Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

Content First, Not Campaign First: Four Steps to Make Sure You Don’t Fall into the Empty Campaign Trap

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I was speaking to a colleague recently who expressed a common lament. She had launched a beautiful looking marketing campaign three months prior, and it wasn't working. Nobody was clicking. It looked great. It was running in the right places, and she couldn't understand what was happening. I had seen this before, so, channeling Click and Clack from Car Talk , I asked her one more question to confirm what I suspected her problem was. "How did you come up with the campaign?" I asked. Here it … [Read more...]

Organic Traffic Isn’t Free: How to Dispel this Common Misconception

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I was in a meeting recently with a web design agency. We were discussing a new site, and how we would be generating leads, when he made the following comment, “Of course, you want to get lots of that free organic traffic.” I thought to myself, I'm not going to hire this guy. He has no idea what he's talking about. Why did I think that? Because SEO is not a one time, set-it-and-forget-it operation. Growing organic traffic takes a lot of work. Lots of staff and agency time. That costs money. It … [Read more...]

Five New Year’s Resolutions for Marketing Teams

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Good heads of marketing are always looking for ways to make their team perform better. But, with no shortage of things to do, layering on more – more planning, more training, more anything – can make any CMO feel a little guilty. What to do? One solution is to seize on resolution season. Create a quick-win New Year’s resolution for your team. By making it small and completing in January, your team can enter the year a little bit smarter and more energized. Here are five easy resolution ideas … [Read more...]

Startup Companies that Say They Do No Marketing Are Full of It

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I was recently at a tech marketing conference in San Francisco, and I once again heard a line from a founder that made me sigh. The trope used to make me groan, but I've heard it so often that now I merely sigh and shake my head. Here's the line: At our startup we don't do marketing. We just build a great product, and the rest takes care of itself. Sigh. It’s just complete BS. Here's why. Most people don't understand that product is an essential component of marketing – the first of the 4 … [Read more...]

Joel York on Agile Marketing

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I don't do a lot of interviews here in Matthews on Marketing, but I recently caught up with an old marketing comrade, Joel York, to find out more about his new agile marketing project. TM: To set some context, what is 'agile marketing'? JY: Agile marketing is a set of agile marketing management disciplines that maximize marketing’s ability to respond rapidly and effectively to change. The basic premise is that if you are marketing in an industry characterized by rapid change and shifting … [Read more...]

Diagnostic Content: How to Boost Conversion and Increase Customer Trust with Problem Solving Content

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Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking at the 2015 MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. Here's a condensed transcript with my slides of my talk, plus a link to the whole presentation at the bottom.  The Concept: Everyone here has had what I call a "diagnostic experience". You've gone to the doctor, brought your car to the shop, gone to a golf or tennis pro, you've sought out the advice of a professional to try and help you understand your problem and give you advice on how to fix it. You've … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials – The Whole Megillah

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There is never a shortage of urgent tasks in a startup’s marketing department. How to prioritize? Here are my ten startup marketing essentials to get you on your way. #1 – The Four P’s I was introduced to E. Jerome McCarthy’s four P’s later in my career. I wish I had known them earlier. There is no more perfect summation of marketing. Each of the P’s is a lever at your disposal. As a startup founder or CEO, understanding the four P’s will help you know which of the four levers to pull to … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #10 Creating a Sales Playbook

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You have released product and are selling it. You want to scale the sales team to really start taking off. How do you make sure all the new guys know how to sell your product. The answer is a sales playbook. A cookie-cutter approach to selling that will work every time. -- TM  If you ask heads of sales what they desire most in their job, the answer will likely be a repeatable, predictable sales process. The more one deal can look like another, the better a sales manager, director, or vice … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #9 Establishing a Testing Culture

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You can’t work in a startup these days without doing A/B testing. Multivariate if you are really good. There’s a reason why Optimizely is spreading like digital kudzu. But you can’t just buy software. You need to make testing part of your culture. Here’s how. – TM A/B testing is en vogue. Everyone’s doing it, or at least taking about it. Putting it into practice requires more than talk and tools, though. You need to create a testing culture to really make it work. For those who are unfamiliar … [Read more...]

Startup Essentials #8: Lead Nurturing and Progressive Profiling

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Leads are the lifeblood of a startup. One common mistake made by startup marketing teams is ignoring leads that are not ready to pass to sales. These leads need to be nurtured – helped along – until they are ready. If you ignore them, you have wasted the money you spent to acquire them in the first place, and paying yet again for brand new leads that may or may not be more qualified. And as you nurture your leads, you can learn more about them, using what’s known as progressive profiling. – … [Read more...]