July 19, 2024
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This Week's Top Marketing News

How To Reboot Your Old Content (and Create Future Treasures)

Most content marketing strategies begin with an endless stream of content topic ideas. You masterfully create world-shifting content about all your customers’ biggest problems, thought-provoking opinion pieces, and insights into your brand story and company culture.

The problem is that this stream of ideas eventually slows to a measly drip. What do you do then?

Everything evolves. Your industry, business, team, and even you will evolve. Think about the current state of that blockbuster blog post you wrote before the pandemic that was a smash hit with your audience. You can attribute at least 4 great customers from the insights in that post. Does that blog still perform at a high level or did it level off (or even fade) over time? Chances are the latter, which is why it’s a great idea to run a content audit and find opportunities to reboot old content into a rejuvenated version that echoes the same message but is updated to include new insights.

Fish Food:
It’s natural to cringe a little when reading old blog posts. You should. You’ve gained more knowledge in a (likely) changing industry. Rather than letting these “oldies but goodies” continue to collect dust, begin to freshen them up with new insights or a slightly different perspective you’ve obtained since you created the content. This approach allows you to reintroduce content that was once popular with your audience rather than trying to drum up a new idea or slight variation of a previous piece of content.

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​Beware of These Risky Sales Tactics That Are Doomed to Fail or Backfire

No one ever wants to feel like they’ve been sold something. The idea of being sold makes people feel like they might have been talked into doing something they didn’t want to do and may regret later. Slimy sales tactics have been around for decades but buyers today hold more power than before in the palm of their hands. They can conduct in-depth research and find endless options to buy from with a couple of quick internet searches.

This does not mean the art of selling is dead. It is very much alive. It’s just different than it was 25 years ago. Even though most of this is common knowledge, there are still some sales tactics that can ruin a good deal. Here are some of the no-nos you should avoid if you want to close the deal.

1. Go in for the close too soon - You can’t start the first date with the first kiss. You need to get to know the customer and understand their needs before you can ask them to make a purchase. Unless you’re selling gum… in that case, just ask for their money.
2. Put an out-of-reach offer on the table - Be upfront and honest with buyers about the cost of your product and find out what their budget is. Help them find a solution aligned with their needs and budget. If you’re not a good fit for them, educate the buyer on their expectations and point them towards options that might fit them better.
3. Saying your offer is “final” when it’s not - Stick to your guns and believe in your product. Once you begin “wheeling-and-dealing”, you make price the focal point of the purchase rather than the value your product or service can provide the customer.
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Hidden Google Tool Reveals GA4 and Google Ads Discrepancies

You would think that two platforms developed by the same company would exist in perfect harmony. Think again. One of the biggest pains for marketers is cross-checking data from different platforms to understand what’s working and assessing some type of ROI.

Google’s recent rollout of Google Analytics 4 has been a rocky road. This Search Engine Land article shares a hidden report that allows users to compare conversions exported to Google Ads and explains discrepancies between the platforms
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50 Small Business Marketing Ideas for 2024

Marketing is painfully simple and complicated.

The simplicity lies in showing a target audience the value you provide that solves a specific problem or challenge they face. The complexity lies in the endless tactics available to deliver this message to your target audience and convert an interested buyer into a customer.

This isn’t a problem for big brands with large budgets and teams that can develop and deploy marketing strategies. On the other hand, this is a big issue for most small businesses without these resources. They are carefully trying to decide where to spend their limited resources of time and money.

This list of 50 small business marketing ideas for 2024 includes marketing strategies, online marketing tips, and small business advertising ideas.
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SEO Writing: 13 Tips on Writing Blog Posts That Rank on Google

One of the most common questions we hear is: “Is blogging still a good thing to include in our marketing strategy?”

Next to email marketing, blogging is one of the most impactful tactics that should be part of (nearly) all marketing strategies.

Blogging is one of the rare marketing tactics that serves multiple purposes. They are a natural way to add more keyword-focused content to your website to increase organic traffic from being indexed by search engines. They are also a fantastic way to give site visitors information about how the products and services your company provides can help them overcome their problems or give potential employees a look at what it’s like to work for you.

The thing is, blogging is not for the faint of heart. It takes planning, time, and effort even if you’re leveraging the assistance from others outside of your company.

Here are the top 5 challenges marketers face with content marketing:

1. Finding ideas for new content (see article above)
2. Creating content that receives a high level of engagement
3. Creating content that attracts more traffic to your website
4. Reaching your target audience
5. Creating content that generates leads

The overall goal of blogging is to create content that site visitors want to read and engage in a way that the search engines’ algorithms rank well for the keywords you’re targeting to get in front of the ideal audience. It’s a bit of a balancing act.

Here’s a list of 13 Tips on Writing Blog Posts that Rank on Google:

1. Start with keyword research
2. Use headings to your benefit
3. Optimize your content for featured snippets
4. Write for humans, not search engines
5. Optimize your title
6. Include keywords in your meta description
7. Answer the questions no one else will
8. Resist the urge to keyword stuff
9. Link to high-authority websites
10. Aim for scannable, longer posts
11. Link to other posts on your site
12. Compress images for fast page load speed
13. Feature a FAQ section in your blog

Fish Food:
​The investment you make in blogging can be fruitful or a complete waste of time. It all depends on how you approach the process. This list of tips is a fantastic checklist you can use in your blog content creation process to make sure that you’re hitting all the right elements so that blockbuster post will be loved by both humans and robots the same.

17 AI Content Tools You Need To Try

Yes, everyone knows about ChatGPT but what you might not know is that there are other AI tools out there that can drastically improve your content creation efforts. Rather than being the front door to AI like ChatGPT, these tools are built to perform specific tasks while leveraging artificial intelligence. Here are a couple of our favs:

• Jasper - Has content templates to help you structure all of that AI copy into writing frameworks with different objectives.
• Grammerly - Helps clean up the text you write just about everywhere. This goes way beyond the red squiggly line that clearly shows you’d get your butt kicked in a 3rd-grade spelling bee.
• CapCut - Great for editing videos and inserting effects that used to be reserved for creative geniuses with high-dollar software.
• Podcastle - Removes all the dead silences and “um’s” from podcast recordings that are an editor’s nightmare. Where was this one 6 years ago?

​Check out the full article for the remaining list of AI tools.
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​The Google Maps Pin Scam: A New Google Business Profile Threat

Scammers have found a new way to make you want to pull your freaking hair out. The Google Business Profile (GBP) platform has a “Suggest an Edit” feature that allows any user to edit the map location for any business. The kicker is that the GBP owner is not notified that someone suggested this edit and it’s often not known until the phone stops ringing and you finally figure all of this out. This all happens on the very same platform that forces business owners to submit a vile of their pet’s DNA to verify they are a legit business.

The suggested fix is to log into Google using an email not associated with any GBP account and move the location pin back to where it should belong.

Let’s hope Google checks its suggestion box soon and takes care of this one.
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4 Questions to Answer on Your Services Page

Your services page should be a mini sales page on your website that answers questions your potential customers have when visiting your website. The information presented should excite the buyer about talking to someone and provide enough education to get them near the final stages of the buyer’s journey.

Unfortunately, this is often overlooked when most websites are built. Services pages are overloaded with features about the product with an occasional mention of benefits. Most of the information is the same old boring copy that can be found on 90% of the other websites.

This is good news for you. With a bit of elbow grease and a dash of creativity, you can create a services page that will educate website visitors and fast-track them to engage in a sales conversation with you.

Here are 4 questions you need to ask on your website services page:

1. Why Would I Want This? Address the problem the customer is facing right away and show them how you can help.
2. Who Is This For? Include content that shows the visitor the type of customer that benefits from using your service. Don’t make them guess if they are in the right spot… tell them!
3. What’s Included? Describe your service and spell out exactly what they get and all the steps involved in your process.
4. Why Should I Choose You? This is where you share the value you provide to help them overcome their problems. Show how you are different from other options they could choose.

Most companies have more than one service. It is recommended that you create individual services pages for each service but you can try to cram it all together into one page if you dare.

Fish Food:
​A great services page is a blessing to all those who are not the best salespeople or do not want to waste time on the phone or in meetings trying to educate people on things that they are going to have to go home and think about. It should answer all the common questions and provide the foundation for you to let your charming personality seal the deal.

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