Inbound Marketing Age

Voice search is growing at a rapid pace. By 2020, 50% of all search queries will be initiated by voice.

This trend is hardly surprising. Voice search is fast (3.7 times faster than typing) and convenient. Plus, with the best systems now operating with 95-97% accuracy, it’s becoming increasingly reliable.

Most smartphones are equipped with some form of voice-assisted search function, such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. At home, smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home are becoming integrated into family life.

For content marketers, the aim is clear. In order to boost your SEO rankings and gain traffic and leads, you need to be creating great content. But anyone who writes regularly will be familiar with the fear factor an expectation to repeatedly produce great content can bring.

Not only does your content need to be high-quality, compelling and relevant to the audience it’s trying to reach, but it also needs to stand well apart from the myriad of mediocre content floating around the digital sphere.

You may be familiar with the book The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a book about how small actions at the right time, in the right place, and with the right people can create a ‘tipping point’ for anything from a product, to an idea or a trend.

Gladwell describes the tipping point as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

Although the book was first published almost 20 years ago, there are a number of opportunities it affords for content marketers today wanting to reach more prospects and grow their business.

Early September saw the annual Inbound conference in Boston, MA, and with our very own Eric Swain in attendance, the Equinet office is now teaming with new insights, ideas and observations.

There were two particular stand out keynotes from Hubspot Co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.

Brian focused on the experience disruptors of the moment, using a few familiar names to illustrate his point: Netflix, Spotify, Slack, for example. 

Your historic blog posts will often account for a large proportion of your traffic. These tend to be your posts that are evergreen in nature with highly shareable and valuable information, and a number of trustworthy backlinks.

But if these posts were written five years ago, are they still delivering what they need to? For your blog posts to make a real impact in a world of content saturation, they need to be as helpful, engaging and well-written as possible.

So identify your historic high-performing blog posts. Then to determine whether they need an update, ask yourself the following questions:

Influencer marketing has become one of the big buzzwords of recent times. The rise of social media has changed the marketing landscape.

All types of buyers – both consumer and B2B, now make decisions based on information and opinions supplied by their peers, by websites and blogs and by influencers on social media. 

Influencers have become particularly important with the rise of social media channels such as Instagram, where conventional marketing is difficult, if not impossible to undertake. 

Wow, can you believe 2020 is just 3 months away?

It was just a short decade ago that we were getting to grips with Facebook and preparing ourselves for the onset of social media.

Rewind another ten years, and we were anticipating the 'millennium bug'. 

Today, we communicate with bots on a daily basis, we ask our smart home hub whether we need an umbrella or sun cream, and our toddlers can unlock and scroll before they can say "Wifi".

Striking visuals are a highly engaging form of content for businesses, and they're essential for building an SEO friendly website. That is why they are so valuable to your B2B blog posts. In a 2019 survey of more than 500 digital marketers, 88% said they used visuals in more than half of the articles they published.

With that in mind, here's some inspiration for content marketers who are on a mission to make their blog posts more visual.

As a writer with oodles of interesting ideas and creative flair you might be tempted to explore your artistic side every now and then and create custom visual content that will complement your copy. So, if you're in the mood for some light experimentation, what tools are available to you, and how easy are they to pick up and give a go?

Here's a short guide to the best free assets for your visual content toolkit.

We focus so much energy on attracting new customers, converting prospects, and nurturing leads into buyers. And rightly so. Acquiring new customers is essential for growth, is incredibly satisfying, plus, it’s a great morale booster.

But it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of chasing that next new contact which is very often short-lived - especially if the customer doesn't stick around very long.

Acquiring a new customer takes a lot of energy, resource, and cost, so if they don't stick around, it can be hard to see a return on investment.

Perhaps you know Ryan Reynolds best as Michael from Two Guys and a Girl, as the CIA Agent in Safe House, or as the title character in the critically acclaimed film Deadpool.

But what about his role in the world of content marketing?

See Ryan Reynolds isn’t just a Hollywood film star. When he’s not busy smashing out hit films, he’s creating some truly outstanding marketing content.

Over the last few years, Reynolds has slowly made a name for himself in the content marketing world, first with the hit film Deadpool (and subsequently Deadpool 2), but also in the drinks industry.

Editor's note: This blog was originally published in November 2012 and has since been updated for optimal accuracy and relevance.

Content, content, content. It is the linchpin of the whole lead generation and inbound marketing process. It educates, adds value and entertains. It can also help you to nurture relationships with your leads in a way that makes them choose your product or service.

What is lead nurturing?

Lead nurturing is the process of using content to draw prospective customers through the sales funnel until they reach the decision to buy.

Forgive the question, but does your content marketing strategy ask your audience to ‘lie back’ and think of you?

Or does it demand they ‘lean forward’ and pay attention?

1. Add images

Great lengths of text in your content are not attractive – it is only when someone starts reading that they come to life and potentially capture your audience. That takes an investment of time that many visitors may not want to make.

Too much uninterrupted text in your content will put potential readers off. 

There are many ways to break up long stretches of text, but by far the most powerful is to use images.

Blogging remains one of the best ways to connect with your customers and prospects. But in an age of content saturation, most writers know they need to up their game.

You may have been blogging for years, but even the most seasoned writers need a little help sometimes.

Plus content writing isn't just about being able to write well. A good content writer will also be focused on ensuring they're writing about topics that resonate with their ideal customers and that their blog posts are getting found by those people.

We've compiled some of the best content writing tools that we use here at Equinet, to help you improve your blog and get noticed by the people looking for what you do.

If you have ever trawled through a stock photography website in search of images to represent your business, you will already appreciate that it can be a bit of a minefield. On the one hand, stock image sites give you easy access to professional photography (or illustration) and save you valuable time and resources.

The flip side is, frankly, there is such an excess of naff material out there. It can take some effort to source images that truly reflect your brand.

Are your website designs sensitive enough to modern SEO tactics?

Incorporating SEO best practices into your website from the ground up will help you to increase the quality and volume of website traffic, and deliver a more pleasing user experience for your site visitors.

Follow these tips to build a business website that both bots and people will love.

For a B2B business, there are two broad marketing strategies you can follow for gaining sales. You could pursue a traditional inbound strategy that involves creating a small number of buyer personas – fictional profiles of typical buyers. These buyer personas then form the target for all your content and marketing efforts, ensuring that your creations are attractive to your target market in order to bring in leads and engagement.

As a marketer, publishing original research is an opportunity to demonstrate thought leadership and position your company as an authority in your industry. And in turn, it can help you to build trust and credibility with your customers and prospects.

In a world of content saturation, publishing original research can help you stand out in your industry. But, it’s possibly one of the most underused forms of content.

Just 39% of marketers have published original research in the past 12 months, according to a global study by Mantis research and BuzzSumo.

B2B Marketing can be tough.

Finding new leads, engaging them and converting them isn’t easy.

It requires a lot of work, a significant budget and a massive amount of time.

But what if you could double your sales force? Triple it? And all without spending huge sums of money too?

This is not a fantasy, it’s achievable. And it’s a goal you should definitely set your business.

Great planning and foresight can elevate your video marketing content from good to brilliant. 

In this blog, we explore how filmmakers can make creative decisions that save time and effort in the editing room, resulting in a video campaign that engages and delights.

Instagram. Whether you love it or loathe it, it's more than just an app for taking photos of your food. But is it right for your social media strategy?

We’re all familiar with the benefits of social media marketing. More exposure for your business, increased traffic and leads, improved sales, developing loyal fans, and so on.

Common sense would argue that if you want to generate awareness of your brand, then the more social media platforms you infiltrate, the better.

On the other hand, could you be better off putting your efforts into one or two social media platforms that are the best fit for your business, and not worrying about the others?

Editors note: This blog post was originally published in January 2016 and has since been updated for optimal relevance and accuracy.

Digital marketing can produce lots of data – but what does the data really mean?

Is it really helpful?

This post will give you five questions to ask about your marketing data to ensure it’s of value to you.

But first, what are the most important questions you need answering?

Psychology and sales have always gone hand in hand. Those subtle, little cues that brands use to encourage us to part with our money - we seem to fall for them time and time again. 

Quite rightly, you might associate the psychological side of selling with B2C brands, but many of the same principles can be applied to the B2B conversion process.

Video is becoming easier, and cheaper, for marketers to create or commission. Here, we delve into the top 5 reasons to focus on video content.

As a marketing writer, I need to know about the latest trends in content marketing. I need to know where the next big thing is coming from and where the industry is going. I need to identify (and understand) the newest developments in software and systems. It’s my job, it’s what I do. And I do it so that I can interpret and relay how these things might affect the way you do your marketing.

Doing your own B2B research can help you to demonstrate thought-leadership and position your company as an expert in your industry.

But research projects aren’t turned around overnight. Research can be a big investment, and to make the most of that investment you should be thinking about how you can create multiple pieces of content from your research.

Some people prefer visual infographics over text statistics.

Some choose podcasts over written reports.

Repurposing your research for different formats means extending its lifespan as well as your reach, and as a result, creating more opportunities to convert prospects into leads.

Great copywriting is the oil that greases the cogs of your marketing machine. It keeps everything moving smoothly, swiftly and efficiently.

The higher the quality of that oil, and the more consistent you are with your application, the longer your machine will last. 

But it’s not uncommon for marketers to underestimate the need for quality copy. 

Marketing is multi-faceted and no two journeys will be the same. 

A great copywriter will address this.

Image optimisation can heavily influence the way search engines calculate your site rank, and, consequently, control how easy it is for searchers to find your site. Behind-the-scene elements such as page load time and keyword usage come to play here. If you want to be the number one search result for your product or service on Google or other SERPs, you really have to get a reign on your images.

In this post, we take a look at the benefits of a website image audit, and identify a handful of best practices.

Editors note: This blog post was originally published in November 2011 and has since been updated for optimal relevance and accuracy.

95% of us check our email every day, sometimes up to 20 times a day. We're glued to our mobile phones, making it easy for us to have constant access to our emails. In fact, 28% of us check our work email whilst in the bathroom!

Despite whispers that email marketing dead, the reality is that it remains one of the best ways to attract and retain customers. It offers a highly efficient channel at the heart of inbound marketing for communicating with clients in a targeted, measurable and cost-effective way.