Ardath Albee

I recently read a post written by Brian Carroll of MECLABS. An excerpt caught my attention as this is a problem I see often. He was discussing a finding in Marketing Sherpa's 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report that found only 15% of marketers reported they have dedicated resources to produce content for each stage of the buying process. Brian's colleague, Daniel Burnstein, shared that he had heard a related story from one of their partners: They, too, wanted to send emails that were relevant and didn’t know where to begin. Typically, as a matter of rote, they blasted out an email every week about one of their products. The marketing team knew it wasn’t the optimal approach, but didn’t have the time to think it through – the emails had become merely another part of their weekly list of activities. This is why content marketers find themselves in a pickle. They've re... (more)

Content Marketing Should Never Be Advertising

The rise of the term Native Advertising seems to be causing quite a stir. This may very well be in creating a label that's inherently in conflict with itself. The main problem is with the word "Advertising." However, the concept of "Native" is headed in the right direction in regards to addressing context for audiences, rather than the unwanted interruption of ads. Before anyone gets cranked up, let me explain a few things. I've been thinking about this for awhile. There are all kinds of reactions to the term Native Advertising, but I find most of them to be surface. We need to lo... (more)

Use Content Strategy to Break Into a New Market

I've been on a number of calls recently with companies that want to break into a new market. They think that content marketing may be the key, but are uncertain if they're right, as well as how to approach this new direction. Content Marketing is definitely a key strategy. In fact, I'm not quite sure how a company would go about breaking into a new market without it. But there are some challenges when your goal is quick uptake and your company doesn't have a lot of exposure or familiarity with the target audience. Here are the things that come to mind. It shouldn't be surprising th... (more)

The B2B Website Audience Litmus Test

Many B2B companies think that their website must serve every type of customer they have—every flavor of persona. I'd ask you to step back a moment and think about your website audience. Just because your company serves a range of people, titles, and roles, doesn't mean that they all use your website—or ever will. The elephants in the room during this discussion are usually represented by the CXOs—the ultimate persona that all companies want to attract, engage and sell to. However, these people are not likely your website's greatest fans or visitors. Why not? CXOs are: Too busy... (more)

The Cost of Misaligned B2B Marketing

When alignment is discussed in marketing, the usual application is to sales and marketing alignment. This has been an ongoing conversation for nearly as long as I can remember. And I've been in the business environment for quite a while. The issue that comes up for me is that there are some alignment issues before we can even get to sales and marketing alignment that could have major implications for brands, if they took stock. What I'm talking about are two sources of fragmentation - the second driven by the first. marketing misalignment customer misalignment But, first, let's ... (more)