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As digital marketing evolves, new and revisited modern marketing techniques continue to surface. Content marketing now sits at the peak of these rising marketing trends and is projected to play a lead character in more and more organizations’ strategies moving forward.

As you develop your 2017 plan, how are you staying competitive and poised for growth? What contemporary approaches have you built into your 2017 budget? Take a look at these top trends in content marketing and determine what techniques might be a good fit for your organization.

Most of us have figured out at this point that Content Marketing isn’t a magical powder that gets sprinkled on our marketing plans and suddenly, all of our
goals are instantly met. No, content marketing is nothing more than a tried-and-true formula. Effective application of that formula is what truly yields success.

Queue nebulous time warp squiggles back to the year 2015 when Flair Interactive posted the blog, What Should be Included in My Content Marketing Strategy. While the blog is on point in terms of building and executing on an inbound marketing plan, in 2017, we’ve taken some measures to perfect the formulaic fairy dust even more. As you dive into your plan this year, keep these additions in mind:

Create data-driven goals—this is still very much the starting point of your content strategy. While not much has changed here since 2015, you’ll want to make sure your goals are clearly defined and mutually agreed upon by everyone. Ensure your ‘wins’ or ‘milestones’ are marked and attainable. Finally…do your homework. Avoid arbitrary, executive-driven numbers. Look at your competitors, your metrics, what’s worked, and what hasn’t worked before getting to an achievable number.

As inbound marketers, it’s our responsibility to provide our clients the best-of-the-best in modern, customized marketing services. 

In 2009, we published a "Typical Projects Handled by Flair Interative" blog post and video that described our services. While we still offer all of the services described in that video, our core focus has shifted during the last eight years to focus on inbound marketing. But one thing remains the same...our number-one priority is to deliver high-quality solutions that get results for all of our clients, and we do that by delivering tightly integrated inbound marketing campaigns and services.

To us, marketing tactics shouldn’t be isolated instances. They shouldn’t be disparate solutions to immediate problems or what we like to call short-term, reactive goals. They should be proactive and strategic in nature with both immediate incremental and long-term wins in mind.

Interactive marketing is trending right in line as it was forecasted seven years ago. In 2009, Flair Interactive posted the blog, Interactive Marketing Has
Finally Come of Age. The blog cites an article by Forrester Research who forecasted that digital spending would nearly double in five years while ad budgets would decline. In fact, its exact predicted growth was a 9% increase in five years (from 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009 to 21% overall spend in 2016).

So, based on Forrester Research's prediction, let's get a pulse of where we're at as we enter 2017:

Overall Marketing Spend

• Digital marketing spending is predicted to grow 12% in the next year, while budgets for traditional advertising will fall to 2%. (The CMO Survey)
• B2B digital ad spending has increased 15% to $5.8 billion in 2014 — due largely to growth in native advertising, while display advertising is becoming less important. (MediaPost)

It's that time of year again! The end of the year is quickly approaching, and you need to start thinking about your 2017 marketing strategy (yikes!).

If this is the first time you're creating a marketing strategy, you might not be sure where to start.

We've put together a list of ten questions that every marketer or business owner should ask themselves in order to create an effective strategy. Be sure to print this list out or bookmark this page so you can refer back to it as you define your strategy. 

Here are the ten questions you need to ask and answer before you can say that your strategy is complete:

1. What are my primary marketing goals? BE SPECIFIC. It's not enough to say "Get more traffic." You need to clarify how much traffic and by when. Quantify your goals and make sure you only pick 2-3 primary goals at the most. Remember you can always add additional goals later—after you achieve your primary goals.
   
   No matter what you do, don't use general or broad goals, such as "I want to increase traffic." It's much better to say "I want to grow my traffic to 10,000 pageviews per month by May 15, 2017" or "I want to increase my marketing-qualified leads to 300 per month by the end of February 2017." Specificity counts and will give you something to shoot for. Aim for realistic yet challenging goals that will push you and your team to excel. If your goals are too easy, you're just wasting energy, time and money.
   
   

Do you need to define a solid inbound marketing strategy or three-month tactical plan, but you don't have a lot of time or money?

I'm thrilled to announce that we are now offering private VIP Days as part of our new T.L.C. Marketing Transformation coaching and training program.

In less than six hours, you can get a solid inbound marketing strategy and a three-month tactical plan while also getting one-on-one feedback from me in a virtual or live session.

Our new VIP Days include the following: