But search engine optimization and building search rankings go well beyond just keywords, an arbitrary amount of content and so on. It also has to be informative and interesting enough to be shared either through linking or the increasingly important social media mentions.

Simply writing generic content that doesn’t grab the reader’s attention won’t exactly yield a whole lot of benefit for your firm.

Headlines are how you grab this attention, which should intrigue the reader into continuing on for more.

Time is valuable….

Since we’re bombarded with so much information all the time, we’re only going to look at what really intrigues us and think will benefit us. Seeing a boring headline limits your content’s potential in this regard. And if it doesn’t see much in the way of traffic, links and mentions in social media, it won’t have the impact it can.

That’s why taking a few minutes to craft a headline that grabs your reader’s attention is so valuable. Headlines are an invaluable part of print media (…think about when you’re in the checkout line looking at the magazines). In the online world, headlines are doubly important due to the sheer magnitude of content that’s out there.

Nick Usborne has outlined 7 approaches to headlines that can grab readers’ attention and ignite their curiosity to keep reading. Using one of these will help you maximize the impact your content has on your bottom line.

Approach #1: Ubiquitous List

People love seeing lists, which are easy to scan and read. They are a lot of times a hit on social media. Lists can be especially valuable if you include some sort of benefit like “5 Ways to save on your Vacation,” or whatever is applicable to your business.

Approach #2: “How To”

Always a winner too…explaining how to do something will always draw a lot of attention. Be sure you say that in your headline (ex: “How to save 15% on your heating bill) so people will clearly see the benefit of reading further. Millions of people go online each day to find out how to do something – buy a car, pick a stereo, fix a flat, whatever.

Approach #3: Challenge

Another thing that compels people to read is a challenge. Do I know the answers or not? What don’t I know or what am I missing? Good example from Nick – “5 Things you don’t know about your teenagers.”

Approach #4: Intrigue

This approach is kind of like a brain-twister where the reader has to keep going to find the answer. “Body Found, Man Still Missing” is an actual headline from a newspaper. While searching for a missing person, someone else’s body was found.

Approach #5: Conspiracy

We all love a good conspiracy involving anyone in a position of authority (doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc.). Giving any indication they’ve hidden the truth will certainly entice readers for more. (Ex:  The truth about raw food diets)

Approach #6: Secrets of the Opposite Sex

People love delving into the mystery of what makes the opposite sex tick. If you’re targeting a specific gender, you will grab a lot of attention this way. (Ex: Why women love to shop or Why men love to watch sports)

Approach #7: Scarcity

Indicating scarcity of an offer or a closing window of time to do something will indeed motivate people to read further. People don’t like to miss out on something so their attention will be drawn by the prospect of a last chance. (Ex: “Last chance to get tickets” or “Deadline for applications soon”)

Examples of headlines are mainly from Nick with a few more thrown in there by me.

These 7 approaches to headlines will garner much more attention than regular, descriptive headlines. The result will be a much higher number of social media mentions, likes and shares.

Nick Usborne has an e-book on crafting killer headlines that I hope to obtain and read here soon. When I do, I’ll come back and share what I learned.

Have you taken one of these approaches in crafting a headline?

If so, did you see more conversions, shares and so forth?

Other Posts You May be Interested In

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It’s commonly known in the search marketing world that Bing has partnerships with Facebook and Twitter and integrates them into relevant search results.

Starting this week though, Google is rolling out a transformative switch that will integrate pictures and posts from Google+ in with search results. Those of us signed into Google will be able to simultaneously search the broader web and our own Google+ networks at the same time.

This latest update from Google is dubbed “Search Across your World.” Jack Menzel, Google’s product management director, explains that members will be able to “…search across information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public web.”

While they will be clearly noted, Google+ results will be blended in with traditional ‘authoritative results.’

Let’s say you’re researching your next vacation to the Grand Canyon and type that into a search. Besides sites showcasing the park, any tours and attractions, you will also see a post one of your friends wrote in Google+ about their trip. However, it will only appear if the post or picture has been shared with you or if it’s public (…in order to alleviate privacy concerns).

And that’s an important thing to remember – this new integration with Google+ and regular search will include images as well. Therefore, if you use Google Image search, pictures from your friends will appear alongside results from the broader web.

From Google’s perspective, this integration of personal, private, public and social will ensure you’re getting more relevant results because this is the information and the people you choose to connect with.

These new features will only work if you’re signed into Google though (…another move to allay privacy concerns). And to allow more flexibility, icons will appear at the top of the page – one allowing you to include social results and the other allowing you to strictly see standard, non-personalized results.

Amit Singhal, who oversees Google’s algorithms, comments that “The social search algorithm, and the personal search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.”

Think of this is as another integration of different searches into one place. In the good ol’ days, you had to do separate searches for news, images and so forth. For a while now though, these results have been integrated with regular searches. Google is now simply including social in that mix as well.

How will this affect business’ search engine optimization efforts?

Only time will tell. One thing is absolutely certain though – we will report on these effects as they become available to us.

In the meantime, see this quick summary from Google below and take a look at these expert reviews from Mashable and Search Engine Land to learn more about these revolutionary changes.

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Over the last few weeks of 2011, we took a break to assess the state of search engine optimization and where things were headed going into 2012. We do this in order to help our clients (…and readers of this blog) better understand where they should focus their online marketing efforts.

After reflecting on where we’ve been and where we’re going, we quickly realized that the lines between different types of search – namely organic, local, mobile and social – are now being blurred more than ever. Rather than web search strictly being the center of activity online, social is increasingly becoming the focus.

According to an exclusive web tutorial from Planet Ocean, web search was the sun and other types of search (…or planets) revolved around it. Now, instead of web search being the sun, social is quickly becoming the center of the universe with other types of search (…or planets) revolving around it.

As we’ve said here many times over the last year, being social is a critical strategy to being successful online – this will become even more critical in the coming year. A cursory review of search results for a variety of terms shows social mentions and engagement alongside traditional webpages.

Social is being aggressively integrated in Bing, who has partnerships with Facebook, Skype and Twitter. Google has basically bet the farm on its new social network Google +.

From these arrangements and others, we can ascertain that social sharing will increasingly integrate with web search. Going forward, social shares or votes will increasingly be the new links.

How many have liked, +1’d or otherwise made a comment regarding content on your site?

So how can I ensure my site continues to rank high in 2012?

Dominating your market online in the new year will require some tried and true methods mixed with some new ways of engaging your audience online.

Since the web has become increasingly social, it’s become increasingly democratized as well. Users will more and more be the driving force in determining which social networking platforms you ultimately adopt.

The key to all of this though is content – as in years past, successful online marketing will be driven by your ability to create reference grade content that helps the reader. In turn, this can lead to true engagement that builds trust and value.

Rather than a few pages earning links, success online will hinge more on how socially engaging your content is.

The more likes, +1s and buzz your content has, the better your business will do.

Besides content itself, freshness will also be a driving factor in maintaining and building high search rankings. It’s increasingly become clear that Google and others are placing a high value on ‘fresh’ content. Just in the last two months, we’ve seen Google make updates to its algorithms to reward sites with fresh content, especially in areas that are always changing.

This update though has sadly penalized some sites with great ‘evergreen’ content that’s been around awhile but still valuable. Repurposing this content will help you get around this ‘freshness’ problem, especially if you experienced a drop in rankings due to this latest update.

Also in 2012, expect to see more firms using social media tools for product development and testing as well as technical support.

What about mobile-based search? Will it continue to grow in 2012?

An emphatic yes!! It’s projected that by 2015, more users in the U.S. will access the Internet through their smartphones or tablets than a regular computer.

Mobile search is deeply tied into local search with over 40% of searches on a mobile device being for something local like a restaurant, doctor’s office or brick and mortar store. According to Google, 44% of searches from a mobile device in the 2011 holiday shopping season were for store locations and last-minute gifts.

With mobile devices, users can seamlessly float between mobile, local and product search as well as their social media activities.

In 2012, it’s imperative that local business establish their presence on places like Bing Local, Google Places, Foursquare and others. Don’t be hesitant to allow reviews – customer reviews give you an opportunity to address grievances and open yourself up to new ways of engaging customers.

So there you have it – things will continue to move at wharp speed in this new year – social and mobile is most certainly revolutionizing how people interact and find things they need.

Stay tuned to our search engine optimization blog as we slice and dice the trends and developments in the search marketing world. Most of all relax and have fun with the possibilities the online sphere will bring in 2012.

Other Posts You May Be Interested In

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Preparing for the Mobile Revolution – Part II

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This latest update is known as the ‘freshness update’ because of its stated goal – rank newer content higher in search results.

The search giant says these changes should affect around 35% of searches, mainly in areas where the most recent content matters – current events, hot topics, celebrity gossip, product/movie reviews and breaking news are examples of where this principal would apply. See further explanation and a list of the winners & losers in this great post from TechCrunch.

Here are a few searches you can look at for an example – “Black Friday 2011,” “Penn State scandal” or “NBA lock-out”

One thing you will notice is how top results are time-stamped and annotated more visually than before. Some of these annotations are in days while others are notated in minutes or even seconds. From these ‘time-stamps,’ we can tell that date-specific content is being served now more than ever.

Considering this emphasis on placing newer content higher in search results, consider the following 7 strategies to ‘evergreen’ your content and increase your chances of a ‘freshness’ boost in search results.

1) Start and maintain a blog

It’s clear from this update that more timely content is better. Therefore, one of the best ways to accomplish this ‘timely’ requirement is to publish content on a variety of topics on a regular, even daily basis. A blog is one of the best ways to easily get this content online.

2) Generate ‘Link Bait’ pieces

Content pieces that are informative and entertaining sometimes bring in thousands of visitors, hundreds of social media impressions and dozens of links each day. When these types of pieces are published on your blog, you will certainly see higher rankings. Seeing the popularity and relevancy for so many people will be a strong signal to Google.

3) Use Time Stamps to your advantage

Take a look at the top results in our sample searches and you’ll notice that each one has a time stamp. Each ‘freshness’ result has a clear publication date pulled by Google from the piece. Time stamping is easy to do and automatic on many blog platforms like WordPress. Google recommends the YYYY-MM-DD format (…2011-12-12).

4) Maximize Your Use of Social Media

Make sure you’re using social media tools to ‘push out’ new content as well as ‘pull in’ traffic     and social signals to that same content. Nothing says ‘fresh’ like a Tweet, Facebook comment or a +1 on Google’s new social network. Also, you can tap into your social networks to help write more content for you. If that isn’t possible, getting your friends to simply promote your content or leave comments will dramatically boost your ‘freshness quotient’ with Google.

5) Dynamically Update XML Sitemaps

By default, XML sitemaps include time stamps for each crawled URL within the sitemap.      Making sure these time stamps are updated regularly when new content is posted is now a pretty big deal. Blogging platforms like WordPress do this automatically but for your regular site content, it’s recommended you install a standalone XML sitemap generator that will automatically update your pages when you do.

6) Publish more Press Releases

Press releases scream ‘fresh’ and timely. In this new era of freshness though, press releases just may be the best and fastest way to feed the search engine a steady stream of the type of content they’re displaying high in search results. However, a press release will only remain fresh for a couple days up to a week so think about ways you can ‘update’ a prior press release with new, more detailed information when possible.

7) Get into Google News

Although it’s extremely difficult for a lone blogger to get into Google News, doing so can have a tremendous influence in how/if your content will find its way to the top of these ‘freshness’ results.

After reading about Google’s new fascination with freshness, you may be thinking that you can simply make changes to a previously published piece of content. According to Google’s statements though, one of the more important factors affecting which content they serve is when they first crawled a page. Making changes to your content in the hope of getting a ‘freshness boost’ will not work.

Therefore, be sure your content is correct the first time!!

One observation about these changes that we and others like our friends at Search Engine News have noticed – freshness doesn’t always equate to ‘most relevant’ in terms of returned search results. Down the road, this distinction may cause problems for Google…we’ll see of course.

Related Posts

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In our last post discussing mobile smartphones, we listed some astounding statistics on how rapid this technology is being adopted and how many users are projected to access the Internet through a smartphone in the coming years.

Many of the facts and figures we found (…some of which listed in Part I) certainly provided compelling reasons to begin thinking about smartphone technology and its role in your online marketing strategy.

In Part II, we’re going to delve in and examine the ‘how’ of building a website compatible for smartphone’ display…as far as marketing goes, it’s hard to say what works and what doesn’t. For now, let’s focus on making sure your site(s) can display on a mobile device and are properly optimized.

To start, one point from a HubSpot article on mastering mobile marketing pointed this out – “…the answer to how lies in not thinking about mobile as another PC but another limb for busy, active customers.”

That’s right – don’t look at mobile smartphones as yet another item on your long to-do list. Rather, think of it as another way customers can interact with your brand. Being accessible both through a computer and smartphone will most assuredly put you at the apex of businesses marketing online.

So getting started – the first step is for you to evaluate your users. Find out how many people visit your current site through a mobile device and which devices (I-Phone, Android, Blackberry) they use. Set realistic goals by optimizing popular content from your website for smartphones.

Next step is to understand mobile’s limitations and leverage its capabilities to your best advantage.

One of the most important things to remember is screen size and making sure your page(s) are viewable on the smaller smartphone screens. Images need to be sized properly to ensure they display and load quickly (…if images are so large they take up huge amounts of bandwidth, visitors are less likely to come back). Include ‘alt image’ descriptive copy that can display in lieu of an actual picture.

Also, if you have forms, keep them short. Studies have shown that users will not spend lots of time filling out a request form, especially on a smartphone. This goes for clicks too – don’t make your users click too many times to get to your content. The more clicks visitors have to make, the fewer of them who will stick around.

If you have a storefront for instance, including click-to-call functionality on your mobile site is an important component to have. Functionality for directions (…Google Maps) are invaluable in these cases as well.

And although mobile browsing should be more streamlined than desktop browsing, you shouldn’t neglect your calls-to-action.

One more important point – be sure you test your mobile site and content on different devices, just like you test regular web content on different browsers. Some will display certain things differently. It’s best to find this out in the beginning so you can make any necessary adjustments.

These items are just a few basic things to get you started. As we said earlier, mobile ‘marketing’ is still pretty new so there’s not much to report on what truly works. You can always consider developing an ‘app’ for I-Phones and I-Pads but it’s generally recommended you get the site down first. Apps are more for mid-level prospects anyway.

One of the best ways to learn what may work is to think about your experience using mobile smartphones. Let us know about some good mobile sites you’ve seen in the comments below.

While that stat shocked me at first, it isn’t entirely surprising once you think about. Today, you can get a cutting-edge smartphone for $200 on up. Back in the day as some of us like to say (the ‘90s), it could cost anywhere from $600 on up to get online with a PC…and that’s a conservative estimate!!

Projections indicate that within the next 2 years, over a billion people will have access to the Internet through their mobile phones. Some say Internet usage through a mobile device will exceed that of laptops by 2015…presently, 25% of Internet users in the U.S. have opted for smartphones completely. In some places, people are completely bypassing the laptop and going straight for a mobile device.

Suffice it to say, businesses will have to (1) be sure their websites are compatible with mobile smartphones and (2) think about marketing strategies for reaching this burgeoning audience.

Those who do will definitely be ahead of the curve, especially considering the fact that only 6% of businesses are engaging in the medium according to Michael Tasner (…via HubSpot). Of small businesses, only 0.5% are doing any kind of mobile optimization and marketing.

Which brings us to our first reason for thinking about smartphones and your business – timing. Since so few businesses are employing mobile marketing at this time, you will certainly gain an edge before it becomes too cluttered. If you’re already marketing online, the costs though are fortunately relatively low.

Here are some other stats to consider (…courtesy of Google):

• 67% of smartphone users research an item on their phone then buy it in a store
• 53% of users purchase something as a result of their smartphone search
• 89% of users do their searches with some degree of urgency

Considering its projected there will be over 100 million smartphone users in the U.S. by 2014, any business with a serious, integrated marketing strategy has to consider mobile. Forget about (…not completely) Google+ or other new things we’ve mentioned lately – mobile smartphones are growing at a very quick pace.

As Michael Tasner says “Mobile is growing faster than any other online-marketing method, tactic, or technique.”  Why wouldn’t you start thinking about how your websites and marketing strategies play into this?

Check back with us in a few days on a brief summary of how to make sure your website(s) are mobile compatible and a few marketing techniques to consider. Since it’s so new, marketers are still figuring out the best techniques. We’ll keep our readers updated as new practices emerge.

In the meantime, check back with us later in the week for more of the how rather than the why on marketing through mobile smartphones.

A recent video from the head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts, tries to answer this question. In short, no it isn’t. According to Cutts, all SEO basically means is making sure your pages are well represented in search results.

There are many legitimate, or ‘white hat,’ tactics SEO pros can use to help your pages rank high, including:

• Making sure pages are crawlable with good links
• Using strong keywords in site’s content. Words everyday people will use, not insider industry jargon
• Constructing a site that’s highly usable and has a design conducive to search engines
• Making your site loads fast, which is one of many of Google’s search ranking factors
• Building a good URL structure that’s easy to follow for both users and search engines

Using techniques like these and many others are considered to be okay by Google. Sites that follow these guidelines and build good quality that’s easily crawlable will, over time, see their organic rankings build.

However, there are ‘black hat’ techniques as they’re called that Google frowns upon. Sites who are caught using things like hack sites and keyword stuffing will be penalized severely by Google. Sometimes, these penalties are impossible to recover from.

The goal of Google is to return the best search results as possible for their users. If a searcher isn’t able to find the right information, they will start looking elsewhere for it. As the #1 search engine accounting for over 2/3 of searches online, Google has an interest in making sure it returns sites that are informative and relevant to what the searcher was looking for.

Matt explains (…correctly in our opinion) how search engine spiders are not smart enough yet to figure out what a site is about all on their own. Therefore, it’s the site owner’s job to ‘help’ the spider learn what your site is about…this at its core is where SEO comes in.  In our experience, basic fundamentals are not addressed.  A good SEO will fix these SEO fundamentals (…listed above), analyze site traffic, ROI and other important factors to keep your site’s rankings consistently high.

With that said, SEO is about building a site Google can crawl and index. If you hire a search engine optimization company to handle your site’s SEO, there shouldn’t be any secret as to what they’re doing. Your SEO should be open about what they’re doing to get your site to the top of search results.

If they’re not, you should go elsewhere for these services. If the SEO firm is employing ‘black hat’ techniques, your site and business will be the one who suffers, not the SEO firm who used the shady tactics.

If your site is penalized for employing nefarious techniques, it will take a long time for you to make up the lost ground. Meanwhile, the SEO firm will have taken a lot of your money and will not suffer the same consequence.

Watch the video below to learn more.

One lesson though to keep in mind in this situation – buyer beware!!

This is just the latest in a round of intros from the search giant, the first being its +1 button unveiled over the summer. Many websites have now added this latest ‘share’ button to their pages.

The new Google + brand pages look very similar to personal profiles with the exception of a little square icon that sets it apart from an individual’s page. Individuals with Google + profiles can connect to their favorite brands on the new network.

Fox News, CNN, Angry Birds, Muppets and Pepsi are just a few of the names who’ve been ahead of the curve. In fact, many brands were so eager to get into Google + that they setup pages as personal profiles much to company’s dismay. This in turn prompted Google to rollout brand pages much sooner than they otherwise would have.

Our friends at Sprout Content have been proactive in building their Google + page (…we’re still working on ours though).

Google VP Vic Gondrata commented in a blog post “So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.”

If you’re setting up a Google + page for your business or brand, you have to choose one of five categories, which include:

1.     Local Business or Place – for hotels, restaurants, brick & mortar stores – any type of business that serves a local area

2.     Products or Brands – for those who specialize in certain items (i.e. clothing, electronics, vehicles, financial services)

3.     Company, Institution or Organization – for companies, institutions, organizations and non-profits

4. Arts, Entertainment and Sports – for bands, books, movies, sports teams, etc.

5.     Other – for any who don’t fit into the first 3 categories

Of course with all of this news coming out about Google’s new social network, Facebook has made some major changes to its platform (…some of which mimic Google Plus’ circles feature and so forth). For brand pages though, there’s not a whole lot of difference between Facebook and Google + for now.

Facebook has more experience in this realm though so you can expect Google to be continuously rolling out new features.

Are you considering a Google + profile for your brand? Or are you going to wait and see how it all works out before jumping in?

The term comes from the popular fairytale Hansel & Gretel and refers to the breadcrumbs the two laid out to help them find their way back (…this metaphor though shouldn’t be taken too far as you’ll see later on).

Breadcrumb navigation, while more of a secondary component, generally appears horizontally across the top of a webpage below the main navigation, title bars and headers.

This component of your site’s navigation allows users to easily see where they are in your site’s hierarchy – since most search results refer visitors to pages within your site, breadcrumbs help visitors see where they are and make it easier for them to navigate to higher-level pages.

Breadcrumbs increase site usability, functionality, shows the hierarchy of all your site’s pages and eliminates the need to make additional clicks to reach other pages.

Besides the usefulness to your users, the benefits to your site and business are equally significant – research and comparisons have shown that including breadcrumbs result in longer site visits, lower bounce rates and increased interest.

Breadcrumbs also yield valuable search engine benefits by providing another opportunity to highlight important keywords – either through the breadcrumbs themselves or the specific anchor-text links pointing to internal pages.

Breadcrumbs also adds content relevancy to all of your pages since they’re all keyword intensive. As you know, relevancy is an important ranking component Google uses for links and so forth.

Now that we know what they are and how they can benefit your site, what are the different types of ‘breadcrumbs’ I can include on my site? Continue reading for a brief description of the three types, or formats of breadcrumbs available.

1. Location-based breadcrumbs

Perhaps the most common, this type of breadcrumb navigation indicates where the current page is in the site’s hierarchy. In the horizontal bar, users are given links to pages or categories that are a ‘level up’ from the page they’re looking at. These ‘level-up’ pages are commonly referred to as the ‘parent’ category.

Courtesy of HongKiat

2. Attribute-based breadcrumbs

Common on e-commerce sites, these breadcrumbs indicate attributes or categories ascribed to the current page with a site. Products not only will fall in a certain category but will have certain attributes as well. The best example of this is a site listing cars for sale – an SUV will fall into that category but will also include attributes like color and year model.

Courtesy of HongKiat

3. Path-based breadcrumbs

Really the least common, this type of breadcrumb navigation most closely resembles the Hansel & Gretel fairytale. They indicate steps a visitor has taken to arrive at the page they’re currently on. The breadcrumb will include links to pages they’ve previously visited. It’s the least popular since this type of navigation essentially replicates the forward and back buttons.

(It can also get quite complex considering how many sites contain literally thousands of pages. That’s why we say it’s problematic to take the ‘breadcrumb’ metaphor from Hansel & Gretel too seriously.)

While breadcrumbs are not the most critical component of your site, they can provide many valuable benefits. They’re not meant to answer your visitor’s questions or make sense of confusing information architecture.

However, they do add make it easier for users to move around your site and lead to many tangible benefits for both you and your site’s visitors.

Justifying the virtue of content marketing over traditional advertising can be difficult for some.

How can an online marketing professional effectively convince executives within their company (as part of a marketing team) or prospective clients (outside executives) of the value of developing informative content?

Content Marketing Institute recently compiled some tips from some of the best content marketers around on how to do this.

Here’s a couple of their responses to the question – “Content marketing can be a new way of thinking for some marketing teams. How would you explain the value of content marketing to a manager or executive who is primarily familiar with traditional advertising approaches?”

“Content Marketing has significant value in a few different ways.  For one, the content you create and distribute on the web has a much longer shelf life at a lower cost then any traditional campaigns you will run.  Each object of content you create can add the the total poll of content that represents your brand and works to get your customers talking back to you.  Over time when your collection of content grows larger, you will notice increases in online traffic and engagement.  A bigger collection attracts more interest.” Nate Riggs

“The value of content marketing lies in the engagement between the customer and your company. Traditional advertising shouts at prospect customers whereas content marketing talks with them. Essentially, it is about the creation and participation in meaningful conversations and development of relationships. Content marketing can benefit your company by increasing sales leads and positioning your company/brand as a thought leader, in addition to increasing the number of visitors to your website.” Amanda Maksymiw

Nate and Amanda hit on probably the two biggest advantages of content marketing over traditional advertising. One being cost – which one commenter says is one of the best ways to talk to someone clung to traditional advertising – and the other being the fact traditional advertising is not about the customer but about you.

As Amanda says, traditional advertising shouts while content marketing pulls up a chair and talks.

Other reasons you can provide your superiors or prospective clients include:

• Draw customers in through relevant content rather than one-size fits all materials
• More dynamic, easier to change
• Has a longer shelf life
• Easier to measure, more metrics and tools available
• Fewer risks and costs
• Reaches a wider audience
• …and more

Besides discussing the benefits of content marketing over traditional advertising, we also get a glimpse into some of the ways you can show your boss or prospective client the advantages of building content rather than using traditional advertising.

This is where testing comes in – nothing is more convincing than data to backup your claims of increased traffic, conversions and revenues. Show your prospect data from previously successful content marketing campaigns, provide word-of-mouth referrals and more.

Traditional advertising has been on a consistent downward trend for quite some time now. There are still some instances where it can work but as CMI and others say, there’s only one way to measure progress and that’s sales.

Providing these reasons along with some data to back it up will go a long way toward convincing your bosses or prospective clients that content marketing is an effective way to spend their marketing dollar.

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