Baer says, “Contact information is easy to get, but how do you turn a lead into a customer? There is no magic bullet for conversion, despite the many wild promises you may hear, but lead nurturing can drive huge improvements. In fact:79% of marketing leads never convert to sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause for poor performance (MarketingSherpa).Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost (Marketo).Nurtured leads makes 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads2 (The Annuitas Group).But how do you make sure your lead... [...]

Baer says, “You already know a social media plan can really help you share your content and connect with your audience.In fact, a solid social media plan helps us at CoSchedule get 31.5 times more traffic than if we would just share our content once and forget about it.So how can you actually build a social media plan that works for you?Here are 33 ways you can do just that:With Great Content Comes Great Responsibility“With great power there must also come—great responsibility,” Peter Parker learned in the Amazing Spider-Man comic”.33 Ways Your Social Media Plan Will Make You... [...]

Baer says, “I’m going to take a wild guess about what you’ve been up to lately. Call me psychic, but I’m guessing you’ve been angling for budget over the last few months. I’ll go a step farther and predict that in doing so, you only shared your successes. The programs and campaigns that didn’t work, the spending that didn’t quite pay off—those probably went unmentioned.Okay, I’m not really psychic. I just know that end of year is when many marketers ask for a budget for the year ahead. I also know that marketers love to highlight their achievements (who doesn’t?) and ignore... [...]

Baer says, “Much like online dating, the matchmaking of brands and customers has entered into the social space with intent to discover, engage, and find compatibility to build lasting relationships. Finding those with like-minded interests and turning them into true advocates for your business has allowed for the greatest win-wins for customers and companies alike.NBA basketball team Atlanta Hawks understood that matchmaking with the right audience happens on and offline. Working with Insightpool, a social sales and marketing platform, they set a goal to get the word out to Atlanta influencers... [...]

Baer says, “The first thing to remember is that LinkedIn is great for SEO, so remember that whatever you put on LinkedIn is searchable, both for individuals and companies. Spend the time and resources necessary to make sure that your LinkedIn page is showcasing your brand, not hurting it. For businesses, that means implementing a few of these pieces of advice:HAVE a company LinkedIn page, to start. If you don’t, you are behind.Focus on the WIIFTR (What’s In It For The Reader) when posting content on LinkedIn (as anywhere in social media). Make sure you’re disseminating content that your... [...]

Baer says, “Just how valuable is email to online marketers? The numbers tell the story:EmailExpert reports email marketing produces a $44.25 return for every $1 spent.McKinsey & Company reports email is almost 40 times more effective at getting new customers than Facebook and TwitterOver 77% of online customers prefer receiving marketing messages via email, according toMarketingLand.Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, reports Unbounce.And 81% of digital shoppers in the US say they’re at least “somewhat likely” to make additional purchases as a... [...]

Baer says, “Recently, LinkedIn released their top 25 job skills of 2014, based on what recruiters are looking for on the LinkedIn platform.Number one was big data analyst. There were several others in the top 25 specifically related to digital marketing, such as digital marketing campaign specialist, etc. I’ve got to tell you what was not in the top 25 was Amish carpenter. That may not come as a huge surprise. But what did surprise me was that so many of the top 25 jobs such as computer programming, data analysis, and several other highly technical jobs, often tie into marketing, especially... [...]

Baer says, “Every time I publish a blog post, dozens of people tweet it instantly using some sort of automation protocol. It is gratifying to be so trusted as an information provider that this group believes it is in their best interests to automatically redistribute what I write. But I also find it frightening, and it’s not something I would ever do myself.While I certainly try to create content that passes the Mom Test every time I open the laptop to write, I know that some content is better than other content, the same way that not every batch of pulled pork is your tastiest, and not every... [...]

Baer says, “In all my years of experience working in the content creation space, I’ve received plenty of requests from bloggers, marketers, and even digital marketing agencies to craft amazing articles. To my dismay, the majority of these pieces end up buried under pages and pages on Google. Only a minority of them turned out to be successful blog posts.But what I noticed is that the ones that ended up being successful in generating social shares and creating hundreds of backlinks shared one common feature that no one seems to notice.It’s so simple that you’ll slap yourself on the... [...]

Baer says, “What you want social media to do for your business, and what real people want and expect from businesses in social media are fundamentally different. This expectations disconnect and dissonance is the nucleus of all that is wrong and difficult about social media from a company perspective.In Q4 2014, Hubspot released new research called The Social Lifecycle. In this project, they interviewed 600 consumers about where and what and how they want to intersect with brands in social media, in both a marketing and customer service context. Several interesting findings in this research,... [...]