This week’s roundup includes lead generation benchmarks for landing pages, problems with live video, overcoming problems with bad data, benefits of user-generated content, and more.
Lead Generation Landing Page Benchmarks and Top Content Tactics
Marketing Profs & Unbounce
Image: Unbounce
Unbounce recently released their 2017 Conversion Benchmark Report. To summarize, short landing pages with simple verbiage are the most effective.
“The report was based on analysis of 74.5 million 4Q16 visits to more than 64,000 lead generation landing pages created by Unbounce customers in 10 industries.”
This summary article shares charts and statistical findings from the research done for the report. Learn what style of writing and word count yields top results. There is even a breakdown of the industries that were looked at specifically. You can download the report for yourself here.
Consider the challenges of live video in your marketing efforts
PR Daily
Image: Sticker Mule/StockSnap
Like all marketers, you are probably being flooded with articles and information about the need for video as its marketing popularity continues to rise; the newest trend being live video. While it is true, this form of marketing is spreading like wild fire through social media tools, it is extremely important that you consider the challenges that come with live video before jumping in.
“[Y]ou are still speaking in real time with almost no room for a mistake. Not everyone is born as confident as Dale Carnegie, but you have to know your topic inside out and be able to improvise in response to unexpected questions.”
Public speaking skills are only the beginning on the list of challenges outlined in this article. Also to be considered are the lifespan of live videos, gaining a large audience, real time feedback, and several other things. [Read more here.]
Time for B2B Enterprise Marketers to Get Focused on Their Audience vs. Their Brands [New Research]
Content Marketing Institute
Content Marketing Institute released their 2017 Enterprise Content Marketing report on benchmarks, budgets and trends, and one of the key findings was that many businesses focus their marketing on their own brand rather than focusing on their audience and forming a relationship with them around the things the audience cares about.
“53% of B2B enterprise marketers who responded to our annual content marketing survey say they agree that their organization is focused on creating content for their audience versus their brand. That’s a lot lower than the 69% of all B2B North American marketers we surveyed (across all industry types and company sizes) who focus on audience versus brand. In other words, B2B enterprise marketers are among the worst offenders here.”
The article shares examples of brands who do “get it” and are audience-focused. [Read more here.]
How You Battle the “Data Wheel of Death” in Growth
Coelevate
Data. Such a blessing and such a curse at the same time. Today’s technology and processes practically give us the ability to have any and all data we could possibly want. It’s the managing and maintaining of it that gets complex and oftentimes leads to distrust of the data.
“The project wraps up, but at some point someone finds a piece of data that doesn’t look quite right. As a result, they don’t trust it and then they stop using the data. Because no one is using the data, the data isn’t maintained — which leads to more distrust. ”
This article looks at the issues that come about and cause data to not to be maintained (and therefore untrustworthy) and what you can do to remedy the problem. [Read more here.]
Three Ways UGC Influences Sales: The Case of Real-Customer Photos
MarketingProfs
UGC, user-generated content, is yet another marketing tool that is actively on the rise. It began years ago with blogs, but now “real people” have so many ways to share their voice that brands are beginning to embrace the fact those voices can actually be a great asset to them.
“Today’s consumers are digital natives. They are exposed to over 5,000 brand messages and advertisements every day and, as a result, are distrustful of brand messages. UGC, however, is effective at influencing purchasing decisions because consumers trust content that is generated by their peers over content generated by the brand itself.
This article covers three benefits of UGC and shares a couple of effective examples of real UGC campaigns run by large brands. [Read more here.]
Video of the Week:
Tweet of the Week:
Tell the truth…and tell it well. #Marketing #Growth #PushCM pic.twitter.com/k1kbJRacAG
— Push C&M (@PushCM) April 17, 2017