Updated August 9, 2021

What are your brand’s stories? #ApostrophesMatter

One of the more controversial topics in marketing is how much control any company has in its “brand.” On one side of the argument are those who say brand control is an illusion. The thinking here is that not only do you not have control over how your brand is currently perceived, you never had any say in it.Continue Reading

Welcome to the race for position no. 1.

Except in this race, we are not the cars. We are not the drivers.

We are the racetrack. And we are competing to be the first choice for every car and driver.

The race is search. The most frequently chosen car? Google, which commands almost 88% of the global search market.Continue Reading

Predicting the “death” of a media-related technology will get you in trouble most quickly. The next worse trouble-making prediction? Saying there will be no replacements at all.

Watch me try to stay out of trouble.

Our journey starts in 1995.

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It feels like we’ve been here before.

[Quickly checks archive.]

Ahhh, yes. We have.  We’ve built the business case for content marketing here.  And here. And here.

But here’s an interesting anecdotal tidbit for you. The overriding purpose behind establishing a content marketing strategy has changed as we round the bend of the third quarter of 2021. Continue Reading

About 2,7000 years ago, people began to optimize content so it could be discovered.

How? They built libraries.

Libraries gave people an organized archive they could search for answers to their questions.

About 2,300 years ago, the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt had a famous librarian, Callimachus, one of the most renowned Greek poets and scholars.

But Callimachus’ fame didn’t come from his storytelling. No, he introduced the first topical catalog of the library’s holdings. He ostensibly built the first Google of the world.

In this month’s Marketing Makers episode, I explore the evolution of content optimization, then leap ahead to the challenges of optimizing content in 2021. Watch the full episode here, or skip ahead to the segment where I show you a content optimization model for the future that takes into account all the ways people look for information today.

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Surfers say waves travel in groups of seven. They call them a “set.” Having the patience to wait for the biggest, most powerful seventh wave is the key to a great day in the water.

In reality, there is no seventh wave. Or, more specifically, the “seventh” wave could be any wave. There are bigger waves and smaller waves, but patterns – though they exist – are elusive.

Even so, great surfers can sense when that big wave is imminent.Continue Reading

You’ve probably heard people describe marketing departments as places for trying fantastical things where no one has a bad idea, and everybody’s work gets a star and gets put up on the refrigerator.

If that was ever true, those days are over.

CEOs now see the marketing function as a driver for growth, according to an article in McKinsey. As one former CEO said, “Data has changed how the C suite is interacting with marketing. Now it’s very hard to separate company strategy from marketing strategy.”Continue Reading

I’m not a handy guy, but I know how to use a tape measure. If I use the tape measure to figure out the height of my fence, I can determine the value of my house, right?

Well, no, of course not.

Yet when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of marketing, we often make these kinds of leaps. We look at some arbitrary measurement – like page views or downloads – and try to link it to a return on investment.

In the latest episode of Marketing Makers – the series for those who make marketing work, I delve into the sometimes-mystifying process of measuring the return on investment for marketing – and, more specifically, the content that feeds the marketing machine. I walk you through the art and science of putting together all those arbitrary numbers to tell a story about helping business performance.Continue Reading