Bite-Sized Marketing Tips from Experts

by Maddy Osman Topic: Marketing Strategy In yesterday’s Advisor, we shared high-level marketing tips from industry experts, with a special focus on content marketing. In today’s Advisor, we’re sharing more bite-sized marketing tips from today’s top marketers to help you come up with new ideas to improve your next campaign. “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.” —David Ogilvy Ogilvy advocates getting into the head of someone in your audience. Don’t think of yourself as an organization. Instead, think of yourself as a peer to the person consuming your advertising. Don’t find customers for your product. Find products for your customers. “Our job is to make change. Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they’d like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn’t do enough to advance the cause, is waste.” —Seth Godin, best-selling author and marketer Godin is all about solving problems, not just creating new products and companies for the heck of it. “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” —Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author If Drucker and Godin aren’t friends, they should be—their marketing philosophies are very compatible. “Good content should be at the heart of your strategy, but it is equally important to keep the display context of that content in mind as well.” —Tim Frick, Author of Return On Engagement Frick is referring to things many content strategies seem to lack: proper formatting (bullets, headings, white space, etc.) and engaging images. It’s not just about the words on the page but how a person consumes them!  “People share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through friends & people they know and trust.” —Malorie Lucich, Facebook spokesperson Lucich correctly identifies the power of word of mouth and challenges content creators to keep these principles in mind when creating content. Is it something that people would want to share? “No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.” —Chris Brogan, founder, New Marketing Labs Brogan has made quite a name for himself with his popular blog. If you start with a blog, you can repurpose content into social media posts, e-mails, and even a book. It’s a wise investment for your content marketing efforts! “Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just the precise moment that a buyer needs it.” —David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR The problem with traditional advertising is that it is a one-way channel: you to your customer. Digital mediums have made communication more of a two-way communication avenue. “The next time you hear a social media myth, question it. Ask for the proof, and ask out loud.” —Dan Zarrella, social media scientist, HubSpot, Inc. There are so many reports of “best practices” with regards to social media, but something could work really well for your company and tank with another. Always challenge your assumptions by testing them out. “There are no magic wands, no hidden tricks, and no secret handshakes that can bring you immediate success but with time, energy, and determination you can get there.” —Darren Rowse, founder, Problogger.com So many blogs (and other content marketing efforts) are abandoned soon after they begin. Rowse correctly points out that consistency and effort are rewarded in the long run. “The biggest requirement is a shift in mindset from creating messages that talk about us to creating content that solves problems for the people we want to reach.” —Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs LLC Ultimately, succeeding at search engine optimization involves creating content that answers questions. Self-promotional advertising is, by and large, becoming white noise that gets ignored. “To stand out from the swell, we must quietly say only what is important. Briefly and with care.” —Brian Solis, digital analyst, speaker, and author Embellishment is not a positive trait of today’s marketing efforts. Being effective and concise is considered to be the gold standard. “Before you create any more “great content,” figure out how you are going to marketing it first.” —Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett, authors of Get Content, Get Customers At the end of the day, content does nothing for you if people never read it. “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” —Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Love or hate him, Jobs had a crazy intuition about his customers, and he was almost always right in following it. He correctly articulated that people don’t really know what they want, so you must create something that solves a problem—even if they didn’t specifically ask for it. “Technology may change the way we communicate, but the relationship building truths will always stay the same. Stay true to them, in life and in marketing.” —Ekaterina Walter, bestselling author, international speaker, business innovator Technology doesn’t change the core activities of marketing, just the medium in which they take place. “Inspiration is difficult to measure, but the results driven by that inspiration are powerful.” —Scott Harrison, founder of charity: water Not everything in marketing is measurable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your attention and efforts.