5 Key Website Trends from 2015

December gets away from us. Shopping, wrapping gifts, holiday parties and events and countless end-of year deadlines. You know you’re also supposed to be thinking about marketing plans for 2016. If your plans include a new website, here are some key web trends from 2015.

One 2015 website trend: split screens. Peugeot uses a split screen to show the emotional connection between a car and its owner

1. Minimalism. Minimalism is the trend that’s driving all other trends.

Google’s April algorithm change placed an emphasis on mobile and elevated the importance of quality content. By minimizing distractions, websites can now focus more on content. Footers, sidebars and borders are all disappearing. Even color palettes are being simplified as companies emphasize one dominant color in their visual design. Love this. Think about what it is you want to showcase—content or portfolio—and white space becomes an important design element.

2. Menus are taking their lead from apps

The mobile market has had a huge impact on the way we think about navigation. Sticky menus and sidebars: Make room for content that readers actually want to see. Menus are at the top of the screen and are mostly hidden, noted by a single icon, that stack of three little lines with which we’ve become familiar on our mobile devices. There’s a name for this—it’s called a “hamburger”--when selected, it either drops down or slides out to provide more options, which is what a menu is supposed to do.

3. Forget boring stock images; step up to Unsplash or 500px

The days of the generic stock photo may be over; move over for stunning visuals. With communities like 500px and Unsplash, the old standbys start to look staid and boring. These images are high-res and seriously beautiful, though if you need those that are business-specific, you’re going to be disappointed. These sites are free, you can subscribe, have images sent to you each week and you can contribute images of your own. With the iPhone 6s’s ability to take stunning high-res images, people are going to be contributing more of their own favorite pictures. This is only going to get better.

4. Single page design

Apparently nobody wants to click through multiple pages anymore. Frankly, this feels like we’re going back to the early days of web design. Remember that first-generation site that we all had a gazillion years ago that was pretty rudimentary? We weren’t as savvy then about organizing information so into a smart drilldown schematic. Scrolling through content on one looooong page is back, and this trend also has its roots in mobile web surfing because it’s infinitely easier to scroll down one long page than to be clicking through pages on your phone. While there’s still going to be drilldown, smart designers will be simplifying their navigation.

5. Vertical split layouts

Split screen layouts are popping up all over the web this year. With a vertical split layout, designers are able to present twice the content in a clean and simple format. Websites are divided in half widthwise, featuring two separate messages. The split screen is a great way to show relationships between two things because standard web layouts dictate the most important things come first. Peugeot uses a vertical split layout on its homepage to blend the human element of the car with the car itself--the relationship between driver and vehicle.

If a new website is part of your 2016 marketing agenda, we’d love to talk with you. Contact Top of Mind Marketing for a complimentary consultation.

The Holidays: It’s One Big Ad Campaign

As someone who's spent a long career in marketing, I’m still fascinated by advertising. Most of it is shockingly bad, but some of it is somewhere between engaging and brilliant. The stakes are high for retailers this time of year, so advertisers pull out all the stops.

The biggest promotion is for cars

This one continues to astonish me--luxury car dealers seem to think that everyone has the discretionary dollars to be buying cars for their SOs for Christmas. They're creating the expectation that we'll wake up on Christmas morning with a small, elegantly wrapped package under the tree. A quick look outside will reveal a luxury car with a big red bow on top. I don't know about you, but I've never known anyone who's ever gotten a car for Christmas.

Follow the advice of the ads and you’ll wake up fat and broke, with a hangover

Other notable ads are for alcohol and food. You're going to be dressed to the nines, attending an endless round of galas and events as well as hosting glamorous parties for which you'll need expensive wine and gourmet food. Online sales are way up, and we’ve been receiving catalogs from a variety of high-end retailers, including Petrossian, soliciting our dollars for caviar, smoked salmon and other high-end delicacies. Advertising is all about the power of suggestion, so if you follow the recommendations of these retailers, you'll wake up around the first part of January fat and broke, with a giant hangover. The reality? Real people aren't celebrating the holidays like the people in these TV ads.

Time to slow down and take care of yourself

Years ago, my family and I decided to donate to our favorite charities in each other's behalf rather than buying gifts that we didn't need or like. Besides supporting some very worthy causes, we just eliminated a whole lot of shopping, wrapping and schlepping.

This was our way of getting off the holiday rollercoaster and focusing on the things we loved about the holidays that didn't cost a dime--holiday music, spending time together, playing a rousing game of Monopoly like we used to do when we were kids.

These days, I try to carry on this spirit of the holidays--contributing to something more important than myself, making time not just for my friends, but for myself.

Time to work on your marketing plan for 2016? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We're writers and marketing strategists. 

Make Room for Video in your 2016 Marketing Plan

As a content marketing expert, I’m delighted to read that content is driving buyer behavior. Research is showing that consumers want, seek and value content from marketers as long as it is informative, objective and minimizes endless pitching and puffing. Nine our of ten organizations are now utilizing content in their marketing programs, devoting a quarter of their marketing budgets to content marketing.

Social media, including blogs, the most popular form of content marketing

Studies are showing that social media has become the most popular form of content marketing, knocking articles out of their leadership position. Print magazines, still actively used, have remained about the same in terms of percentage of marketers including them in their content program. Research reports, presentation content through online sites such as LinkedIn-owned SlideShare (60M visitors/month and with more than 15M registered users), and virtual conferences and webinars have seen significant increase in application.

Consumers themselves—not just marketers--are contributing to the explosion of content, as evidenced by the morphing of the 90/9/1 rule, where 1% of consumers using the Internet were actively blogging and posting other types of content, 9% of consumers were commenting on the content, and 90% were just observing this activity. According to studies, it has now become the 70/20/10 rule, where 10% of Internet users are posting, and 20% are commenting. The 70% who are just observing is declining all the time, as more people become involved in content/comment.

The element getting the most attention is video

The element of content getting the most attention--and the greatest year over year rate of increase is video marketing, aka rich video. Cisco anticipates that video will represent a whopping 70% of consumer Internet traffic by 2017, up from 57% now. YouTube is actively used as a source for consumer content. It’s the third most visited site in the world and the second largest search engine. YouTube is also set up to facilitate easy sharing. In addition to YouTube, videos are available in other venues on the Internet (Instagram and Vine), plus mobile and TV.

Many reasons to love video, including increased conversion rates

Videos have been found to be four times more engaging than static content, and three-quarters of C-suite execs view industry videos online at least once a week. Video creates consumer involvement, conveys rich information, and builds an emotional connection with a brand or company, often through advanced neuroscience approaches. Video is an excellent, highly productive marketing tool. In one study, video embedded in an email improved campaign effectiveness by 88%, click-through rates by 76% and disposition to buy by 72%. In another study, embedding video on a website’s landing pages increased conversion rates by 80%.

If you’re still fleshing out your 2016 marketing plan, this may be the year you step up to video. A tip: consider hiring a professional to create a quality product that tells your story—the grainy, shifting talking-head that you and your neighbor create in your garage really isn’t doing you any favors.

Are you struggling with your content marketing program and 2016 marketing strategy? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and marketing experts.

New SEO: Forget Tricks and Focus on Quality Content

Google makes algorithm changes an astonishing 500–600 times/year. For the most part, we ignore these changes—who, after all, can keep up with what Google, and most of these changes are minor. But Google occasionally rolls out major algorithmic updates—you’ve probably heard of Google’s Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird updates that affect search results in significant ways. Its latest major update is being referred to as Mobilegeddon because of its far-reaching effect on websites that don’t translate to mobile devices.

Changes include an emphasis on high-quality content

But this isn’t just content marketing. You really have to understand Google’s overarching goal for search, keeping in mind that Google owns the search space. What you need to know: we’re no longer focusing on keywords, but on content—and that means quality content.

Forget the tricks to optimize your website 

We used to identify keywords, then load our landing pages with those keywords. This is no longer an acceptable strategy; in fact, keyword loading is something for which Google apparently punishes you. Avoid the tricks that SEO had really become—a bag of tricks for ensuring your pages could rank well without your having to do any real marketing.

Think about it—you really didn’t have to provide thoughtful or creative content. Instead, you thought about keywords, linking strategies and trying to show up on page one of Google—at least for a day or two until the algorithms changed once again. But while we’d all rather show up on page one than 50, there are those who point out that showing up on page two or three is not a bad thing. I always tell my clients that you really have two audiences: you want to show up on search engines, but you also need to provide a compelling reason for people to contact you once they land on your website. A high ranking doesn’t necessarily translate to conversion.

Google’s content guidelines

With the significant algorithm changes, Google has published content guidelines that clearly spell out what they’re looking for. These are their exact words to elicit high quality content:

1. Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
2. Don’t deceive your users.
3. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
4. Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

I keep coming back to a quote I read a while back. If you want your site to show up in search engines, invest in good writing. “You can no longer game the system. Quality content has become nonnegotiable.”

Quality content has never been more important. I’d love to talk with you if you have questions. Contact me at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing experts.

7 Ways to Build Authority as an Online Writer

If you’re a blogger, you’re doing this to gain influence and increase your SEO value, not for your health. You want to become recognized as an authority. You want your audience to enjoy your industry insights, knowledge, experience, great sense of humor, writing style and personality. You’re ultimately hoping to gain clients from your efforts, which is what content marketing is all about. Here are 7 ways to grow your influence and become a more authoritative online writer.

1. This is not about you. Forget private agendas and endless self-promotion. This is about sharing information, not promoting your products and services. Going out of your way to help someone never goes out of style and the results just may surprise you.
2. Play hard to get. Clients expect you to say things to please them and may even sense a little desperation. Avoid saying “I’m flexible.” A client will suspect you’ll do anything for money, suspecting you don’t care about quality or integrity, that you can be bought, cheaply.
3. Establish a reputation for one outstanding quality. Your reputation should be simple, based upon a single, sterling quality — strategic thinking, keen insights, great case studies. This becomes your calling card. There’s no substitute for great content.
4. Court attention. A little bit of showmanship is not a bad thing. We all know that one person in our social and networking groups who always has to be the center of attention. There is a fine line between endless self-promotion and getting well-deserved attention for great work.
5. Be confident. The more self-assured and confident a communicator you are, the more likely people will accept what you say. Say what you think. Don’t be afraid to share your opinions. Those who love you will love you more. Those who don’t? Well . . .
6. Deliver. There’s no replacement for hard work and commitment. Meeting deadlines. Being on time for calls and meetings. Delivering a product that exceeds expectations. There are no excuses for excuses.
7. Charge premium prices. People are conditioned to think they need to pay for what they get and well may mistrust a product or service that’s too cheap. Think about this: Do you know anyone else who does exactly what you do? What would it take for your clients to figure out and deliver what you’re providing? Not going to happen.

Don’t let others decide how you are perceived. Become the master of your own reputation.

Is your New Year’s resolution to start blogging? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing experts.

Building a Case For Longer Landing Pages

Landing pages help promote your company’s products and services and encourage conversions from your web traffic. A landing page, officially any page on which you land, always has its own unique url. Landing pages can be temporary—thrown up as part of a campaign to promote a product or service. People will click on a call to action and land on this page; it’s generally taken down once the campaign is over. The messaging on these pages should be crisp, focused and direct. These landing pages are necessarily shorter.

Longer landing pages promote trust and credibility

The landing pages that promote your products and services need to have more substance—that means 300+ words. Longer landing pages generate trust and credibility, motivating web visitors to convert once they’ve learned more about you and your company. The user who scrolls to the bottom where the call to action is located and views all aspects of the page is typically a higher-quality lead—that’s the potential client who wants information about what you do. Don’t disappointment them by not answering their questions about what you do and how you work with your clients.

Longer landing pages: increased SEO value

As you increase the likelihood of conversion with longer landing pages, you also increase the SEO value of your website. Longer pages rank better in search engines. Use well-written, high-quality content that positions you as an expert.

• Think about using quality video that explains your product. If it’s a service, provide an explanation of how it works. Testimonials are always effective.
• Include images, a bulleted list of a product/service’s benefits and a strong call to action.
• Also think about leveraging internal linking strategies within the pages on your site.

These days, people seem to be text-phobic

I frequently find myself going to websites to get more information—and am rewarded with a few lame sentences that translate to missed opportunities. Whether you’re selling a product or service, why wouldn’t you provide enough information to fully flesh out your business? If you’re selling your products online, longer landing pages with plenty of description is always recommended. If people are spending money, they want detailed information about the product they’re about to purchase.

I became I believer in long landing pages

I finished a project a few months ago that made me a believer in longer landing page content. It was a website for a lighting manufacturers’ rep, and I had to write descriptions of the 90+ manufacturers with which this company worked. Our goal was to provide comprehensive information about each company because we wanted potential clients to come to our site and stay there.

I quickly ramped up to the fascinating and complex lighting industry. I wanted to find out a little bit about each of these companies—did they specialize in lighting, controls or daylighting? Were they family-owned, where did they manufacture their products, what was the time to market and what did their customer service ethic look like? The quality of these 90 sites varied dramatically. Some were beautiful, with comprehensive portfolios of their national and international lighting projects. Others were dismal. Some sites didn’t even have an About section—nothing but product info and numbers. Others had badly written information about the company, sometimes talking about the company’s founders some 80 years ago—in which I had no interest. I ultimately had to work with my client SME to get enough information to flesh out some of these profiles.

I learned a big lesson from this project: Provide the information that will answer people’s questions

• As a guide, think about your own questions when you go to a website looking for information.
• Frontload the important stuff so that it’s readily available in the first few paragraphs.
• Try providing a call to action higher in your page rather than burying it at the bottom. Convert people while you still have their attention rather than taking a chance that they’ll scroll to the bottom of the page.

Have questions about landing pages? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and internet marketing experts.

Let’s Take the Mystery Out of Keywords

There seems to be some kind of mystery associated with keywords, but it’s not as confusing as they try to make it. Your keywords are based on what you do—I’m a content marketing expert, so obvious keywords for me are words like marketing, online marketing, content marketing and internet marketing.

What would people be keying into a search engine to find you?

A good approach is to think about what words people would be keying into a search engine to find you, then capitalize on those words. Use a tool like Google adwords to gain an understanding of how often people are searching for these terms. If the numbers are large, there are a lot of people using those terms—that means there’s a lot of competition. A better strategy is to identify words or phrases that are still meaningful and relevant for you, but for which there is less competition. With less competition, there’s a better chance your site will show up in a search. In general, the more words in the keyword phrase, the smaller the search result—but also the more specific it could be to what you do.

The trend these days is not to be limited by a keyword alone; rather, think of keyword phrases or long-tail keyword strategies—these longer phrases that are even more definitive about what you do have a better chance of reaching your specific audience.

How to use keywords in a landing page or blog

You can’t trick Google anymore by filling a page with a bunch of nonsense and blatant keyword stuffing; quality content has never been more important. Keywords don’t need to be repeated throughout the page. Do use the keyword in your headline, and let this drive the page’s topic and keep it closely focused. Avoid awkward sentences and phrases where you’re trying to work in your keyword phrase. The goal is to inform the reader, not search engines.

Keywords don’t need to be an exact match

Use closely related words and phrases--this is more natural than trying to overoptimize a page by deploying one keyword a number of times. Searches will use a wide range and combination of words and phrases to find what they’re looking for. The content on your site should be varied enough to meet that search engine criteria while still adhering to one overarching theme.

Struggling with keywords and content marketing? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re content marketing experts.

Quality Content: Facebook Takes a Tip from Google

If you’re paying any attention at all, you know that Google’s last few major algorithm changes have placed an increasing importance on quality content. You can’t trick Google anymore—no more meaningless keyword stuffing or other despicable deceptions to make your website show up on page one rather than page 50. The emphasis is now on quality.

Facebook now ranking posts according to its own criteria for quality

On Monday Facebook announced that it will “rank stories higher in feed which we think people might take action on, and which people might want to see”. It looks like Facebook is taking a page from Google—it’s now ranking posts according to its own arbitrary criteria for quality.

The “action” to which Facebook is referring, of course, are the Likes, comments, clicks and shares that we all like to receive on our posts. As we’ve learned from Google, the message is clear and familiar--provide quality and avoid gimmicks. Pages should avoid encouraging people to take an action—according to Facebook, this is a gimmick. No more “Check out my party pictures” for example.

Facebook has graciously come up with a list of best practices to help us comply with their new rules.

1. Post frequently. Post frequently to your Facebook Page to drive more referrals and get more fans. A note here: Many (most?) people I know are using their personal pages—not their business pages for the bulk of their messaging, both personal and business. This is NOT best practices for a lot of reasons, including that Facebook has been known to completely take down a page that’s being misused in this way. There are many reasons you want to use your business page, including the ability to generate Likes and metrics.
2. Use a variety of content, including links and photos. Use a variety of formats including links, photos, videos, and other content. Pose a question; use calls-to-action to encourage engagement.
3. Upload videos with a call-to-action. More than 4 billion video views happen on Facebook everyday. Upload videos to Facebook to let them play automatically in News Feed and make sure you add a call to action to your video to drive viewers to your website.
4. Create content with social context in mind. Be thinking about what would increase the likelihood of someone’s sharing your content. Think about identity and emotion — key drivers of sharing — when writing headlines and choosing images. Remember that short posts are most effective, so you’ve got to choose your words carefully to get the most impact.
5. Tag other Pages in your Facebook posts. Tagging other Pages will make your post eligible to appear in the news feed of people who are fans of those pages, potentially increasing your distribution.
6. Engage. Host a Q&A session or sponsor a contest.
7. Use Trending to find popular topics on Facebook and post about them. Trending—on the right side of your News Feed--is a personalized list of the most popular Facebook topics by country. Repurpose these, comment on them, etc.
8. Embed Facebook or Instagram posts in your website. Once you’ve found a great piece of content on Facebook or Instagram, you can embed it on your website using Facebook Embedded Posts or Instagram Web Embeds. Embeds are fully interactive and bring your webpages to life.

Is it time to incorporate social media into your marketing plan? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing experts.

SuperBowl Ads--Warm and Fuzzy: Make Way for Disturbing

Another SuperBowl, and for once my team won. Peyton Manning really is a class act. Articulate, hardworking, enduring. He may be a shell of his former self, but what a legacy, what a career. He’s raised the bar for the wannabes and the youngsters like Cam Newton who dabs around the field and is a great interview—as long as he’s winning. But really, the SuperBowl is only partly about football. It’s also about partying, getting together with your friends and eating and drinking. And for anyone who’s interested in marketing, it’s about the advertisers who drop millions of dollars for a chance to get in front of one of the biggest TV audience of all time.

Puppy-monkey-baby. Perhaps the most disturbing ad?

I always think of SuperBowl ads as an effort to reach Americans on a fundamental, emotional level. They remind us that football is an American sport and this is our tradition. Who, after all, doesn’t look forward to those Budweiser ads—those magnificent Clydesdales, the puppies, the young servicemen coming home—the ads that break your heart. But I sat there on the couch this year, notebook in hand, and not one ad really tugged at my heartstrings.

This year’s theme was about disturbing

Rather than an emotional connection, this year we got bizarre and disturbing. The grotesque puppy-monkey-baby promoting a drink that combines Mountain Dew, fruit juice and caffeine called Kickstart, though it was difficult to figure out what this was all about. The ad where a husband is stuffing himself with Doritos during his wife’s ultrasound? Distasteful, but apparently this was the most shared ad. And then there was Xifanan, sort of pink puffy personified version of constipation.

Kudos to Jeff Goldblum and Helen Mirren

Loved watching the ever-stylish and elegant Jeff Goldblum playing a grand piano while gliding up the side of a building—who cares that we’ve never heard of apartments.com and never quite got the connection. And of course we love Helen Mirren—frank and uncensored, telling us to not drink and drive on a day that’s known for record-setting alcohol consumption. Yet there’s a disconnect here—I really can’t see Helen sitting down and knocking back a few Buds.

Doritos dog revenge ad steals the show

Doritos spent big this year, and their dog ad may have stolen the show. The supermarket that made it clear that no dogs were allowed somehow got outsmarted by those adorable pups. They found a way into the store, stood on each other’s shoulders, donned an overcoat and marched right up to the checkstand with a bag of Doritos in hand. Clearly, when you want a Dorito, you find a way to get it.

Some interesting stats on SuperBowl advertising

• Automakers purchased 11 spots for a total of 9 minutes of ad time.
• 9 million people tuned in to watch Super Bowl 50, making it the third-most watched broadcast in US history.
• 1 million visitors came to San Francisco for the Big Game, more than doubling the city’s population. Beyonce was the most-loved tourist in town.
• Super Bowl 50 included 49 minutes and 35 seconds of advertising, making up 22% of the total broadcast.

Does SuperBowl advertising work?

Let’s take a look at one more stat: First-time advertisers bought 32% of the ad time; 45% of last year’s Super Bowl advertisers did not return this year. As someone who’s spent a lifetime in marketing, I hate one-off efforts—they never work. Those 45% were smart to not drop their dollars into another SuperBowl ad effort with no ROI.

Need help with your marketing? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and marketing strategists. We help our clients get the most of their marketing dollars.

Inclusive Marketing Means Reaching All Demographics

This is the time of year when marketers talk about trends. It goes on and on and can be a stretch even for marketers. But I was reading an article about Inclusion in 2015, and I think this is an issue which has come a long way and deserves some air time.

Inclusive Marketing is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.

Inclusion: Race, class, sexuality, immigration status, religion, ethnicity. What do these have to do with marketing? A lot. Because marketing targets demographics. Groups of people based on characteristics—think babyboomers or working moms, for example.

Facilitating social change

Marketing professionals are increasingly aware of the diverse nature of their customers—and more aware of the social, political and cultural forces swirling around their brands. Some CMOs and PR managers are sensing a growing desire to use their platforms to facilitate social change. This is what they’re calling Inclusive Marketing. Crafting marketing messages that resonate with every demographic.

The challenge: a progressive stand on social justice 

Marketing without relying on stereotypes. Creating a visual culture that is more representative, that strives to understand the history, yet the commonality that binds us. Inclusive Marketing takes a progressive stand on issues of social justice.

The article I was reading identified some examples of good Inclusive Marketing and others that missed the mark. A Facebook ad that blundered? Last summer, they did an ad that ran across the top of everyone’s newsfeeds, “On Aug. 26, 1920, women achieved the right to vote in the US”. As it turned out, as well intentioned as this ad may have been, not all women were given the right to vote, sadly it was just white women.

A good example of a big brand that’s doing something very sensitive in the area of Inclusive Marketing? Adidas’ Change the Mascot program. They’re donating free design resources to high schools looking to get rid of their Native American mascots and nicknames. Good luck to the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Redskins—I don’t see this happening any time soon.

You have to hand it to Google

Google’s the brand with whom we have a monstrous love/hate relationship, but they do put their money where their mouth is. They’re giving 2.35M in grants to community organizations working toward racial justice.

Inclusive Marketing is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do. Think about the subtleties of your messaging and the images you’re using. Your audience spans demographics—you want to reach them, not alienate them.

Are you struggling with your marketing plan for 2016? Talk to Top of Mind Marketing. We're writers, and we create online brands for our clients.

Good Marketing is About the Stories We Tell

Last week I was giving a presentation about marketing--specifically content marketing. This is a term that marketers throw around a lot, yet it's not something with which the general public is familiar--even though they're likely using some form of content marketing on a regular basis. I began with a little bit of nonscientific market research, and sure enough, a show of hands indicated that of the 25 people in the room representing a wide range of industries, only three were familiar with content marketing--all marketing people.

Marketing has undergone a major revolution

Many people who either don't pay any attention to or don't do any marketing aren't aware of how much electronic delivery has changed the landscape. Not only has it given us new communication channels--websites, a proliferating number of new social media sites, newsletters and other forms of electronic media, but it has changed the way we share information about ourselves and our businesses. Today’s marketing is much more personal. It's also raised the stakes and increased competition. If you want to reach your audience, you’ve got to set yourself apart.

It's time to connect

It's no longer good enough just to be presenting boring information about your products and services. There's nothing about this that will set you apart. You need to be telling a story, finding a way to connect with your audience. This is the essence of content marketing. How do you do this? Case studies are great ways to share your expertise. Businesses like to position themselves as problem solvers, right? Share an example of how you helped a client solve a problem, make more money, get more clients, improve cash flow, streamline operations, etc. There’s likelihood that someone else shares the same problems and will relate with this experience.

One of my favorite marketers is Seth Godin, writer, speaker and all-around interesting guy who comes up with some eminently quotable stuff. "Good marketing is no longer about the stuff we make but about the stories we tell". For some reason, people think about marketing and think it has to be boring. Just like they think about the endless commercials we watch on TV and think they all have to be stupid. Yet they’re not—some are clever and fun, even brilliant. Marketing can and should be interesting, fun and inspiring.

Reach your audience on an emotional level

It’s infinitely more likely that you’ll make a lasting impression if you can reach your audience on an emotional level. I was at a luncheon a few months ago hosted by a financial guy. I went because I can always count on interesting people and good food. I was delighted that he chose to give a brief talk—not on market upheaval—but how he worked with a client who wanted to retire but didn’t think he could afford it. He told a very moving story about he worked with this couple for several years to position them so they could enjoy a simpler life—and their retirement. This was terrific marketing—a great story about how he helps his clients—and really—isn’t that what it’s all about?

Need help with your content marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing experts.