actionable marketing guide

Dear ,

I’m in awe of my fellow Americans.

They’ve peacefully taken to the streets with handmade signs to stand up for their beliefs. They’re marching to protect the ideas we as a nation hold dear. The ideas framed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that all people are created equal.

The covers of the New Yorker and Time Magazine spotlight hand-knit pink pussy hats. The knitter in me rallied to the pussy hat call. I pawed through my stash (aka: unused yarn) to gather my pink and red leftovers to make my hat. (BTW—in a truly New York moment, a college student gave me a fist bump for my hat!)

Abigail Gray Swartz of Maine transformed World War II's "Rosie The Riveter" image into a modern woman of color with a pink pussy hat.

It’s a fairy book story of one woman achieving her dream—getting her drawing on the cover of the prestigious New Yorker magazine. But it’s also the ageless tale of good triumphing over bad.

Pussy hats show how an idea can become a movement if you connect with your audience in an inspirational way.

Why do I write about this in a marketing newsletter?

Because marketing isn’t about you!

At its core, marketing is about your customers. More broadly, marketing is about your audience. Your audience includes your customers, your employees and promoters.

To succeed, you must determine and respect the principles and ideals your audience holds dear. You must respect your audience.

Otherwise you may make a fast buck but that’s ephemeral. Even worse, the sale probably won’t cover your marketing cost to get it.

You’re not building the foundation for a long-term customer relationship that yields on-going sales and referrals.

As I prepared my blogging course for Social Media Marketing World 2017, I’ve been thinking about the topic of audiences a lot.

Does this surprise you?

It surprised me.

When I first outlined my workshop, entitled “How To Create Quality Blog Posts Consistently”, I jumped straight into developing quality content.

But as the workshop developed, I realized:

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to write a strong piece of content that will resonate with your reader, if you don’t know whom you’re writing for.

Every writing workshop I’ve ever attended has made the point that you can’t write for an undistinguished mass.

If you write for everybody, you write for nobody.

This is why most business communications fail. They sound like a robot writing for a mass audience of robots. But even Futurama’s Bender, who's a robot, has a personality akin to a lazy beer-guzzling student.

What can you do to improve your blogging, content marketing and other communications?

Find out who your audience is.

Don’t put your forefinger in the air and guess. That’s called seat-of-your-pants marketing. That’s about what YOU think, not your audience.

Instead, ask your audience. It’s that easy.

For your blog visitors, send them a survey or ask them what their biggest pain point is. I stole this idea from Social Triggers’ Derek Halpern. It’s easy. Put a question in your email confirmation.

Alternatively, if you’ve got a retail presence or customer service function, have them ask customers and prospects.

If you haven’t started writing, engage them on other people’s sites or social media.

Of course, don’t be creepy or stalkerish!

Further, once you start creating blog posts and content, examine your Google Analytics to determine which topics resonate with your readers. You can learn this by observing other blogs and the conversations happening there.

Once you get to know your audience. Write directly to them. Write like you’re addressing a letter to a friend.

Happy Marketing
Heidi.

Heidi Cohen
Actionable Marketing Guide

Content Typography: Why Your First Impression Matters

I love this piece from Medium, WTF? I just spent $1,207.40 on Books? by Shane Parrish about reading. Reading is an investment in you. Ask yourself how much time do you spend reading? At a minimum, it’ll improve your writing.

Want to be like Einstein? Give yourself space to be creative. I love this idea. You need to give your mind time to let ideas brew. I wrote this newsletter as soon as I woke up since a number of themes came together.

10 Key Marketing Trends for 2017

With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, it's getting harder to separate the signals from the noise and discern the insights from the hindsight.

Discover 10 key trends that will shape marketing in 2017 and get ideas for deepening customer connections, growing brand value and fueling strategic growth.

• Heidi Cohen collaborated with Orbit Media’s Andy Crestodina on Content Collaboration: 5 Powerful Ways to Upgrade Your Content. It’s helpful if you’re looking to expand the reach of your content creation.

• Heidi Cohen contributed to Social Media Examiner’s 19 Facebook Marketing Predictions for 2017.  This is article is a must read. See what the Facebook experts say is going to happen with the number 2 media giant.

• Heidi Cohen was quoted in Oracle’s 2016 Roundup along with other top marketing stars. (FYI, it’s a FREE ebook of marketing goodness!) Her quote:

  “2016 was the year that marketers stopped running after the shiny new thing!”

​​​​OptinMonster is the best lead-generation plugin for WordPress. It allows you to create WordPress popups, floating footer bars, slide-ins, sidebar forms, and after-post forms, while giving you the ability to A/B test, add page-level targeting, and do so much more.
​

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