actionable marketing guide

Dear ,

It’s President’s Weekend in New York City.

The weather is as divided as people are in their opinions of the current president.

It was chillingly cold on Friday requiring extra layers of clothes. Then the weekend was spring-like.

President’s Weekend celebrates George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Washington and Lincoln sought to unite the country in the aftermath of war.

Washington and Lincoln each had the strength and power of conviction to listen and consider both sides of the issues. They took counsel from the wise men around them and led our country forward.

Lincoln was adamant that he didn’t want to punish the South. He didn’t want to leave scars that would fester.

He envisioned a country of free men working together.

As marketers, you have the power to unite your company and your audience to achieve greater things together than you can as individuals.

In ways the environment we live in has many of the same elements of tarnished trust.

But you have the power to help improve it, especially if you’re part of a small business.

With the help of your internal technical experts, use your marketing to build trust with your audience including prospects, customers, end-users and the people they turn to for purchase decisions.

Start with your mission. Make it inspirational.

Go beyond your corporate goals of increased profitable sales. Consider how your company and marketing can help improve the small corner of the world where you’re established.

Create quality content your customers actively seek. Think Customer FAQ content: the information your prospects and customers need to learn about to use your products and services.

Branded websites are trusted content according to Nielsen.

Another way to break through in this low-trust landscape is to tap into influencers and co-created content. This enables you to increase your credibility because it’s not just what you’re saying. Getting others, especially influencers, to co-create content helps amplify your reach.

To build credibility, think beyond your short-term goal of getting your content distributed or the latest product sold.

Instead seek to deepen your relationships with your prospects and customers. People buy from people they know and like.

Get out and make person-to-person connections. Talk to your customers and engage them while they’re in your retail outlets.

Also get out and meet peers and influencers. It’ll help your emails get through.

Until next week.

Happy Marketing
Heidi.

Heidi Cohen
Actionable Marketing Guide

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• Heidi Cohen was referenced in the Search Engine People’s useful blog post, Jaw-Dropping 2017 B2B Content Marketing Controversies (and What Can You Do About Them).  The author analyzed Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 Predictions, a meaty piece of roundup content. They spotlighted the differences and other highpoints using data to make their point. It’s a great example of how to create content based on other people’s research or roundups.
  
  
• Heidi Cohen weighed in on the 2017 ecommerce trends along with 18 other experts.
  
  
• Outbrain named Heidi Cohen as one of the Top 20 Content Marketing Influencers of 2017. The list is useful for filling your Twitter followers.​​​​​​​
  
  

Top of Mind Marketing - Email List Strategy

A healthy contact list is key to email marketing success. 

Let’s face it, list management is not a high-profile, exciting task on the marketing To Do list. Nevertheless, it is a marketing best practice for a reason — poor list management impacts deliverability, sender reputation, and the effectiveness of every single email marketing campaign you send. 

In order to take a closer look at how marketers approach email list management and what they view as the most significant challenges, iContact partnered with Ascend2 to survey marketing decision-makers about how list strategy was impacting their businesses and organizations.

Put this research to work in your organization’s marketing strategy. Clip the charts and write about them in your blog or share them on social media.

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Here, at the Actionable Marketing Guide, using OptinMonster has resulted in a dramatic increase in subscriptions for this newsletter and other marketing projects.