Content Marketing
How to Drastically Increase Traffic to Your Web Site
Looking for ways to drive more traffic to your Business-to-Business website? Need a cost-effective way to educate your prospects and customers on your products or services? Perhaps you want to add a new marketing channel to promote your upcoming Sales, Events, and other promotional activities? If any of these things are true for your B2B organization then you need to add a blog to your B2B Web site.
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CPA Content Marketing: Four Examples of Superb Content by Accountants
B2B buyers complete nearly 60 percent of their purchase decision online before they even engage a sales representative, according to research by Google and CEM. What does this mean for your business? Quite simply, it suggests that if your online presence doesn’t knock prospective clients’ socks off, you could be out of the game before you even know you’re in it.
As more purchasing decisions are made online and more firms embrace content marketing, only accounting firms with extraordinary content will stand out in the new B2B marketplace. I’m sorry to say it, but that blog you haven’t updated since January simply isn’t going to cut it. Accounting firms must consider how to create online content that’s helpful and engaging enough to keep prospects coming back again and again.
Below, I’ve shared examples of four different types of great accounting content. My hope is that they will inspire you to produce bigger, better content that will keep your firm growing in the new era of B2B marketing.
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Developing Client Personas to Give Content a Personal Touch
For professional services firms, success is based not so much on “selling” to your clients, but on becoming a trusted advisor. You want to position yourself as an expert in your field and be the advisor clients and prospects turn to when they need to make a decision. One way to build such relationships through marketing is by creating a library of great “content.” Though content marketing has become an integral part of the marketing mix for professional services firms, I personally find the term so vague that it would seem there's plenty of room for error.
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How Professional Services Firm Can Excel at Content Marketing without Jeopardizing Billable Time
Have you seen the popular news clip that has spawned a media and meme sensation? It’s referred to as “Ain’t nobody got time for that,” and while the meme itself may be pretty silly, I often feel that “marketing… ain’t nobody got time for that!” is what our professional services clients think when I ask them to add content marketing to their already busy schedules in which billable client work is the first priority. They seem to think I am as crazy as these memes are.
I can’t say I blame professional services firms for ruling out content marketing because it “takes too long.” I too understand the demands of today’s fast-paced professional world. There are clients to serve, employees to manage, goals to reach, and endless deadlines to be met (shout out to the accountants). Would you think I am even crazier if I told you that you can easily weave content marketing into your day without jeopardizing your valuable billable time? Well, believe it! With the following time-saving strategies, you can accomplish one more thing: growing your business by generating leads online with content marketing!
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How Young Professionals Can Advance Their Career Through Thought Leadership and Subject Matter Expertise
When it comes to professional services firms, young employees are often quite unfamiliar with the concept of marketing and the fact that there is a plethora of quick and easy things they can do to advance their careers and help their firm reach its growth goals. Much of a professional’s early years is spent mastering professional skills, learning client service, and knocking out billable hours.
While these are all certainly important areas, this scenario presents a challenge for young professionals as they begin to rise through the ranks. At a certain point, they may feel that they have hit a ceiling where they need to begin marketing in order to continue advancing. Or maybe they have already climbed to that point and have been tasked with bringing in new business through marketing and business development. Young professionals may find themselves thinking, “What is this marketing stuff? I don’t have time for this!” The great news is that young professionals (and all professionals for that matter) can use thought leadership and their subject matter expertise to propel themselves forward in their careers without having to invest a lot of precious time.
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Attorneys: How Content Marketing Can Take Your Career to the Next Level
The following post originally appeared in The Legal Intelligencer Blog.
As a marketer to the professional services industry, I can tell you that "content marketing" for law firms has arrived and is here to stay. With social media, email, and Web advancements, it's become all too easy to "push" your firm's message out to the masses. The result is a fundamental shift away from pushing the more self-serving “me” marketing messages out to the marketplace, towards providing “you”-focused content of value to a more targeted audience. Basically, your potential clients don't necessarily want to know about you or your firm; they have questions they want answered. The primary objective of content marketing is to gain the trust and attention of an audience by providing them with valuable information on topics they are already interested in.
Take a few moments to browse through large or mid-sized law firms’ web sites and notice how many offer blog sites and other tools and resources. Content marketing has become such an integral part of the marketing mix for professional services firms that it's become more of a "price to play" than a "nice to have." It's also a great opportunity for young attorneys and professionals to enhance their knowledge and boost their careers. If you and/or your firm don’t generate great content, you should consider starting!
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The Gloriously Imperfect World of Professional Services Marketing
My first day at Ernst & Young (circa 1990) – a big moment in this young professional’s life! Everything had to be perfect, so I quickly ran down the list.
- Freshly polished patent leather pumps – Check!
- Silky sheer control top panty hose – Check!
- Perfectly pressed black suit – Check!
- Creamy white blouse with large shoulder pads – Check!
- And, pearl earrings, of course – Check!
(We won’t mention the permed hair for purposes of this blog post!)
My shaking hand pulled the shiny gold door handle of the sparking clean glass door of the class A office space at 1225 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Washington DC and my career in professional services had begun!
The Internet was in its infancy and fax machines were considered pretty high tech. Communications, both internal and external, were as formal as our professional attire. We used big words: “Mission Critical, Best-of-Class, Cutting-Edge.” All correspondence, including internal memos, went through multiple rounds of review. The business world moved slower than a herd of snails traveling through peanut butter, but everything was PERFECT!
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7 Quick Tips for Building an Awesome B2B E-Book
In a recent blog post, we noted that calls-to-action (“CTAs”) are “must haves” in the B2B marketing world. No matter the tactic, if you don't direct your audience towards the next step they likely won’t take it, and that would be a huge lost opportunity.
A successful CTA includes an enticing offer such as industry information and insight, and it doesn't hurt to present this information in an entertaining format. An e-book fits the bill in all these areas.
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Nine Habits of Highly Engaging Content Marketers
Someone recently told me she was an “advertiser's dream” because whenever she sees a commercial or hears of an offer, she is immediately convinced she wants or needs that product. Well, I think I'm a content marketer's dream...and maybe most marketers are. Whenever I hear about a new blog, webinar, tool, or tactic, I just can’t wait to give it a whirl.
With the speed at which marketing is changing- even over the past year- I'm constantly learning of new tools, social media platforms, SEO rules, etc. When I want to dig deeper, I'm reading blogs, downloading e-books, and/or watching YouTube videos. That said, we at Marketri are also on the other side of the fence, creating content for both our own firm and our clients'. Being both a producer and consumer of content helps us stay connected with the elements others find interesting too.
Here are some tips (or "habits") for keeping your content relevant, interesting, and engaging so that readers come to know you as a resource and keep returning to devour more information.
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Don’t Get Buried Alive: Effectively Curate and Share B2B Content with Scoop.it
Have you ever seen the TV show, “Hoarding: Buried Alive?” If you haven’t, you need to finish reading this blog, shut your computer down, throw yourself onto the nearest La-Z-boy, and turn on TLC because you are missing one of the most mindlessly addicting experiences in all of basic cable.
Now, those of you who have seen “Hoarding” know it’s about people who find themselves awash with lots and lots and lots of stuff. They have so much stuff because they just don’t know how to separate “good stuff” from “bad stuff” and all the stuff piles up uselessly as a result.
Some stuff is awesome—like the classic car one man buried under 30 years of junk.
Some stuff is garbage— like one couple’s massive collection of… you guessed it… garbage.
Some stuff is just repetitive—there once was a little old lady who owned 6 microwaves.
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