7 Ways to Measure Your Content Marketing Success

7 ways to measure your content marketing successAs marketing becomes central to digital marketing strategies, marketers should measure their program’s success on more than a hunch. More and more, we’re expected to quantify the success of our content marketing to justify our budget. The best measurements look beyond a shopper’s initial response and gauge sustained engagement compared with downstream revenue.

In other words, retweets and likes may not matter as much to your business objectives as actual leads and sales. Here are seven ways to prove your content marketing program is worth the investment:

Online Marketing Strategy

Tips for Managing Your Affiliate Marketing Program

Tips for managing your affiliate marketing program

If you’re managing an affiliate marketing program on a low budget – or outsourcing the task out to someone else – you may be left with ineffective strategies, sluggish growth or dissatisfied clients.

Affiliate marketing should be a measurable way to boost sales. But how do you ensure your program has the potential to take your brand awareness to the next level? Does your program provide constant recruitment of new affiliates? Does it align with your clients’ strategies, as well as your own? American City Business Journals urges you to first be sure affiliate marketing fits into your company’s overall marketing and brand strategy before diving in. For this to happen, you’ll need to devote attention to all of your affiliate programs or find someone who can.

Some marketers get so bogged down in the weeds they end up actually wasting company resources, rather than addressing the nature of the challenges to their program. Digital marketers in particular should review their management techniques for new ways to grow strategically. With the potential to represent 5 to 15 percent of online sales and performance based payout structure, affiliate marketing is a necessary part of the digital marketing portfolio for retailers looking to grow their online sales, Multichannel Merchant reported.

Affiliate Marketing

How B2B Buying is Evolving

Digital Marketing - B2B

Traditional business-to-business buying involved two things: wooing customers at live events and buying ads in hopes of hitting the jackpot. Between the digital revolution and a younger demographic dictating new buying trends, things are not so straightforward anymore.

Now there are more players than ever and many more layers to the B2B buying process. The way buyers conduct their research and make purchasing decisions has changed with the times, as well. MarketingProfs reported that millennial B2B buyers want to interact directly with vendors’ representatives far more than Gen X or baby boomer buyers when researching products and services. If you’ve been out of the game for a while, expect to see three major factors affecting the field:

Online Marketing Strategy

The State of Search Across Devices

The state of search across devicesThat prize consumer you’re after could Google reviews of your restaurant on his laptop, make reservations from a tablet and then get directions from his smartphone, all within an hour. The trend of searching across multiple devices, by people transitioning from one to the other, is on the rise as users query search providers from nearly any location. Recent Microsoft research found that 16 percent of queries on one search engine were from multidevice users, despite the fact that the percentage of actual users was lower. In other words, those doing the searches are especially engaged, making them more accessible to digital marketers – but also harder to pin down.

It’s not just that we’re seeing people use more devices, but that the types of usage are also evolving. Marketers will have their work cut out as they anticipate changes in how consumers conduct different types of searches. The report points to the example of gaming console users, who can now conduct Web searches directly from consoles and use applications previously found only on other devices.

Mobile Marketing

Knowing When Your Brand Needs A Mobile App

Mobile apps give can give businesses new SEO opportunities.With more consumers spending time on their mobile apps, you may be wondering whether to take advantage of the trend. Many companies create apps to build on their existing communication with consumers via their iPhones, iPads and Androids, provide them with a new service, or broaden their audience.

But brand apps still comprise a small fraction of overall app activity. A few well-functioning mobile channels may already serve your brand just fine.

Mobile Marketing

The 411 On Mobile Pay-Per-Click

Pay Per Click AdvertisingMore than half of adults use their phones to surf the Web, the Pew Research Center reported – a trend that will continue throughout 2015. That amounts to a lot more clicks and impressions available to marketers, many of whom are already using the pay-per-click model to target users of cell phones, iPads and other mobile devices.

Essentially, this offers a more efficient way to manage the type of website, time of day and ad copy that these visitors are viewing. Mobile PPC ad campaigns allow marketers control over when and how ads will be displayed, and who will see them.

Online Marketing Strategy

8 Tips To Drive Lead Generation With Pay-Per-Inquiry Radio Advertising

per-inquiry radio advertising

Many brand advertisers are missing out on the performance placement opportunities that radio has to offer. Pay-per-inquiry radio advertising is one such opportunity for direct marketers because, typically, you only pay for the inquiries generated, regardless of the number of spots that air. It could also enable you to reach more radio markets than you would through traditional radio buys. Last year AdAge ranked pay-per-lead generation programs among its top B2B prospecting programs, but it can be just as effective for B2C.

Your program would get rolled out to a broad spectrum of radio stations, networks and syndicators of your choice in your desired geographical area. Depending on your objectives, sales leads can be generated through a variety of offers, from a free appointment or trial, to a free rate quote or request for more information.

Lead Generation, Pay Per Call

What Is Pay Per Inquiry And Why Does It Work?

What is pay per inquiry, and why does it work

You need two things to profit from pay-per-inquiry: relationships with media outlets and a desire to advertise across a wide geographical area. Also called cost per lead, pay per lead or pay for performance, it’s a direct response marketing model whereby advertisers receive free ad time and space but only pay for results. The catch: You lose control of where and when the ads will run.

In a nutshell, your job is to entice consumers to call a customer service center. Media outlets often have unused air space, so making use of this unsold advertising space benefits both you and the media outlet. Marketers cycle their offer to their media partners, which produce trackable, measurable results. Your client merely agrees to pay a set price for each qualifying call.

Lead Generation, Pay Per Call