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The Competitive Advantage

tag: content marketing

November 19, 2013

Frequency vs. Quality: The Content Marketing Balancing Act

Guest blogger: Debra Semans, Lead Writer at Harpeth Marketing

Vince-Lombardi-3Content is King!

Consider*:

  • Companies that blog 15 or more times per month get five times more traffic than companies that don’t blog at all.
  • Small businesses (1-10 employees) tend to see the biggest gains in traffic when they publish more articles.
  • Companies that increase blogging from 3-5 times/month to 6-8 times/month almost double their leads.
  • Even B2B companies that blog only 1-2 times/month generate 70% more leads than those that don’t blog at all.
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July 30, 2013

If your summer is slow, focus on marketing & sales for a competitive advantage; part 7 – develop content ideas

Amazon Kindle in Womans Hands at beachI hope you’ve been following along this summer and implementing some of the ideas we’ve been discussing.  Whether it’s getting ready for the fall conference season, targeting new sales prospects or even cleaning up your in-house database, the summer is a great time to work “on” your business.  But we’ve got a few more to go…

One of the most popular tactics in marketing today – and it’s popular because it works – is ‘content marketing.’  That is, sharing information and ideas to help your clients and prospective clients.  And in helping, it builds credibility for your firm and positions you as a subject matter expert.

This content most often takes the shape of blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies, ebooks, podcasts and videos.  Throw in the occasional webinar and that about covers it.

One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is deciding what to write about… what the ‘content’ in ‘content marketing’ is going to be.  Which leads us to…

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May 29, 2013

3 Unique Ways to Generate Content for a Competitive Advantage

Last weekconference-image1, I wrote about how to unblock writer’s block (by focusing on what your clients and prospects want to read about).

But if that’s the perspective you need… what sources do you use to come up with content?  Where does the information come from that you then write about?  For me, sometimes I’m just struck by everyday occurrences that trigger ideas, sometimes I draw on recent experiences with clients or vendors and other times, I just know what I know and I write about it.

However, if you’re looking for some new places to go to find some things to write about, let me give you three that work really well:

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May 21, 2013

How to break down writer’s block and accelerate your content marketing.

MR-writers-block-guyEvery (yes, every) Saturday morning since we opened the doors to Harpeth Marketing, I have gone to a local coffee shop (in fact, I’m here now as I write this) to work on things not necessarily related to taking care of clients.  One of those tasks is writing… for my blog, my monthly article for Quirk’s or developing an eBook.

But this week… I hit the wall.  After 60+ weeks of crankin’ it out… I didn’t know what to write about.  I went to my editorial calendar… but I hadn’t looked this far forward so no topics were listed.  What am I going to write about… what do I want to write about?

And then it hit me… that is not the question to be asking.  Then question is (and should always be)… what do my clients (and prospective clients) want to read about?  What’s important to them?  What do they care about?

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May 16, 2013

Re-purpose… and extend the depth and breadth of your content marketing.

I recently delivered a presentation on marketing at the annual CASRO Management Conference in New Orleans.

It was called, “12 reasons why your marketing & sales might not be working and what you can do about it.”  Other than creating the PowerPoint presentation itself, it took me no time to develop… no time flushing out ideas, no time refining concepts, no time finalizing the content.

How was I so lucky? Easy… the presentation already existed.  It was based on an eBook I had published a few months earlier.  I simply took the content that had been developed for the eBook and ‘re-purposed’ it for the presentation.

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April 30, 2013

A 5-step recipe to position your firm for a competitive advantage

At the risk of sounding like I’m a little full of myself, I’m going to toot my own horn… but only to make a point.

We had an inquiry from a good-size research firm in the U.K. recently, which was sort of unusual… since I don’t really do anything to try to build business there. So I was a little flattered.

During the introductory portion of the call (gotta love Skype!), my contact said that he reached out to me, “because you’re the most recognized name in marketing & sales in our industry in the UK.”  Are you kidding me?!  How did that happen?!

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March 13, 2013

How Advertising can Support your Marketing & Sales for a Competitive Advantage, Part 3

This is the third in a 3-part series on a few current consumer advertising campaigns that really got it right with their advertising – all of which were an excellent execution of a strong marketing strategy. [Yes, they’re B2C, but they illustrate very important marketing lessons.]

In the last two posts, we showcased Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. and Chik-Fil-A and the interesting work they were doing with their TV ads.  This week I want to talk about the law firm of Cordell & Cordell.

I first heard about them through their radio ads here in Nashville.  They are a firm that focuses on men in cases of divorce.  That, in itself, is very interesting.

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October 2, 2012

Content Marketing Execution and Promotion

(Part 2 of a 2-part series)

In last week’s post, I defined ‘content marketing’ and wrote about the many benefits of including it in your marketing strategy.

This week, I want to get into the nitty-gritty, starting with a review of 10 different ways to provide quality content to your target audience.

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