorming innovative ideas on what assets to produce, how to share and amplify company news and content creation. I can see myself overseeing others’ tasks, building brand awareness through marketing strategies and ensuring effective messaging and communications. 

This experience extends far past a header with some bullet points on my resume. My time at Studios has provided me with confidence and security in choosing my career. I continue to learn more about how the marketing industry operates daily. 

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to always ask questions. It is much better to pause, hop on a Zoom call and clarify confusion than to stare at your computer without a clue how to proceed. Communicating and asking for help affects everyone’s success. Even though I am the only intern, Studios is a team. We all communicate with each other and help out one another. A team cannot function without one of its pieces. All the pieces need to fit together to successfully solve the puzzle.

All of the time and energy the Studios team has put into my growth demonstrates how much they value an individuals’ pursuit to acquire knowledge. I can’t wait to continue my Studios journey this summer. 

The post 3 Things That Made a Studios Internship the Perfect Fit for Me appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Great… but what should your business blog about? For teams that may not have experienced content marketers, coming up with blog topics can be trickier than you think. Next time you gather your marketing team or agency, use these four questions to spark ideas. 

1. What do we want to accomplish with this blog piece?

Ultimately, the objective of your blog strategy is to drive business outcomes; you’re not blogging for the sake of creative expression (well, at least not primarily). So don’t let the tail wag the dog: start by identifying specific objectives, then think of blog content that can support them. 

Maybe you need to drive registrations for an upcoming webinar. A blog post introducing key concepts of the presentation could be followed by a CTA to register for the webinar. Maybe your objective is less specific, like trying to drive brand awareness on LinkedIn. Just be sure to set specific KPIs you can use to measure success, like impressions or clicks. 

By identifying a specific objective up front, your team can ensure each blog post is optimized to deliver results.

2. What problem can we help our audience solve?

Your audience doesn’t want to read about how great your company or product is. Their interest in your brand extends only as far as their interest in how your brand helps them. 

Your content team shouldn’t be writing long-form ads. Instead, each of your blog posts should help your audience solve a specific problem they face. Maybe you detail how to perform an essential business task (like blogging!); maybe you explore the impact of a developing industry trend; maybe you describe how your company’s recent funding round will improve the customer experience. 

Start by brainstorming the types of problems your business solves for customers; great blog topic ideas will flow from there. 

3. What does the sales team think?

Nobody knows your customers and the problems they face better than your sales team. So shouldn’t they have a role in developing content to engage those customers? 

Get your marketing and sales teams on a call and have your sales folks review your buyer personas and the typical paths to purchase. What challenges do these individuals and their businesses face? How does your company solve the challenge and how can you best communicate your solution? 

Then have both teams brainstorm blog topics that address specific problems faced by potential customers. Discuss how that content can be crafted and delivered in a way that moves leads along the sales path. 

This process of account-based marketing, or ABM, creates more efficient, targeted campaigns and will increase ROI.

What search terms do we want to rank for?

Blog content is a great way to improve search rankings for your company website… but only if you take a strategic approach. 

Have your marketing team pull the list of search terms your business is trying to rank for, then use it to brainstorm blog topic ideas. But don’t just turn these into product or service descriptions; go back to point 2 and think about the problem facing someone searching for that term. Then create blog content that helps them solve it. 

If you’re offering real value, users will stick around to read the blog, boosting your website’s engagement metrics and signifying to search engines that your business is an authority on that subject. That will, in turn, improve your website’s SEO and drive more potential customers to your site. 

Still need help developing a blog content strategy? Contact a content marketing pro at Studios.

The post Not Sure What Your Business Should Blog About? Ask These 4 Questions. appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Now comes the critical step: aligning that SEO plan with your content marketing strategy. Readers of the N6A blog already know why this integration is critical; but how do you go about activating the integration? How can your landing pages, product pages and blog articles be optimized for search?

Here are six tips you should follow every time you publish new content on your site.

1. Write for humans.

Yes, you want to please those Google bots crawling your site. But your first priority is writing something humans want to read. 

A piece written with only SEO in mind can come out awkward, repetitive, lacking voice and, worst of all, boring. If people who come across the content don’t enjoy it or can’t easily find the information they came for, they won’t stick around. That high bounce rate is going to undo all of the careful optimization work you put in. 

So ask yourself a few questions: What information does this content deliver to my customers? Is that information easy to find? Does the voice sound the same as the voice used across the rest of my brand?

Once you have a human-friendly draft, you can always work back to layer in SEO. Write for people, then optimize for search.

2. Don’t stuff keywords.

You’ve probably heard of keyword stuffing before. It’s an antiquated tactic used in the early days of the internet, when search engines weren’t sophisticated enough to do much more than count the number of times a keyword appeared on the page. 

The smart folks at Google have long since figured out how to teach their algorithms to contextualize on-page keywords. So if you’re trying to rank for “automated customer CX”, you don’t need to repeat that phrase in every other sentence. Perpetrators of keyword stuffing—intentionally or otherwise—will see their search rank go down instead of up. 

The best way to avoid this? Go back to point one and write for humans. If a keyword is repetitive or annoying, cut back.

3. Focus on headlines.

Anyone familiar with HTML—the computer language that constitutes the majority of the web—knows that the size and style of a heading is dictated by something called a heading tag. 

The heading at the top of this page that reads “6 SEO Tips…” is an H1 heading tag. The subhead a few lines up? That’s an H4. The lower the number, the larger it typically appears.

Heading tags aren’t just relevant to web designers concerned with aesthetics. Search engines know that H1 tags are the most important indicator of a page’s content and scrutinize them accordingly.  

What does that mean for you? Make sure you’re getting the most important keywords into your H1 tag… and, preferably, early in the heading. But don’t forget Rule #1: if the heading isn’t readable or appealing to a human, it doesn’t do you any good.

4. Break up copy with subheads. 

Once you’re done optimizing that H1 tag, turn your attention to subheads. The goal here isn’t so much to optimize for search engines (though including keywords isn’t a bad idea), but to optimize for readers. 

Let’s face it: our attention spans on the web aren’t particularly long. We’ve become scanners. Anything that helps break up a page and make it more scannable will likely increase time on page. Remember, good SEO strategy not only drives people to your page but keeps them there; longer time on page and lower bounce rates means higher search rankings. 

5. Don’t forget metadata.

Think of meta tags as instructions written to search engines in invisible ink. The people who visit your website won’t see them but they convey valuable information to the search bots crawling the page. 

When preparing your content to publish within your CMS, you’ll come across metadata fields like page description and keywords. Put some real thought into filling these fields, as they can have an impact on search ranking. 

But be selective: trying to cram too many keywords into these tags can blunt their significance to a search engine. 

As Moz puts it: “Think of your page code as a set of step-by-step directions to get somewhere, but for a browser. Extraneous meta tags are the annoying ‘Go straight for 200 feet’ line items in driving directions that simply tell you to stay on the same road you’re already on!”

6. Share your content on social media.

Whether social sharing has a direct impact on a website’s search ranking has long been a topic of debate. If there is a direct impact, it’s likely minimal. 

But sharing on social certainly has an indirect impact. Social sharing in general can raise the visibility of your brand and drive higher engagement rates. Sharing any particular piece of content increases site visits from loyal followers who can boost page-specific, SEO-relevant engagement metrics like bounce rate and unique pageviews. 

So share that blog on Twitter and Facebook. You’ll see long-term benefits. 

None of these six steps on their own provide immediate virality and millions of views. But following each one consistently over time can be the difference in publishing away in obscurity and getting your content in front of potential customers. 

Need a hand building your content marketing strategy? Contact a Studios expert today.

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By that I don’t mean I have no work/life balance. Rather, I mean that I am now able to bring my whole self to work. My kids have dropped in on more calls than I can remember and my oldest daughter makes PowerPoints on her iPad alongside me so often she should be on payroll.

Much of what I’ve learned in the year since Studios was launched is about life, not just business. North Sixth Group Chairman Matt Rizzetta, the original visionary behind Studios and one of my major inspirations, often talks about working and living for the eulogy, not the resume. While Studios has amassed an impressive resume this past year (rebrands, website launches, animated videos, white papers… seriously incredible resume-building stuff), my main takeaways can be applied to all facets of life. 

This may not be the typical “what we learned in our first year” post (apologies to Jeff, our content manager, who prescribed me just that) but when work is such a big part of your life, it is only natural that the lessons learned extend beyond the 9 to 5.

These are the adages that capture the lessons I’ve learned during Studios’ inaugural year:

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

As the Head of Studios, I am consistently blown away by my team. I know most people say that—maybe it’s trite as a boss—but the team I am lucky enough to work with each day is driven, smart and truly cares about the work they do. Better yet, we complement one another in all the right ways. That’s the foundation of a great team and a well-rounded service offering. 

When I am in the room with the Studios team… I am very much in the right room.

The days are long, the years are short.

This adage rings particularly true as a parent of kids who have seemingly grown up overnight. It’s also true as an agency leader. 

The days and the projects can seem long. As an attention-driven team, we labor over every element. As a new business, the work can literally be endless as we grow our team, our roster and our processes. The year though? The year feels short. As we prepped for the Studios anniversary, someone remarked it feels like both yesterday and 10 years ago that we launched our logo into the world. 

The takeaway is to not get bogged down in the individual day or the individual tactic but to always look at the big picture. As an Outcomes-driven agency, we do this with our clients regularly. Sure, you want us to manage your social media—but why? It isn’t about any individual post’s performance; it’s about your company’s overall performance. 

Taking a step back from the day and looking at the year makes you realize you’re playing for the end game and releases you from the tunnel vision that comes with the short term.

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

To me, this is true as both a vendor and as a boss. Our clients want to be treated just as I expect my vendors to treat me: with honesty that is rooted in mutual success. During our kickoff calls, we tell clients that we are straight shooters with the best of intentions. We don’t sugar coat it. If the service you’re seeking isn’t going to make the impact you want, we’ll tell you. 

As the manager of a PNL, I don’t want my budget wasted. We aren’t in the business of wasting yours. 

As a boss, I do the same thing: work from a place of trust and honesty. We work a lot and it’s truly important to me that my team enjoys it. And not just in a virtual happy hour way, but in a way in which each person is challenged and heard. Their preferences for projects are respected to grow their skill sets and align with their professional interests. They have flexibility to take their dog to the vet or to go on a run in the afternoon. I know the work will get done and be better because of it.

These are the good old days.

These are the days we’ll look back on and say “Remember when?” Mike and Erik will be employees 2 and 3 of hundreds. The “newbies” won’t remember selecting the logo, building the website, figuring out service packages or selecting the best project management tool (we’re big fans of ClickUp, by the way). 

It’s easy to get caught up envisioning the future or the next big revenue milestone instead of enjoying the business as it is now: a hands-on, tight-knit team that delivers impactful marketing and has fun doing it. 

I want to enjoy the now. You all should too, no matter what you’re growing. 

I am so grateful for every member of the team—across Studios, N6A and North Sixth Group—who supported us this past year. More importantly, we are humbled by the clients who we’ve had the privilege to create with.

So here’s to Year 1 of Studios, a year of growth personally and professionally.

The post Year 1 of Studios: Life Lessons From a Year at Work appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

As the structure of traditional PR comes down, so too do the walls that have historically separated PR and marketing teams. No longer are the two groups siloed, one working to promote specific products and services while the other focuses on improving the reputation of the business as a whole. Together, they’re working toward a unified communications strategy.

Almost half of PR professionals and more than 60 percent of marketing executives believe that their two disciplines will become more closely aligned in the next five years, according to the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

If your business isn’t aligning PR and marketing, it’s more than just an efficiency issue. You’re missing out on a critical step in connecting your communications strategy to your core business outcomes. 

Here are four reasons why PR and marketing should be aligned:

1. Marketing amplifies earned coverage

The new model of PR—what N6A calls Outcome Relations—is built to deliver tangible business outcomes, like completing a capital raise or hitting a sales benchmark. The PR team works to secure earned media results that support that outcome. 

But the work isn’t over once that big company feature is published in Forbes. This is where the marketing team can provide the critical step in connecting earned coverage to measurable outcomes: amplification. 

Maybe they pull a quote from the feature and create a branded graphic to publish on Instagram; maybe they create a paid LinkedIn campaign targeting new leads; or maybe they share the article in an email campaign to your existing clients. 

Once the PR team has earned that big media piece, the marketing team ensures the right people see it. 

2. PR can increase your search visibility

Marketing teams spend a lot of time working to increase the search visibility of their brand’s website, be it bidding on search terms as part of an SEM plan or optimizing organic content to increase rankings.

Effective PR teams can play a key role in that strategy by generating organic search traffic and backlinks.

Being featured in a major publisher will naturally create more search traffic as readers seek out additional information about the featured company. If your business is mentioned in an article from The Wall Street Journal, you can bet you’ll see a significant spike in organic search traffic.

Some publishers may also include backlinks, or links from other websites to your own website, in their coverage. These backlinks are considered by Google and other search engines to be votes of confidence for your site. If a credible publisher is linking to your site, Google figures, it must be pretty credible as well. Up goes your search ranking.

If the PR team is aligned on the key search terms your business is trying to rank for, they can pitch to relevant and credible publishers to drive increased visibility.

3. Joint news monitoring can benefit PR and marketing teams

PR pros spend a considerable amount of time monitoring media coverage for opportunities for newsjacking, or leveraging a major news story to draw attention to their own brand. Content marketing teams, meanwhile, are constantly monitoring social media feeds looking for relevant news and conversations the brand can engage with. 

When PR and marketing teams coordinate, this news monitoring system becomes more efficient.

Let’s say a PR team working on behalf of a cyber security client comes across a story about the data breach of a high-profile company. In addition to pitching publishers on a byline from the cyber security brand’s CEO, the PR team flags the news to the marketing team, who publishes the original article on LinkedIn along with a few insightful tips for avoiding security breaches. 

The well-timed social post could drive significant visibility and help establish the brand as an authority in their industry… all because the PR team was quick to flag the news.

4. PR can boost marketing campaigns

Designing a marketing campaign to increase lead gen or hit a sales goal? Think about how PR can support the effort. A byline or feature in a relevant publication can drive people to your site, then funnel them into the campaign.

Let’s say you’re an automated CX brand who’s just published a lead gen campaign built around a PDF download. In addition to budgeting for Google Ads and designing a social media blitz, you pulled your PR team in to support. They’ve been busy pitching and landed a CEO byline with a major publisher, which publishes the day you launch your lead gen campaign. That byline drives a ton of qualified readers to your website, where they’re met with a pop-up offering the PDF resource in exchange for their email. 

By bringing the PR team into the campaign design early and aligning timelines to create a cohesive campaign, you can significantly expand your reach.

None of these things are possible if your PR and marketing teams are sitting in separate departments—or separate agencies—with little to no communication. Aligning the two disciplines from initial outcome development all the way through messaging and campaign deployment is key to optimizing ROI. 

If your PR and marketing teams aren’t working together to drive business outcomes, you’re not getting the most out of either.

The post 4 Reasons Your PR and Marketing Should be Aligned appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

According to a recent HubSpot report, 48 percent of companies with a content marketing strategy utilize blogging and 56 percent of those who do say blogging is effective.

Blog content can improve search ranking, build customer trust, and provide recyclable content, all with modest resource commitment. If your business isn’t blogging, 2022 is the year to start. 

Blog content improves SEO.

Blog content can do heavy lifting lower in the funnel as you look to convert leads—a topic we’ll get to shortly—but it can be just as valuable at the top of the funnel. One of the primary benefits of blogging is the increased visibility it brings to your brand through SEO. 

For starters, blogs give your website more surface area for search engines to crawl, increasing the odds a given page on your site will rank well for a relevant search. More importantly, blog pieces give you the opportunity to enrich your site with key search terms relevant to your business. You’ll have more flexibility to organically include these terms in a blog piece than you might in a product description or about page. 

Blogs also provide opportunities for internal links (links to other pages on your website) that can increase your search rankings. Throw in backlinks, pictures, and other rich content elements and the SEO benefits can be significant: according to a HubSpot study, businesses that blog get 55 percent more visitors to their website. 

Be wary of keyword stuffing, or the antiquated practice of loading a web page with keywords to manipulate search engines. Google’s algorithm has long been smart enough to sniff out this tactic; it’s also smart enough to recognize quality, organic content relevant to a user’s query. Develop a few key search terms to build content around and write for your customers, not an algorithm. The results will follow. 

Blog content builds customer trust and loyalty. 

Blogging can lead to immediate wins—a search query during the decision phase could turn up a relevant blog and lead to a quick conversion—but the medium is really about the long play. 

Whereas other marketing channels may focus on product value and the hard sell, blogs allow you to go beyond your own products and demonstrate knowledge of the broader problems your customers face. 

Let’s say you sell CX software. A potential lead early in the discovery phase comes across your blog, “5 Reasons Customers Abandon Carts” while Googling the subject. There’s no mention of your specific product or even your business but the piece addresses a need the potential customer has at that moment. Maybe that same person comes back to your blog the next time they need info on CX software; maybe they even bookmark the site.

When it comes time to consider vendors, where do you think they’ll begin? Most likely the one that’s built their trust throughout the purchase journey.

By providing authentic value rather than making a hard sell, blog content establishes your brand as an authority within the category and builds long-term loyalty. And the knowledge you’re providing works on multiple levels: not only have you built trust through education, the more knowledgeable customer will require fewer resources and less time at the conversion stage. 

Blogging carries low overhead and high ROI. 

Video marketing is all the rage right now and for good reason. But creating quality video can require significant resource investment. 

All you need for a blog post, on the other hand, is a good idea and a competent writer. Everyone in your business is an expert at what they do and, combined, you possess a treasure trove of industry knowledge that will help your potential customers solve their problems. 

One of the primary benefits of blogging is its accessibility and affordability compared to other forms of content marketing. With that lower overhead comes a better return on investment. In fact, 10 percent of marketers who blog say it’s the content type that generates the biggest ROI, according to a recent HubSpot report. 

Not that blogging doesn’t take effort or discipline. Once you’ve built the expectation that your blog is a source of valuable information, you’ll want to establish a consistent publishing cadence to keep your audience coming back. Only bite off what you can chew; publishing once every month is better than publishing four times in a month and then going quiet for a long stretch. 

Blog content can be recycled. 

As if blogs didn’t already offer significant ROI, the ability to repurpose them across other content types stretches the value even further. 

Sections of a blog piece can be pulled out and featured in social media posts; quotes from team members can be fashioned into branded quote cards; stats and figures can be built into infographics; a well-written blog post can even become the basis for a video script. Once the information has been collected and organized in a blog piece, there’s near limitless opportunities to recycle it across other platforms. 

An entire blog piece itself can be repurposed. As explained in our previous post about repurposing content, new language and some additional insight can make an old blog fresh and relevant again; like putting a new coat of paint on a wall.

The low costs and high benefit potential of blog content make it a must for businesses. If you’ve been on the fence about blogging, 2022 is the year to get after it. You’ll increase your business’s search rankings, build customer trust, and generate easy content for your other marketing channels. 

And here’s one more reason to blog: it’s fun! This is your opportunity to show off your hard-earned expertise and talk about what you know best. Get creative.

Need help crafting your blog strategy?

Or don’t have the capacity for blog writing on your current team? Contact a Studios expert to learn more about our content creation services.

The post Yes, Your Business Should be Blogging in 2022 appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

These articles are often well-researched and insightful. But let’s be honest: simply detailing trends stops a step short for busy business leaders who realize marketing is a means to a business end, not a means in and of itself.

Below are five steps business leaders can take to ensure their content marketing efforts accomplish tangible business Outcomes in 2022.

The post 5 Steps to Drive Real Business Outcomes With Content Marketing in 2022 appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Generally speaking, content repurposing can be broken down into two categories: cross-media and content refreshing. At the end of the day with both forms of repurposing, however, the goal is the same: getting the most for the investment you made in the initial content and creating additional touchpoints that can serve broader marketing initiatives.

Making the Most of Cross-Media Content Repurposing

There are countless varieties of content, from longform eBooks and whitepapers to video case studies, product one-pagers, and everything in between. The medium for the way the content is delivered is fluid; this is where cross-media content repurposing comes into play.

Let’s take a longform asset like an eBook, for example. A standard eBook can be as much as five thousand words, broken down into more digestible sections that may or may not have the ability to stand alone.

Beginning with an eBook, that content can be repurposed into a blog series, taking each of the discrete sections and rounding them out with more focused, blog-friendly language that creates connective tissue between each installment of the series. What’s more, these eBook blogs can be used to drive the download of the gated asset (the eBook), which can serve as a foundational touchpoint for prospective clients. Not only are you able to demonstrate your expertise through the content itself, but you’re driving a point of contact with a client around a specific topic, which can be a meaningful, focused conversation starter.

When repurposing an eBook for a blog, one thing to keep in mind is audience. Blogs are, in most cases, not gated, which means the language you use needs to be geared towards a broader audience. Blog content also needs to be quick to grab attention. If someone is willing to download an eBook, chances are they’re interested in engaging in-depth with your content. On a blog, consider your audience and make it more approachable for casual readers. This process can mean breaking down denser sections into bullet points, adding sidebar content that highlights specific takeaways from a section, and breaking the content down into smaller subsections with additional headers.

Additionally, eBooks can serve as fodder for cross-media social campaigns. Taking an eBook and extracting a key graphical part of it, like an infographic or relevant statistical study, can be a solid asset to post through social media channels to drive additional traffic to an eBook download landing page. Or, a 15 to 30-second sizzle video can be created and posted to social channels for the same purpose.

Content doesn’t need to be the one thing it sets out to be. Think of longform content as a large block of ice, waiting to be carved into as many shapes as you’d like.

Refreshing Old Content to Make It New Again

One of the most difficult parts of content creation is ideation. If you’re a brand with a large content mandate and you work in an industry that doesn’t evolve often, you can find yourself telling the same story over and over with a slightly different spin on it.

Instead of coming up with new ideas out of whole cloth with each blog you create, consider refreshing older pieces of content that you’ve already published. With some new language, and some additional insight, an old blog can be made fresh and relevant again; like putting a new coat of paint on a wall.

When refreshing content, it’s important to make sure that it brings something new to the conversation, even if the topic is fundamentally the same. By adding a new section that provides additional information—which can also serve as an opportunity to create new internal website links critical for SEO—adjusting the headline, and reorganizing the content, an old article can be made to feel new and relevant again with minimal investment. Updating the imagery on the post and/or changing the author can also help distinguish the piece from its original incarnation.

From a purely content perspective as well, there are many times where pieces are published that aren’t exactly what we want them to be. Giving a flawed piece a little polish can give it a second chance at success.

When you think about content, think about it as a living, breathing entity. This isn’t the newspaper days where what’s set in print is there forever. Content can evolve, it can be repurposed and adapted to different mediums, and used as a cornerstone to vital outreach efforts that can drive a business. Repurposing content is an art, just like content creation itself; and when it’s mastered it can create value that didn’t exist before.

The post The Art of Repurposing Content: How to Put a New Twist on Old Stories appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

As COVID-19 continues to change nearly all parts of life, and with vaccinations on the horizon, top marketers and their C-Suite colleagues must make the most difficult business decisions to come out on the other end stronger than before. The stakes are high, and with the continued demand for brands to optimize budgets and refresh sales pipelines, every business decision will take on a mission-critical status as we ring in the new year. 

There’s an inscrutable accountability deficiency and a major disconnect for most executives when it comes to their corporate marketing initiatives, leaving them frustrated at an inability to deliver results. This is made worse by businesses still going through a once-in-a-lifetime economic upheaval and being under more pressure to prove that every single dollar they spend yields a healthy return on investment. 

Photo by Edward Jenner from Pexels

It is currently impossible to develop a comprehensive picture of what brands will do once the worst of the pandemic and its economic consequences recede. Many businesses — in fact, far too many —  may not be able to go through the uncertainty that still lies ahead. But looking back at 2020’s need to fundamentally rethink marketing strategies will create room for businesses in 2021 to maximize cash, and galvanize great opportunities to diversify revenue streams and capabilities.

Post-COVID, Customers First

Marketing used to be about outputs, not outcomes. Publishing any number of blog posts, increasing site traffic and leads, or tallying hundreds of people that join a webinar were the be-all-end-all. Through every action they take in 2021, marketers need to show that they’re actually driving the business. 2020 taught us that if the outcome doesn’t capture the right person who could actually buy into a business’ products and services, or was influenced by what is put in front of them, then that’s not going to cut it.

In the new year, marketers should start with a basic question: who are the people responsible for buying my product? Then, within each subset, be able to shift rapidly to think about what types of credibility assets are going to matter the most to them and influence them going forward. 

How could this revamped marketing strategy actually help a business sell more of its product to more people at a higher purchase price — and faster? Marketers cannot just sit, wait, hope, and pray that target personas are going to hopefully see those things. Instead, marketers will increasingly use precise tools for audience targeting through earned media amplification over a longer period of time.

Top executives will continue to scrutinize the value of marketing strategies. But by creating an inherent level of full-service accountability, attribution, and amplification for normally imprecise metrics, businesses will be able to take on 2021 with a new marketing mindset. 

We’ll leave you with three key takeaways:

• The Role of the Marketing Must Continue to Change: CMOs and other marketing leaders can’t simply stay on the sidelines. Content, analytics, and customer-centric strategies will compel digital marketers to evolve in 2021 or risk not making impactful decisions that tip the bottom line.
• Results and Revenues Are at the Top of the List: Part of the changing role revolves around being able to connect results and revenues to these evolving efforts, including PR. It will also force businesses to choose their post-COVID partners more wisely. With budgets shrinking and increasing speed-to-market pressures, enterprises must assess their collaborators with an eye toward comprehensive results over anything else.
• Marketers Should Adopt a Long-Term Measurement Mindset: By focusing on KPIs versus ROI over the length of a PR cycle, marketers can better determine success. Expanded service offerings can create brand sustainability and offer better centralized solutions that will last longer into the future post-pandemic.

Want to learn how N6A can drive specific business outcomes for CMOs, CEOs, and brand marketers in 2021 and beyond?

Contact N6A.

The post 2021 is Almost Here: What Your Marketing Strategy Can Learn from 2020 appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.