Eric Schwartzman

Brian Dean is founder of Backlinko, a website that offers next-level SEO training and link-building strategies, sharing free tips through a website, YouTube channel, and email marketing that are designed to make a market for online courses he sells. 

He started his company in 2013, but it took three before his traffic started to pick up. Now he does roughly half a million unique visitors per month. Here’s what changed.

“When I started, I was really focused in quantity over quality,” Brian says, “because I was in a super-competitive space”. Back then, there were already a lot of SEO and marketing blogs, so he had to compete against giants like Hubspot and Neil Patel. 

When he realized just putting out content wasn’t working, he decided to start producing massive guides that were well-designed to help him stand out from the crowd. They were expensive to make. But he looked at it as an investment. When he found it hard to scale, he started hiring more people, mostly gig workers, to get the job done. He still writes all the text himself, but he’s built a team around his content production. 

Finding Good Gig Workers on Upwork and Fiverr

https://youtu.be/G_at1IIJ5RY

Brian’s advice is not to make your instructions that detailed. It’s better to give people the result and let them figure out how to produce it. So, rather than spell out detailed instructions on Fiverr and Upwork for his gigs, he posts links to the finished product and lets candidates use those to guide what they are trying to produce. He’d rather have someone who can deliver the result than someone who needs a lot of instruction. He recommends hiring many people for the same job and seeing who performs best.

Ranking Google Passages

https://youtu.be/sNaOgHmVFYw

Soon, Google will introduce passage indexing, which Brian describes as the search engine making long pages on a website discoverable as segments or “passages”, which can rank individually. This will make it easier to find sections inside long-form content without having to scroll and scan for what you’re looking for in a long-form post. Brian invented the skyscraper technique, so optimizing long-form content is particularly important to him. “It’s essential now to divide long-form posts into clear sections, which was always a best practice because it’s good for readability.”

That being the case, is it a good idea to have a table of contents index at the beginning of your page with links to each passage or section? Brian hesitates to call it a must-have, but he believes it’s helpful for users nonetheless. Unfortunately, there is no Wordpress plugin for that. You have to code those links by hand.

One of the areas I always struggle with is measuring traffic from my email marketing to my site. I do my UTM links manually with Google Campaign Builder. Is there a better way to go? Brian says that your email service provider will tell you how many people clicked on your link, but other than that, if you want accurate email metrics to show up in Google Analytics, you have to set up your UTM parameters for all your links manually.

https://youtu.be/ftyFLxYY3sA

In terms of Brian’s favorite Digital Marketing stack, his front is still Wordpress, but he recoded his backend with next.js, which is a JavaScript framework much faster than PHP. But he warns that implementing this type of solution takes pretty good technical skills.

For more information about his favorite tools and how to create great online courses and newsletters, check the full conversation, which was loaded with interesting tips. Check out this SEO for news websites.

To support this podcast, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts here.

The B2B content marketing deluge we are experiencing nowadays was predicted 10 years ago by Doug Kessler, co-founder and creative director of B2B content marketing agency Velocity Partners.

The internet is littered with bad content under click-worthy headlines, which makes it harder for good content marketing to get considered because no one wants to risk wasting time wading through crap.

Most B2B content marketing agencies spin up a bunch of fluff that loses the reader in the first paragraph. So if you're still reading this, this article is above average.

Doug Kessler is convinced that hard work pays off.

He helps brands attract buyers with B2B content marketing that adds a fresh spin and new ideas.  He says we need to stop creating meaningless, snackable content marketing that doesn't deliver new ideas. "Snacks are good, my second favorite form of self-abuse, but meals are pretty, pretty important too," says Kessler

Growth of B2B Content Marketing

https://youtu.be/DM_OqeJGQwU

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/qvlUi50zO1U

Doug believes in simple principles like getting granular, breaking down a subject, and choosing a topic you can own. "It's about being smart, picking battles you can win, and then work them," he says.

We are drowning in a sea of content that promise results they don't achieve. And part of that is because crappy and good content looks similar at first glance. The difference is that regardless of the stage of the content marketing funnel, when we finish reading the crappy content, we're angry that we wasted valuable time. And that negative experience transfers over to the brand that created. 

The reason is so many B2B content marketing agencies are just about maintaining a steady stream of low-quality content as air cover. It doesn’t matter if it's just a bunch of nothingness. Nine simple tips become a 30-page white paper. There are little to no new ideas. That approach doesn’t drive measurable growth anymore. "Don't say the Definitive Guide if it's just a bunch of tips." Every time you publish B2B content marketing that doesn't deliver, you devalue your brand." And this what leadership needs to realize.

Creating B2B Content that Doesn't Suck

https://youtu.be/qDKGNDk-iuM

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/qvlUi50zO1U

Meaningless content damages your brand because you lose people's trust. Putting the extra work into creating meaningful content strengthens your brand. 

A big part of creating engaging and serious content in B2B growth marketing is confidence, says Doug. Right from the start, the reader must feel compelled to finish the article. They need to understand why investing the next 20 minutes in reading or perhaps an hour in absorbing the content is beneficial to them. Take your audience seriously. 

Doug also discusses what he calls insane honesty, which admits your weak points to build trust. Most marketing strategists recommend hiding a product's flaws or disadvantages; Doug says to highlight them. 

Strategies for Creative B2B Content Marketing Bliss

https://youtu.be/ajMMiQ2yNQs

Full video interview: https://youtu.be/qvlUi50zO1U

He believes marketing is both a magnet to attract clients and a filter to eliminate lookie-loos. He believes B2B content marketing planning should have a list of "who this product is not for."

We also talked about the scarcity of talented writers. For him, it is about being passionate about writing, curious, and having a voracious appetite for learning about business and marketing. 

If you'd like to support this podcast, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts here.

In this special episode of the Earned Media Podcast, I talk to Edelman Executive Director of Intellectual Property Tonia Ries about the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer. 

We are living through a raging infodemic and a pandemic simultaneously. The survey suggests that the Trump Administration and the GOP’s war against science has culminated in a crisis of confidence that threatens to prolong the coronavirus public health emergency.

Trust Trends Over Time 

https://youtu.be/M9UcrzDhI0k

“In tweets to their followers, the political leaders of the U.S., Brazil and Mexico diminished the importance of masks and social distancing to accelerate reopening their economies; these nations now are among those leading the world in COVID deaths,” wrote Richard Edelman, who has served as President & Chief Executive Officer of the public relations firm since 1996, in his essay about the findings.

Fifty-seven percent of Biden voters say they trust the media, versus just 18% of Trump voters. The polarization is so extreme that 57% of Americans say they believe the U.S. is in the “midst of a cold civil war.” There’s so much politically motivated false information out there, people don’t know where to turn. “As a result of this daily diet of distortions and counter-factual narrative, we no longer believe our leaders,” writes Richard. 

Trust in Institutions

https://youtu.be/si3-IBajUIc

Top Survey Findings:

Trust in traditional and social media as sources of general news and information are at all-time lows.

Things have gotten to the point that over half of the people surveyed are worried that journalists, government leaders and business leaders are all purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations. 

People don’t know who to trust. All sources are viewed with suspicion. So bad information is not only contaminating the information ecosystem, it is also starting to make people doubt good information.

People who are not careful consumers of information are less likely to be willing to get vaccinated and to aid the government in contact tracing.

Employers have a key role to play in addressing the infodemic due to the high levels of trust they have with employees who distrust the news media.  

After surveying respondents in more than 28 countries, the report finds trust in journalists, government, and business leaders at an all time low. More than half said they think that journalists and leaders are purposely misleading people on a regular basis. This crisis of credibility has brought us to the point where most people don't know where to turn for accurate information anymore. 

Trust in Media

Poor media hygiene -- which the report defines as relying on social media for news, not verifying headlines by clicking through and reading the actual story before amplifying it by liking or commenting and engaging in online echo chambers -- is threatening to prolong our recovery by discouraging a large enough percentage of the population from getting vaccinated, which will keep us from achieving herd immunity. As a result of the infodemic, inoculation hesitancy is too high. Just one 1 in 4 of the survey respondents practice good media hygiene.

Trustworthy Information

Respondents who said they verify the accuracy of news they share on social media before amplifying it were also 11 points more likely to be vaccinated against coronavirus than people who don’t. Social media algorithms are juiced to drive engagement and truth is not a ranking factor, so sensational headlines travel farther, faster on social networks, which is part of the problem.

Trust in Leadership

https://youtu.be/sywB4UcYmKA

“...only one in three of our 33,000 respondents is ready to take the vaccine as soon as possible and under 65 percent plan to be vaccinated within a year, writes Richard. “Of those who practice poor ‘information hygiene’...there is substantially less willingness to get the vaccine within a year (59 percent versus 70 percent for people with good information hygiene). There is greater vaccine hesitancy among Blacks and Hispanics in the US despite 3 to 1 death rates from COVID because of medical inequities and misinformation borne of history,” writes Richard. 

Trust in Public Health Agencies

According to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, the most trusted source of information is an employee's CEO, then national government, followed by news media reports with attributed sources, then significant news media reports with anonymous sources, advertising, and social media at the bottom of the barrel.

Trust by Country and Region

https://youtu.be/sTl612yaKJ0

Trust in Media

When the news media is either absent or failing to supply people with accurate and timely information, corporations are seen as having a responsibility to fill the information void.

With these greater expectations to engage on societal issues, CEOs are accountable to the public, not just the board and shareholders. 

Half of all employees are more likely to voice objections to management or engage in workplace protests now than a year ago.

Businesses are in a position to leverage trust by serving as guardians of information quality because they are one of the few institutions that scored as trustworthy, competent, and ethical. 

Trust in Subject Matter Experts

https://youtu.be/qm4mI64U0bs

“The challenges of the next decade, including ending systemic racism, renewed globalization, and oversight of technology platforms, require a more balanced trust equation for business and government. Media must restore its position as even-handed arbiter of truth, focused on news not opinion,” writes Richard. But how we get there in an environment where elected GOP officials still deny the legitimacy of President Biden’s win over Trump, despite 65 lost court cases and zero evidence, and lack the political will to hold Trump accountable for his failed coup d'état? 

My Conclusion

First, let me say that I am guilty of celebrating social media as a democratizer of information. If you go back through this blog, I welcome it as an agent of liberation. But that's not how things went down. Social networking companies made a pact with the intelligence community, leading to the age of surveillance capitalism we're in now. In exchange for sharing their data, the social networks got a license to strip mine our identities, preferences, fears, and dreams.

"The economics of surveillance capitalism...turned Facebook into an advertising juggernaut and a killing field for truth. Then an amoral Mr. Trump became president, demanding the right to lie at scale. Destructive economics merged with political appeasement, and everything became infinitely worse,' writes Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Business in an essay published by the New York Times.

The world's a big place so I don't want to say never, but there are few precedents of any girth for businesses putting purpose before profits. Facebook's donations to PBS are like Exxon's corporate social responsibility programs. Both effectively hack off your arm and hand you band-aid. So I'm skeptical that businesses are up to the task of defanging surveillance capitalism.

Unless the public, government, and NGOs can rally to revoke the surveillance economy's license to build personal dossiers on each and every one of us, the future of democracy is in peril.

For the full interview, listen to the podcast. You can download the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer here.

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can rate and review us on Apple Podcasts here.

Tim Soulo is CMO at Ahrefs, an industry-leading keyword research tool. With nearly 10 years of experience in SEO and digital marketing, Tim speaks at conferences around the world and publishes content on the Ahrefs Blog.

He’s also authored SEO research studies and digital marketing guides. In this interview, we discuss AI, domain authority, and conversion rate optimization.

Ahref’s has been upgrading their hardware and investing in AI, because “it really does give you and edge.” As big data processing gets easier, search engines will get “smarter and smarter, being able to factor in more ranking factors and blend them in a more sophisticated way.

So basically, the word ‘more’ is what AI means to SEO.” While everything will be more complicated, hopefully, it will be more useful, too. But Ahrefs needs more processing power, which means more hardware on the backend, to get there.

While neural networks that make decisions in specific scenarios aren’t that intelligent, Tim doesn’t see that as a limitation for Google when it comes to applying AI to its search algorithm. On the other hand, the raw amount of data that must be processed is a real challenge.

https://youtu.be/ZgyZzIPrIhc

Ahrefs is currently working on a metric that calculates how hard it would be to rank for a search query based on how many backlinks the top ten pages have. This has to encompass hundreds of millions of queries, which is hard enough to factor for backlinks. The formula demands exponentially more processing power.

In their page quality rater’s guidelines, Google uses “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness” to rate the quality of webpages. Tim says that no one’s quite sure about how Google exactly defines “authority”, but it’s probably not as simple as the number of backlinks a given page gets.

https://youtu.be/ZgyZzIPrIhc

Tim speculates that the algorithms also factor in how many times authors are mentioned on other pages, or how many people search their names, follow or write about them on social networks. But no one knows how Google prioritizes these signals.

In terms of which online outlets SEOs should be pitching, Tim says, “it boils down to what you have to say, and is the publication that you want to get a link from interested in that?”

Regarding domain authority, Tim reflects that Ahrefs’ approach is somewhat removed from that concept, stating that the rank boost you get from backlinks doesn’t come from domain authority, but from page authority. For instance, if you publish at TechCrunch and nobody reads or links to it, that page will have very low authority. 

https://youtu.be/IZCzBOsdBw8

There are no shortcuts to creating content that withstands the test of time. But consistently valuable content is the goal. Slow and steady wins the race. When it comes to leveraging AI, the lack of regulations around digital privacy in China means they have more data to inform algorithms than we do in the west. So I asked Tim if he thought the Chinese would dominate in AI. For his answer, listen to this podcast on SaaS marketing through SEO.

If you want to support this podcast, rate and comment on us at Apple Podcasts here.

In this episode, David Pogue talks about his latest book, How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos.

David has a great sense of humor, although the topic of his book and this podcast is no joke. I met him when he was keynoting a digital marketing conference that I chaired in NYC. He's taken the road less traveled to where he is today. And he's more interesting for it.

After graduating summa cum laude from Yale with distinction in music, he conducted Broadway musicals, wrote for MacWorld, and eventually became a weekly technology columnist for The New York Times.

Order the Book

He’s a five-time Emmy winner for his stories on CBS News Sunday Morning, a New York Times bestselling author, a 5x TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. 

Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree that the planet is getting warmer because of fossil fuel emissions. To understand why it’s happening, think about the temperature inside your car with the windows rolled up in a hot parking lot. The reason the earth is getting hotter is that emissions get caught in our atmosphere.

https://youtu.be/UGebIVNrT0E

The Earth is just one car in a crowded parking lot of planets we call the universe. when we burn fossil fuel, it's like rolling up the windows around our planet. And scientists agree that that's why climate change is happening.

The wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington, the one hundred years of hurricanes that are now happening every five years, or the hottest day ever recorded, which was in Death Valley are all the result of our planet getting hotter. And even if you think these are natural phenomena, David's book is still worthwhile because it’s not about why, it’s about what to do as a result. “Whether you think it’s natural or man-made, you still need to get ready,” he says. 

https://youtu.be/uf8j1IKqiwQ

Where are the safest places to live? The East Coast has rising sea levels, hurricanes, storms, bug infestations, and their associated diseases that go along with that. The South will become so hot it will be uninhabitable in some places. The West Coast also has rising sea levels, wildfires, and drought. In many places, there will also be a shortage of freshwater. The two sweet spots in the US are the Pacific Northwest -- which has a temperate climate, rain, lots of freshwater and interesting people -- and the Great Lakes region.  

After you figure out where to live, you need to get ready for floods, heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes, tornados, mosquitos, and ticks. You need to think about how to protect your kids, how to protect your business, how to build structures, and what to invest in. “I can spend two hours talking about flood insurance," says David. You also need to be ready for the breakdown of society as we know it.

https://youtu.be/mw45jOfl4oM

The book ends with a positive note about where to find hope in these challenging times.

More Climate Change Public Affairs Podcasts

Climate Scientist Michael E. Mann Reveals Culprits in War Against ScienceMIT PhD Joe Romm on the Fossil Fuel Industries War Against ScienceHarvard Professor Naomi Oreskes Talks About Her Book Merchants of DoubtHow Global Warming Became Climate Change at the US Dept. of State with Liz Murphy and Billie Gross at the State Department

To support this podcast, rate us and post a comment on Apple Podcasts here.

Creating content that captures, keeps, and converts attention into measurable transactions is broken. You start by conducting keyword research, then you create content based on that research, then you edit, re-edit, wordsmith it, add links, and wait for the world to discover it. 

But what if you could optimize from inception? Our guest in this episode is Alexander De Ridder, CTO of INK, a new content performance optimization platform. 

https://youtu.be/KBPv2dKoxHg

Subscribe to the podcast

Alexander is a Belgian living in Texas, where he enjoys beautiful nature, excellent barbecue and great success with INK. For those of you who didn’t see my previous episode with Michael Umansky, INK is a suite of AI-powered tools that help storytellers optimize their content without having to worry about technical SEO. They’ve used their own product to grow traffic at their site inkforall.com from less than 2,000 to nearly 200,000 visitors per month. 

“It’s all reproducible, and it’s been reproduced by many people who I’ve given similar information to,” says Alexander, citing the case of one INK user who grew his website from nothing to one million organic users in just ten months. He shared with us his six-step execution plan for putting together an effective SEO consulting strategy, which you need to listen to the podcast to really understand, but here are some brief notes:

FOCUS: What do I want to be known for? What am I really good at? 

ORGANIZE your ideas with a mind map.

RESEARCH as many keywords ideas as possible using a variety of techniques.

QUALIFY the top competing sites, compile their keywords, choose those with a low level of difficulty.

PROJECT an execution plan that includes workflows and realistic goals.

MEASURE and optimize.

If you have content that’s disorganized, get rid of it. Remove unproductive content. “You have to measure what works and what doesn’t work. If you have entire sections that add no value, they’re siphoning off authority from the other pages,” says Alex.

https://youtu.be/jvhFY-uozBU

Subscribe to the podcast

On the other hand, if your performance is a mixed bag, his advice is to take your content into INK and search engine optimize it section by section, starting with your more successful pages. Since I have the INK’s Wordpress plugin installed in my site, we did a live demonstration on how to perform this, which should be very useful for those still unfamiliar with the tool. 

In terms of WordPress categories, they can be used to create content hubs (defined as sections of your site devoted to a specific topic). WordPress categories are totally fine, provided that you use only one category per hub (there can be multiple tags, though). He also recommends making content hubs very prominent on the home page, with visual elements leading to landing pages devoted to a specific hub.

https://youtu.be/ENmwiQm2uOM

Subscribe to the podcast

If you're like to watch the full interview and see his graphs and charts, here it is:

https://youtu.be/3NWQqaEmp_U

Complete video recording of my podcast interview with Alexander de Ridder.

If you want to support this podcast, rate and comment on us at Apple Podcasts here.

“The best content doesn’t win - the best promoted content wins.”

You know by now that you need great content, but a lot of content marketing agencies make the mistake of thinking that content marketing stops when you hit the publish button. 

That couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Content Chemistry by Andy Crestodina

As brands, we need to be thinking of content promotion and PR tactics before even sitting down to write. After all, just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. 

Today, I’m sharing exactly how you can create a high-impact B2B content marketing strategy, highlighting the key takeaways from my recent interview with Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media and author of Content Chemistry.

Mapping out your content marketing funnel

Creative content agencies need to know that the modern content marketing funnel may not be a linear one, but the buyer journey still has the same stages. 

And they apply to both B2C and B2B content marketing consultants as well as every industry, product, and transaction people make. 

Think about it; anything you have ever done - making a donation, accepting a job, joining a webinar - has required that you become aware of what you need, think about your options, and take action.

Now, consider these marketing funnel stages as they relate to content: 

The content marketing funnel stages

Moving through the content marketing funnel stages could be compared to the process of cleaning up a messy garage.

Stage 1: Problem aware >> Seeking general information

You become problem aware when you realize the mess in your garage has gotten out of hand. You’re not sure if you can organize everything yourself, with the tools you have. And you’re not even sure which tools might be right for the job.

You begin Googling phrases like, “how to organize a garage.” 

   Content idea: This is where, as a company, finding problem-based key phrases for content will help you show up on Google. 

Stage 2: Solution aware >> Content marketing funnel

The customer now has questions (or concerns) about the industry and/or are beginning to look for information about the company.

Once you’ve started researching and reading a few things online, you know of a few options you have for cleaning up that garage. 

You’re now solution aware. 

You’re in the content marketing funnel. 

Content idea: You may have promoted content on social media, other sites, or your own site that helps inform customers about solutions and begins to generate interest about your brand.

Stage 3: Consideration >> Cost Lengthens Sales Cycle

The customer now knows about you and their solutions, and have specific questions (or concerns) about the product or service.

The amount of time you are at the solution aware/consideration stages of the marketing funnel depends on how expensive the solution might be and how quickly you need to clean up your garage. 

source: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-complexity/

But you may still have research to do.

You think that some sort of shelving can help out. Now you need the details. Will I need special tools? Do I need to have a pro install it? Is this a short DIY project or will it take a week?

Content idea: This is the B2B content marketing stage where you begin to talk about benefits and features of your product or service. Sales pages help by answering these questions. 

Stage 4: Action >> Conversion optimization

The prospect or lead is confident enough in you to purchase.

Finally, you’re empowered. You’re ready to do away with the chaos in the garage. 

You just need an enticing offer to nudge you to click “buy.”

Content idea: A strong CTA and conversion-focused content.

Calls to action are called just that - actions. They create the demand for something and tell you how to get it, converting your leads into your customer base. 

Content marketing boat metaphor

Before getting into more specific tactics, here’s a smart analogy to consider when thinking about your content marketing funnel and strategy.

Content marketing is like a boat.

There are three ways to move it forward: SEO (the sail), email (oar), and social (oar).

Pages that rank in search are unique because they passively send you traffic all day long. SEO is powerful. Once something is ranking, it can stay there for years. And every page on your site has the chance to catch traffic - just like a sail in the wind.

Email and social are activity based. You have to keep rowing to keep moving.

And, paid is like the motor. Turn it on and you move forward. But you stop moving when you stop paying.

How to create B2B content for promotion

You may be surprised to hear that Andy spends 6-8 hours writing each article on the Orbit Media site.

“You don’t create, then promote. You can’t retro-fit for keywords. You know how you’re going to promote before you even write the first word.”

He has a great 12-point article template that is used for every single piece he writes. It includes:

Keywords and search volume

Related key phrases that support your B2C or B2B SEO strategy

Optimized URL

Title tag (no more than 60 characters)

Optimized meta description

URLs he’s going to use for internal linking

Old articles he can use to link to the new piece

Pre-written email newsletter subject lines with the 5 most powerful words first

Social media posts/headlines around 15 words each

Which contributors or sites will be included

Additional people and sites to reach out to after publishing

Possible headlines

Then he starts writing. 

The idea is to C.O.P.E. 

Create Once, Promote Everywhere.

A little later, you can syndicate to give your content a new life. This would be copy + pasting a blog post into something like Quora, Linkedin, or Medium.

“SEO’s get panicked about this because they think of duplicate content, but it’s actually fine,” says Andy.

Speaking of SEO, he says it’s not always an important part of the content marketing funnel.

Write what you want to write and always write to help your customers. You may have 50% of your content that is more attractive via social or email. You’ll just need to get out the oars for these.

Remember that people searching for answers are busy and looking for something specific, while people on social media are bored and want to be triggered emotionally.

Without a B2B content marketing strategy and content to promote, “You don’t have content, you just have an online brochure in the form of a website.”

But before you start thinking about how your PR firm could promote your content marketing, you do have to do a quick check at the bottom of the funnel to make sure there are no holes or leaks in the bucket. 

Final considerations for your content strategy

Now that you’re armed with tactics for building your digital marketing funnel, and have an idea of how good promotion and PR can support your strategy, there are a few final considerations.

Fix holes in your marketing funnel

“Fix leaks in the bucket before you put more water in.”

Promoted content will fill the top of the funnel, but a broken conversion experience will make customers leave before buying.

No leaky buckets.

Set up attribution 

Know what success looks like.

Checking referral sources on Google Analytics will help you know which promoted content is bringing you the highest quality traffic. 

And it will help guide your future strategy.

You can also put tracking codes, or UTM parameters, to track exactly which links people are clicking on to come to your site. 

Be smart with content creation

Now we’re coming full-circle: the content marketing funnel and those marketing funnel stages look a little different for each company.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B or B2C marketer; if the purchase requires someone to think about it, content marketing is a good fit.

And the longer the funnel/buyer journey, the more opportunities you have for content.

Conversely, impulse buys may not need a content marketing strategy.

People see your promoted ad and buy. No research needed.

We all know there is no one-size-fits all approach to content - especially B2B content marketing. But this talk with Andy definitely gave us come guideposts to get to our goals.

And the marketing insights don’t stop there. Watch the full interview with Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media.

https://youtu.be/VoFgyr7-iCU

Subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen podcast for more thoughtful conversations that'll help you generate qualified leads for your company.  Or if you're more interested in digital PR, subscribe to the...

If you don’t think your content is reaching its full potential - or you’re wondering how to build a sustainable B2B content market strategy that regularly brings in qualified leads - then you’re going to enjoy these tips from Robert Rose, the Chief Strategy Advisor at Content Marketing Institute. 

Not only is Robert with CMI, he’s also the Founder and Chief Troublemaker for The Content Advisory and a 3-time best-selling author.

Needless to say, he had some compelling ideas on building a content marketing strategy for B2B lead generation.

Which leads us right to the question:

What is a content marketing strategy?

A content marketing strategy is defined as a plan to build a committed audience through consistent content that educates and inspires. Sounds simple enough. 

But not all content creative strategies are created equal. In fact, each one needs to be tailored to your unique business model. 

Robert’s 5 content marketing tips for startups and B2B businesses

1. Start with problems, not products

Many brands engineer a product and hand it off to marketing, hoping they can sell it.

That puts the solution before the problem.

You will be more successful if you reverse engineer your products based on a proven customer need. 

First, get to know your customers’ problems inside-out before making your next offering. Sometimes, they may not even know what their true problem is. 

But getting to the true core of what they need will make you much more successful in the long run. 

2. Focus on building an audience 

If you are creating scatter shot content marketing assets like blog posts or infographics that aren’t cohesively connected to a broader topic, you won’t attract anyone. 

It would be like publishing a magazine that covers a completely different topic every issue.

The best content marketing strategies are not necessarily campaign-focused, but they do have to be category-focused to connect with a target buyer over time. 

3. Be willing to change 

You wouldn’t take a race car driver seriously if he said, “I don’t want to change race cars, I just want to win the race.” It’s the same with your website content. You can’t think, “I don’t want to change my site, I just want to show up first.” 

Change. Test new things. Think of your website as something that is constantly evolving. 

4. Value quality over quantity

“Why won’t one amazing white paper suffice for the entire year?,” asked Robert.

Is it because it didn’t work? Are we tired of our own content? Do we think we need a different piece for every marketing effort? 

Firstly, each resource should not be limited to one-time use for a campaign. You should be creating in such a way that each individual piece makes the overall collection of content on your site more valuable.

Second, if you keep making more, more, MORE, you run the risk of sacrificing quality. The best content marketing tip I can give is to focus on quality - even if that means cutting back on quantity.

5. Sell solutions

Most of your B2B customers have already decided they need a change. It’s your job to sell them on the fact that your digital content marketing framework is the best one.  

Write a white paper with step-by-step, practical information that’s easy to apply. Tell customer success stories. Explain what they will have to change in their business, what the implications will be, and what your solution is. 

Make yourself invaluable. 

Put these content marketing tips to action 

Use Robert’s five tips to spend more time on thought leadership rather than “thought repeatership” and your content marketing efforts will successfully deepen your connection to your customers. To truly build an audience, you must view them as relationships and not metrics. 

And don’t forget to subscribe to my B2B Lead Gen Podcast for more marketing tips.

What does it take to earn the confidence of angel investors? What does it take to get an early-stage startup funded? And what does it take in a post-pandemic environment? 

Angel investor Jeff Saling who is also executive director of StartUpNV, Nevada’s only State-Wide Business Incubator, which helps startups take business ideas from beta to revenue. 

Jeff led a clinic full of founders who were eager to learn how to fund their startups.

In terms of how the pandemic has affected the types of companies getting funded, Jeff says contrary to what you might think, in times of economic turndown people start companies. In fact, many of the most popular brands today had their start at the 2008 crisis. That rings true to me. I launched iPRSoftware right after the dotcom bubble burst.

https://youtu.be/miQg8-XXVVA

What Jeff does through StartUpNV and its sister venture, a boot camp called AngelNV, is connect investors and startups. When they launched AngelNV, they expected about 70 startups to enroll in their founder program, but instead they attracted more than 300. So all in all, while the pandemic has obviously been bad for the economy, it has also opened some windows of opportunity.

You can’t make generalizations about what types of companies are getting funded these days. Jeff says it depends on each individual investor. For instance, he likes to invest in software companies. “They’re super capital-efficient, you don’t need to invest in huge inventories, manufacturing, etc”. 

Focus on Sector Angel Investors

He’s been heavily involved in the sector, so he feels comfortable in investing in software businesses. Similarly, other investors will fund ventures they know and feel comfortable with as well. So if you’re a startup, it makes sense to look for investors who are comfortable with you industry.

Focus on Local Angel Investors 

Proximity, particularly for early stage investors, matters too. Most angel investors fund local startups. “Early capital usually comes from family and friends, from somewhere near you. People who care about the local community they live in and want to see it succeed. So you want to develop that local ecosystem of angels. StartUpNV has had 17 of the startups in our group raise $40 million dollars this way,” he says.

Elements of the Perfect Pitch

Cover two these 4 things:

What is the problem that you’re solving?

What’s the solution that you’ve created?

Who’s your addressable the market? How big is it? How quickly can you get at it? What’s the competition? 

And what’s your business model? How is it you’re gonna make money?

Who’s the team? 

That’s how you explain an investment opportunity. It’s about the problem, the solution, the addressable market, the business model, the team, and the investment opportunity. Those are the big five. 

If you want to find out more about funding opportunities for your startup or if you’re an angel looking for Nevada based investment opportunities, visit StartUpNV and AngelNV sites.

This episode is for:

Digital marketers who want to explain what they do to people outside of tech.

Anyone interested in understanding what digital marketing is.

Clients are curious about what a digital marketer can do for them.

I go through the 10 digital marketing skills that will be most in-demand and teach you how to explain them to anyone, regardless of tech-savvy they are.

https://youtu.be/K4eo-5jFZNI

If you want to become a digital marketing specialist, you need baseline fluency in the first 4 skills. After that, you can choose any of the others and drill, down more on them.

1.       Analytics. You really can’t improve what you don’t measure. At a bare minimum, you should know how to do website usage analysis using Google Analytics because it’ll tell you where the money comes from. Also, do a search engine visibility assessment with Google Search Console and a user-experience evaluation. Check the video for practical examples of this skill.

2.       Marketing Automation tools give you a way to flow of information cross-functionally throughout an organization. This process map, which I designed for the US Department of State, shows how the information a central digital communications team creates can be attributed to independent third-party sources.

3.       Web Performance. Making your website load quickly and correctly indexed by Google is extremely important. Also, you must avoid page downtime at all costs.

4.  Search Engine Optimization is the first part of the B2B lead generation process. You need to know the basics of keyword research, because it applies to every aspect of Digital Marketing.

5.       Email Marketing. You’ll deliver relevant communications and get quality leads through personalization. There are three levels of personalization, which I explain in some detail in the video.

6.       Content Marketing is authoring compelling and useful content creative that will be found and shared by people looking for answers to questions that your product or service solves

7.       Blogging. For B2Bs, maintaining a blog that helps customers solve problems is a very effective strategy, even if the page itself doesn’t seem that popular from a traffic standpoint.

https://www.ericschwartzman.com/blog/

8.       Copywriting is using persuasive language to get prospects to notice, remember, and respond to your message. Always factor in that people is more seduced by emotional stories than by cold, hard facts.

9.       Podcasting. The Theory of Multiple Intelligence shows that some people absorb information better by listening than reading. Rather than go with a news format, try to produce a more durable, feature-oriented interview format program. It works pretty well, if I say so myself!

10.   Social Media Marketing. Before you invest any time in this, get your website in order, search optimize it, and have your email marketing ready. Many people will consider your following as a measure of your capabilities, so if you choose this route, build a following first.

11.   Digital PR is about getting relevant, high-profile websites and blogs to write about and publish links back to your site. This is a really important skill set, because it’s where your credibility comes in, so work towards making yourself a name and build a solid community.

12.   Online Advertising. If you have lots of money and want quick results, you can use paid media, but this doesn’t always do the trick. To test out different approaches, you’ll need traffic because more visitors mean more data.

If you’re just starting out, think about which of these skills you’re strongest at. Once you become a generalist, you’ll be ready to lead the digital marketing effort.

And download my 12 Essential Digital Marketing Skills white paper.