Dear ,

Happy 49th Birthday to the New York Marathon!

Although I’m not a runner, I love the idea of seeing my city on foot free of traffic. 

Run by the New York Road Runners, the NYC Marathon extends 26.2 miles across the city’s 5 boroughs and crosses 5 bridges to end in Central Park.

But you can’t just show up at the starting line to compete in the Marathon. 

In addition to applying and qualifying for the NYC Marathon, you must get into physical and mental shape. 

Beyond the Marathon’s sponsorships, what does this have to do with marketing?
While a given promotion may yield results quickly especially if you use email or paid social media, but most other forms of marketing require consistent effort and resources to succeed.

For example: 
When I asked Amy Landino of AmyTV and Douglas Burdett of The Marketing Book Podcast, for the key to their success, they didn’t offer me a secret formula. 

Instead both answered: 
“Showing up on a regular basis with consistent content”.

To be clear, this is NOT “Field Of Dreams” since you can’t produce and publish a blog post, video or podcast and pray your audience will find it. 

Rather, like Amy and Douglas, you must commit to creating content for the long run. This is consistent with Orbit Media’s 2019 Blogging Research. It found that bloggers who published at least once a week did better. 

 

Unfortunately to date, Orbit Media hasn’t measured blog longevity since I’m sure this is an important factor in generating profitable results.

While Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog, Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks and Mark Schaefer of Business Grow all started as solo bloggers years ago, they’ve all expanded their blogs to include other voices and content formats. As a result, they've established themselves as top marketing thought leaders.

  
As we look to 2020, examine how to make your marketing succeed for the long run.

In her Content Marketing World session entitled, “How To Conquer Content Chaos”, Kristina Halvorson summarized the problems facing content marketers (BTW, I strongly recommend that you read Kristina’s post and her deck!): 

“Figure out what’s going on right now, then prioritize the conversations and activities that will help improve outcomes.” 

Kristina’s advice applies not only to your content but also to your marketing more broadly! 

So take the time to figure out what’s working across your entire audience, not just your customers, to reach and engage the broadest possible readership. 

This is particularly important in light of these 3 factors:

• Uncertain global economic environment. This influences business, trade , customers, suppliers, distributers and investors.Seismic Marketing Shift. This includes voice first, marketing AI, and content saturation.

• Shifting buyer behavior. This is most noticeable among B2B buyers where the purchase funnel and journey no longer exist according to Gartner's 2019 B2B Sales Research.
  
• Seismic Marketing Shift. This includes voice first, marketing AI, and content saturation.  

So, let’s push back on racing for short term results! 

Instead, to grow your businesses profitably, plan for the long run like it's a marathon. Because no one plans “going out of business” as an exit strategy!

Actionable Marketing Tip:

• Reassess your Marketing Personas. Where possible learn how your audience seeks your information and what devices they use. 

Want to improve your marketing?
Then attend AgoraPulse’s Social Success Summit 2.0! 

Taking a page from the Netflix playbook, AgoraPulse is dropping all of the episodes on November 13, 2019 so you can watch them at your convenience not their schedule!

Get the latest on social media, content marketing and influencer marketing from some of the smartest marketers including: Larry Kim, Rob Balasabas, Douglas Karr, Stephanie Liu, Andy Crestodina, Kim Garst, Christopher Penn, and others, including me!

Even better, the Social Success Summit 2.0 is FREE and the episodes are available until December 13th!

If you’re running an event that you would like me to speak at, please let me know. (Just hit reply to reach me.)

Shout out to new readers: Cynthia, Conny, Mã¡Rio, Truptirekha, Ladanna, Irina, Karthik, Parisa, Santosh, Aleena, John, Annabella, Vagabundo, TC, Kouros, Diane, Laura, Hanna, Isaac and Social Benjie. Welcome and thank you for joining our community.

Happy Marketing,
Heidi

PS: Do you have a friend or colleague who would benefit from reading the Actionable Marketing Guide newsletter? If so would you please forward this email to them?

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FEATURED ARTICLE: How To Build Share of Audience Attention To Improve Your Marketing Results

Want to break through seismic marketing shift?

Use Share of Audience Attention to increase trust and content distribution with consistent content.

Share of Audience Attention (or SOAA for short) helps solve your marketing conundrum.
 

FEATURED ARTICLE: How To Use Consistent Content To Attract Attention And Hook Your Audience

Learn about the 5 key traits of consistent content to hook your readers into developing a content consumption habit for your content, information and/or data. 

Hint: The key to success takes place in the mind of your audience! 
 

FEATURED ARTICLE: Voice Marketing Defined

Get the inside scoop on Voice Marketing and why your marketing must focus on being voice-first!

Translation: You need audio content!

Note: Includes research and charts to help you make the case to your boss!

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Heidi Cohen Around The Internet

• Heidi Cohen was featured in Onalytica’s Complete Guide To B2B Influencer Marketing. It’s jam packed with useful information you can use!
   
• Talkwalker also spotlighted Heidi Cohen in their Social Media Trends for 2020. Personally, I love what Jay Baer says about social media in 2010. To paraphrase, social media returns to its personal communication roots. (Translation: Away from mass marketing.)

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• Unless noted otherwise, all photos are ©2019 by Heidi Cohen
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