There’s a crisis in consumer trust. At least that’s the word in the research.

The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer revealed that only 48% of the U.S. population trusts business as an institution (a 10-point drop from 2017).

Yet, brand trust is one of the biggest factors in consumers’ purchasing decisions.

According to PwC’s Consumer Insights Survey (2018), 14% of respondents put trust as their No. 1 reason for choosing a retailer. “Trust in brand” was the second most frequently cited reason for purchase decision-making.

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Over 80% of people say they prefer to watch a live video than read social media posts, and four in five say they prefer to view a video from a brand than to read a blog, according to a survey from Livestream and New York Magazine.

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Rapid advances in AI technologies mean marketing automation is no longer optional. It’s a mainstay of modern marketing.

Not all content marketing tasks can or should be automated. No matter how far AI advances go, software will never replace a human for crafting an insightful and meaningful blog post.

But as you go through your daily content tasks, it’s worth asking, “Can this be automated?” Chances are, many of them can.

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User-generated content is powerful because it taps into people’s inherent desire to be recognized and appreciated.

When your brand shares something a customer or fan created, that external recognition not only strengthens the customer or fan’s affinity with the brand, it encourages that person to share the content further with his or her friends (and your brand benefits vicariously).

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Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing yet produces almost three times as many leads. It’s easy to see why 89% of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their strategies.

However, executing an effective content marketing program is no simple task. It requires a skilled team and a well-run process. To help you build and operate an elite team of editors, strategists, writers, videographers, and designers, follow these tips curated from 13 marketing experts.

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Most companies that are successful with content marketing typically employ a skilled team of strategists, editors, writers, and designers. You can achieve a lot with a small team but as it grows you may benefit by making a developer your next hire.

For more complex projects, you need someone with technical knowledge, which often has meant leaning on your IT department. However, content production becomes far more streamlined when you have a developer on hand at all times.

A good developer is passionate about testing and understands conversion rate optimization, which is essential if you’re serious about creating content that not only engages but also improves the company’s profits.

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There’s something to be said for thorough, extensively researched buyer personas.

When you’ve taken the time to answer 150 questions about your target customers, there’s no way the content written for them and the way you market to them won’t resonate.

The data backs this up. Katie Sweet, writing for IBM’s THINK Marketing blog, shares some insight that proves how important understanding your customers is to your marketing campaign’s success, including this statistic: 63% of consumers say they would think more positively about a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting, or relevant.Continue Reading

At first glance, pay-per-click and content marketing can seem like contrasting ideologies. PPC offers an immediate ROI. Alternatively, content marketing is an excellent tool for improving your brand’s visibility, but it often takes time to gain momentum.

But the two can work together. PPC can act as a secret weapon for your content marketing, supercharging your content campaigns and giving you an edge over your competition.Continue Reading