In a hyper-connected world where a strong online presence means better growth opportunities for business, it's no wonder businesses are wising up to the fact that investing in digital marketing is key.

The rise of digital marketing

More and more companies are recognising the importance of having a strong online presence and a survey by Martini Media and iMedia found that 95 per cent of firms will increase their digital spending in 2013.

The reason? Well 75 per cent of those surveyed believe high-impact digital ads can have as much of an audience reach, if not more, as TV and print.

And what's more, businesses that want to target high-income consumers specifically, anticipate spending more than twice as much as they have previously on video and rich-media content in order to appeal to a wealthier clientele.

Social is unstoppable

It probably won't surprise you to learn that the marketing area in which companies are planning the greatest investment, is social media.

This area will see a 63 per cent increase in spending as sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are a key way to foster a competitive edge, while engaging consumers at the same time.

Among other emerging digital tactics, investments in video and rich media will also see a rise, as will spending on mobile marketing.

Content is king

Most noteworthy, however, is that the top priority worldwide according to the study is content marketing, as it remains a key way to create brand awareness and generate more visitors to a website.

According to Martini Media's study, around 60 per cent of companies will increase spending in this area over the year and 70 per cent of those surveyed said they would run content marketing campaigns alongside other platforms to really make an impact.

Skip Brand, Martini Media's CEO, said: "As digital investments increase, it's clear that standard display just isn't cutting it. We can expect to see standard display spending continue to decrease as brands turn to rich media, social, video and mobile to effectively connect with their audience."

The problem with this approach is so self-explanatory that we needn’t go into much detail here – suffice to say that spamming your own site with reams of material on a subject completely unrelated to your product is rarely going to end well.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t at least try to cash in on the opportunity to drive traffic to your pages when a story breaks that is going to have everyone scrambling for news and information – the trick lies in waiting for the appropriate windows and knowing how to exploit them when they open.

An Olympic opportunity

Let’s hark back to one of last year’s favourites to demonstrate the point here and talk about the Olympics.

For this example we’ll use company A and company B. Company A specialises in parcel deliveries and postal firms. Company B sells sunglasses. Sort of see where we’re going?

The key thing to remember here is that the Olympics brought with them all manner of fears relating to how services in the capital would be affected by the influx of visitors, particularly the delivery of goods to both businesses and consumers.

If you’re company A then you’re rubbing your hands together, digging out the bunting and whistling while you work – people are going to be hitting the web to search for news regarding deliveries during the Games, meaning that with the right content, A’s site will be awash with visitors.

Company B isn’t so lucky. They want to cash in on the Olympics, but posting stories about the sunglasses David Cameron was wearing as he watched the events is clutching at straws. This isn’t their day, and filling their pages with content about the Games is going to be one big waste of time.

This is the sort of situation in which B is better off focusing on their target market, keeping their material fresh and original without trying to compete for an online Olympic presence with companies that can actually draw a definitive link between themselves and the Games (without incurring the wrath of the organising committee).

Man bites dog: the key is to create content that’s relevant to your audience (image: iStockphoto/Thinkstock)

Yet it isn’t plain sailing for A, as even though they’re perfectly positioned to benefit from the event, they still have to get it right. The material has to be engaging, people have to want to read it and it needs to be relevant to what web users are searching for if A wants to enjoy any conversions. If the marketing team over at A tick these boxes they could well be onto a winner.

Relevance above all

The overall point here is that there’s nothing wrong with trying to take advantage of popular stories and events to boost your presence on the web – providing that you can keep things relevant and aren’t compromising the identity of your product.

And if like B you can’t find a tangible link between your company and the news, remember that you’ll be better off sticking to your guns and trying to attract visitors that are searching for the exact thing you’re offering – after all, that’s where the sales lie.

Check out our new infographic: 

Is Yahoo!’s announcement yesterday that it is acquiring social sharing site Tumblr for $1.1 billion (£72 million) an attempt for the 20-year-old company to revive its fledgling image? And what will it mean for content marketing?

Tumblr: an untapped marketing gold mine?

Since a third of Tumblr users reportedly come from households with incomes above $100,000, according to the Huffington Post, Yahoo! certainly has the chance to seize an audience with money.

What’s more, nearly half of all Tumblr users are in the 18-34 age bracket – a coveted age group for advertisers – while only 34 per cent of Yahoo!’s users fall into this demographic. So, as well as the acquisition making Yahoo! appear to be hip again, it also makes the internet corporation much larger.

Industry experts say that Yahoo! has to find a way to quickly monetise Tumblr without alienating its core audience – and the obvious way is through advertising. The company will now explore ways to run ads within Tumblr users’ dashboards, which act as the homepage section of the site.

Should businesses care more about Yahoo! now?

Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing social media sites with 120,000 people joining on a daily basis.

As a result, Yahoo! expects its audience to grow by 50 per cent thanks to the collaboration and if its estimations are accurate, companies looking to market their business may need to look further than Google to be noticed in search engine results.

As the gap between competitors such as Google – and to a lesser extent Bing – is narrowing, brands must pay attention to developments and adjust their SEO content accordingly if they want top results in SERPs and to to drive traffic back to their site.

Andrew Lipsman, vice president of Industry Analysis at Comscore, told the Huffington Post: “Tumblr certainly has the audience to be monetised. The fact that you have the combination of a young skew with a somewhat above average income is a sweet spot for marketers or advertisers.”

Speaking of sweet spots, have you seen our latest infographic: Content Strategy Pick ‘n’ Mix?

If your company has shunned Pinterest in favour of more popular social media sites, now's the time to consider setting up a profile as the content sharing service is making its first steps towards promoting brand engagement.

The site has unveiled a new pin structure for different kinds of products so it's easier for users to click through links and purchase items – therefore making the service more actionable and driving increased traffic to brand sites.

New info-rich pins

When users find something they love on Pinterest, they want to learn more – how do I bake those cookies? Where can I find that summery dress? How much does a stay at this hotel cost?

To make it easier to find the answers to these questions and more, the site has created new information-rich pins, which are the "first step toward making pins more useful", the company blog says.

By clicking on the image, you will find relevant facts, such as pricing, availability and where a product can be purchased. The move won't just benefit users; it will also make the site potentially more attractive to companies looking to boost their brand awareness.

Pin to tap into consumers

While this is just the beginning for this type of brand engagement service offered by the site, the power of the many companies joining up to it – eBay, Etsy, Sephora, Sony – suggests Pinterest could become on par with Facebook and Twitter when it comes to marketing.

The move is one that will be of particular interest to brands and companies that are looking to tap into the strong community of users of the site. While Pinterest doesn't release the official stats on this, a report put the number of users at 48 million unique visitors globally.

Now that businesses have worked on their Facebook and Twitter profiles, they need to focus on building up their Pinterest ones too – as it offers another platform for engaging with their customer base and boosting awareness.

By gaining momentum in the social sphere, brands can also reach a much wider audience.

Jet2.com email marketing executive Darren Kunar told us it is important for brands to showcase their products and services in the best light by offering their audiences the most information in the clearest way. Tom Whitely, group marketing executive at UK General Insurance, believes certain industries are leading the way with this, with others now starting to look at their strategies. Companies that have not yet embraced content marketing are getting worried that they may get left behind.

Content marketing was a hot topic at TFMA Manchester

Jaze Zewska, a student at the University of Salford, described content marketing as “the way forward”. She believes brands should find the right balance of the various potentially relevant platforms and social media channels for them. Finding the right mix of content types for your strategy is important, and it is also the topic of our latest ContentPlus infographic: Content Strategy Pick ‘n’ Mix.

One solicitors firm which is currently leveraging the power of content marketing after a site relaunch is Pannone Solicitors. Digital marketing executive Rachel Nickless told us that they combine videos, blogs and infographics, which are then promoted via social media.

Check out some of the content types we provide and read how content marketing achieves success for our clients.

Publishers need to understand just how important it is to have a perfect link profile.

Google has been targeting businesses whose web practices are not up to scratch with its Penguin algorithm – a new version of which is set to be rolled out in the next few weeks – and this means some companies have seen their SERP profiles affected.

Webspamming will not be tolerated 

Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, has recorded a video and took to Twitter to warn businesses about the search giant’s practices, adding: “It’s safe to assume webspam will continue to tackle link networks that violate our guidelines”.

Cutts backed this statement up by revealing his company has taken legal action against several thousand link sellers on May 14th. This demonstrates how brands need to have a close look at their link profiles, as they do not want to fall foul of the system and compromise their web visibility.

Develop a strong content marketing plan

This is where content marketing can be useful, as it makes sure publishers are producing well written and optimised content for the web.

This is not the first time Cutts has warned brands about the quality of their output. Back in March, he made it clear Google is going to be penalising poor content and SEO practices and so this will impact on digital strategies in the future.

If brands want to avoid the wrath of Google, they should stick to creating engaging content in an effort to attract more customer to their portals.

A range of improvements have been rolled out for Google+ at the search giant's sixth annual Google I/O developer conference.

Thanks to the addition of a new responsive, multi-column layout for the Google+ Stream, users will be able to see up to three columns of content at a time – depending on the screen size and orientation of the device they are using.

According to the Google+ blog, improvements are also being made to the look of photos and videos, as an emphasis is placed on visuals – something brands can exploit by shifting more of their budget to producing videos for their pages. 

Improved design

Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Marketing Land, said that, according to Google, 40 per cent of people using Google+ Social Signon choose to download a site's mobile app.

Hashtags are also being enhanced. This means users will see related hashtags pop up when they post something, giving them the chance to explore other subjects. On top of this, posts with multiple hashtags will now get more than one hashtag button.

Google+ comes to the fore

Figures from GlobalWebIndex show that Google+ is now the second most popular social media network after Facebook with over 359 million active users. Part of the reason is options such as search, maps and YouTube have been tied-in to the channel. 

Because of its popularity, brands cannot avoid this medium if they want to boost their social media engagement levels. Regularly uploading relevant content means they can interact with their customer base and reach a much wider audience by forming new connections. 

Brands are continually trying to come up with the perfect content marketing mix in order to boost engagement levels.

While blog posts and features offer companies the opportunity to get their point across in a readable format, infographics can be equally as useful thanks to the quality and variety of information they offer in an aesthetically pleasing format. 

Using a range of content types

With research by the Content Marketing Institute and the Direct Marketing Association UK finding that marketers typically use 14 different tactics, it's clear to see how important it is to offer content in different formats. 

The benefits of infographics include improving lead generation, boosting brand awareness, swelling conversion rates and delivering a strong performance in search. As 90 per cent of information is transmitted in a visual manner, this measure cannot be overlooked.

Case Study: A successful infographic

The latest infographic from ContentPlus tackles the issue of choosing the perfect content strategy by showing brands how they can draw up their content marketing objectives and set about achieving them. 

Relevant statistics about the efficacy of whitepapers, newsletters, blogs, video, social media and infographics and many other content types are listed. Ultimately, if brands want to be successful, then they need to have a solid understanding of their target audience's needs.

ContentPlus will be showcasing its new infographic – as well as answering any content-related questions – at the TFMA Manchester event, which is running from 09:00 to 17:00 at the Manchester Central Convention Centre, Manchester.

What determines “compelling content” and “preferred formats” will vary from one organisation to the next, but there are a few things that all audiences expect from publisher brands.

Quality

In the “olden days” of digital marketing (maybe five years ago!), companies could “win” at SEO even if the content they published was very poor. Pre-Panda it was even possible for nonsensical content generated by programming software to help brands rank highly in search engine results pages. Those days are gone forever. Google’s algorithm continues to be fine-tuned to give greater prominence to sites that publish well-written content and to penalise those with low-quality content.

Variety

The cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work with content. If you serve up your information in exactly the same format to your audience every time, they will get bored. This is why you need to really understand what your audience is all about – and keep abreast of changes as their tastes evolve. What information do they like to read? Do they use a mobile device to consume the content you publish? Do they have the time to read through a 1,000-word feature, or would they prefer a 200-word blog post conveying the main points? Or perhaps they’d rather watch a video? Do they love infographics? What about white papers?

Research from the Content Marketing Institute and the Direct Marketing Association UK revealed that the best in class marketers they surveyed use around 14 different tactics in their strategies to get optimum results. At the top of this list are website articles, followed by social media and email newsletters. Podcasts and gamification lag at the bottom of the list of the 26 most-used tactics.

Content marketing objectives

When deciding about which content types to include, you need to start with the end in mind. What do you want to achieve? What do you want people to do once they are engaging with your content?

For many companies, a strong performance in search remains a top priority, which is why 90 per cent of marketers publish news on their websites. News keeps your site fresh and interesting, giving people a reason to return on a daily basis and impressing Google and other search engines.

But your SEO efforts will be hampered unless your website is set up in a way that is “friendly” towards both search engines and human users. You also need to ensure your landing pages are well-written, optimised and properly integrated, with relevant calls to action.

Lead generation is another top priority for marketers. The good news is that content marketing is a great lead generation tool. Nearly six in ten companies that blog have acquired customers in this way, while a third claims to have generated leads via Twitter.

Content is also powerful in helping to convert leads to customers. Video in particular is a compelling medium for conversion, and with UK internet users spending 45 per cent longer watching online videos now than a year ago, consumers’ appetite for video content is clear. Case studies, regarded by B2B marketers as the most effective content marketing tactic, are also growing in importance as a content type that helps with conversion.

Building brand awareness is the top marketing priority among both B2B and B2C marketers, according to the CMI and DMA UK, and publishing thought leadership content such as white papers is crucial in achieving this objective. Brands can also extend their reach very effectively if they harness the power of social media. Four in five Facebook users actively seek to connect with brands on the platform, while companies with between 51 and 100 Twitter followers generate 106 per cent more traffic to their sites than those with 25 or fewer. The highly shareable nature of infographics also increases traffic to the publishers’ sites by an average 12 per cent.

Too much choice?

There are many other content types employed by marketers, for example press releases and how-to guides, and the number of options available to them can sometimes feel overwhelming. According to the CMI and DMA UK, marketers’ top challenges are producing enough content, producing the kind of content that engages and producing a variety of content. It’s no surprise then that 55 per cent of marketers in the UK outsource at least some of their content creation activities.

However, regardless of whether you create your content in-house or work with an agency, it all comes back to understanding your target audience’s needs and meeting those with relevant and timely content. With a growing appetite among consumers for high-quality content, it may well be that they expect you to publish lots of content, but it’s no good giving them quantity at the cost of quality.

Talk to us about your content marketing needs. Reference this infographic to set the ball rolling with a free mini site health check.

Our new infographic explores the benefits of the most popular content types and how including the right mix in your content strategy can lead to great results. Read more about the research behind this infographic.

If you like this infographic, please share it using the social media buttons at the top of this page. You can also embed it on your site by using the code below. Find out more about ContentPlus infographics services and view more content marketing infographics.

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