6 Tips for Crafting a Thought Leadership Marketing Strategy

In all seriousness, thought leadership is the lifeblood of any sound content marketing strategy. BUT, the thoughts you’re leading with need to address actual customer pain points. Unless you’re working on your reputation for your future consulting company, don’t just blow hot air for the sake of making sure the world knows you’re a big thinker.  So, let’s start with the basics…

What Is Thought Leadership?

By definition, thought leadership is a method of marketing, which solidifies you as an expert and authority within your industry. The goal of thought leadership marketing is not to create sales heavy content, but to provide an entry point to your business by branding yourself as an expert. There are still opportunities to highlight your product or service, but first and foremost you want to be viewed as knowledgable and willing to help. Here are 6 tips to use when building a thought leadership marketing strategy:

1) What Questions Are Customers and Potential Customers Asking?

The first thing you should do is identify the questions your target audience, and current customers are asking—and build your thought leadership marketing strategies around the answers to those questions. Consider how people search for things online. When you have a question about something, there’s a good chance you’ll type it into Google, right?

By identifying the questions, and strings of words your customers type into search engines—you can create your content in a manner that will answer those questions. To get started, ask yourself the types of problems your products and services solve, and find the questions one would ask related to those problems. If you have a good enough answer Google might even scrape it right off your page (lucky you!):

2) Social Media is a Thought Leader’s Best Friend

This is the oldest trick in the thought leadership playbook, but it still works like a charm. As long as you are engaging and providing value on a given platform, directing people on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or a niche community to one of your well written blog posts that answers a timely question is a completely acceptable way of showing people your company is an expert in the industry, and there to help.

3) Display Your Thought Leadership Beyond Your Blog

In my opinion, your company blog should always be the hub of your audience building efforts, but it’s critical to discover other audiences by posting your thought leadership content on other platforms. 

4) Revise Your Questions On A Regular Basis

When your thought leadership marketing strategy is built on a foundation of customer questions, you must revisit these questions constantly. As industry trends change, you develop new products and services, and general business trends evolve—your answers to old and new questions need to evolve as well.

Google Trends is a great way to stay ahead of the curve. For example, if I focused on being a social media expert, looking at this comparison between searches for “social media marketing” and “content marketing”, I would probably want to shift my focus to content, as it’s trending up while social seems to be plateauing.

5) Using Thought Leadership Marketing To Brand Your Business – There Are No Second First Impressions

Since the goal of your thought leadership marketing strategy is to create an entry point, it is the perfect opportunity to brand your business. You can do this through your writing style, the level of creativity in your videos and images, and by demonstrating how well you understand your B2B client’s wants and needs. When creating new content, ensure that it supports how you want to be identified as a brand, especially since this may be an online reader’s first experience with you.

6) Don’t Be Afraid To Copy What’s Working

Just because your competitors are killing it with thought leadership already does not mean that YOU can’t do it better. But if their content has already touched a nerve on the inter-webs, demonstrated by those share buttons with big numbers on the top, bottom and side of their post…

What have we learned about thought leadership marketing?

1) Find out what questions your customers are asking, answer them.

2) Social media is a thought leaders best friend; as long as you’re listening and engaging it’s ok to direct people to your great content.

3) Post your content outside your blog,

4) Always revisit the questions your answering,

5) Define your brand with your thought leadery

The 50 Most Influential Marketing Articles Discussing Facebook and Twitter Advertising

We have searched every virtual corner of the Internet to bring you the best 50 marketing articles for advertising on Facebook and Twitter. You may want to brew yourself a very strong cup of coffee before you sit down and read them all!

TOP 25 MARKETING ARTICLES RELATED TO FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

1 – Beginner’s Guide: How to Advertise Your Business on Facebook

2 – 45 Fabulous Facebook Advertising Tips & Magic Marketing Tricks

3 – 10 Rules for Advertising on Facebook

4 – Are Paid Facebook Ads Worth the Bucks?

5- What I Learned Spending $2 Million on Facebook Ads

6 – How to Effectively Advertise on Facebook

7 – How to Advertise to your Website Visitors on Facebook

8 – How to Advertise Your Products on Facebook

9 – How to Advertise on Facebook in 10 Minutes or Less

10 – 6 Tips to Improve Your Facebook Advertising Results

11 – Boost Posts or Promoted Posts on Facebook: Which is Better?

12 – Why Every Business Should Spend at Least $1 per Day on Facebook Ads

13 – How to Target Facebook Ads to Your Audience

14 – 5 Facebook Ad Tips to Maximize Your Facebook Campaigns

15- 4 Unique Ways to Use Facebook for Your Business

16 – The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

17 – 15 Tips for Better Facebook Marketing

18 – 8 Ways to Get Your Posts Seen More on Facebook

19 – The Ultimate Guide on Facebook Paid Advertising 2014 Edition

20 – Is Paying for Likes on Facebook Worth it? [RESEARCH]

21 – Building Your Facebook Page’s Audience Using Paid Advertising

22 – Developing a Pay-to-Play Strategy: How to Create a Balanced Facebook Publishing Schedule with Organic and Paid Content

23 – 5 Tips to Make Facebook Marketing Mobile-Friendly

24 – The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Mobile App Ads

25 – A Guide to Facebook App Install Ads

Wow, that was an epic list! Now quickly go and refill your coffee to get ready for the best 25 Twitter advertising articles on the Internet!

TOP 25 MARKETING ARTICLES RELATED TO TWITTER ADVERTISING

1 – The 9 Twitter Advertising Tips N’ Tricks You Must Know

2 – 5 Tips for Maximizing Returns from Twitter Advertising

3 – Advanced Twitter Marketing Techniques That Will Help Your Twitter Account Take Off

4 – 35 Ideas to Create Successful Twitter Ad Campaigns

5 – Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Twitter Advertising Campaigns

6 – 5 Tips for Planning Twitter Ads From Top Brand Marketers

7 – How to Use Twitter Ads for More Exposure, Leads and Sales

8 – 5 Tips for Thriving Twitter Ads

9 – 7 Tips to Promote Your Business by Promoted Tweets

10 – 6 Ways To Make Promoted Tweets Pay Off

11 – 6 Start-Up Tips for Using Twitter’s Promoted Tweet Advertising Campaigns

12 – How to Set Up Twitter Advertising to Build Awareness for Your Business

13 – Creating a Promoted Account Campaign on Twitter

14 – 41 Ways to Promote your Twitter Account

15- The DIY Guide to Twitter Ads for Small Business

16 – The Most Comprehensive Guide to Twitter Advertising

17 – Step-by-Step Guide for Twitter Ads to Promote Your Business

18 – The Pro Marketer’s Step By Step Guide to Using Twitter Lead Cards for Lead Generation

19 – Twitter Paid Advertising for Small Businesses: How to Get the Most Out of the Promoted Tweets Platform

20 – How to Get The Most Out of Paid Twitter Ads

21 – 5 Tips For Becoming A Twitter Advertising Whiz

22 – 5 Tips You Need to Know to Improve Your Twitter Strategy

23 – Best Practices: How to Use Twitter Amplify

24 – A Quick & Dirty Guide to Setting Up Twitter Ads Campaigns

25 – A Step-by-Step Guide to Twitter Ads

And there you have it folks! 50 amazing articles offering all sorts of tips, tricks and expert advice on how to make the most out of your Facebook and Twitter advertising campaigns. Leave a comment below and let us know which one you enjoyed the most, or if we missed any out that you think deserve to be on the list. Happy advertising!

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Niche Positioning: Three Reasons Why Smaller Can Be Better

When companies or individuals invest money in a new venture, they generally don't want to shoot small with their market positioning, out of fear that they won't be able to attract enough business by marketing to just one niche segment within their chosen market.

Indeed, many companies take comfort in the fact that by striving for a market position that has wide appeal, they'll only need to capture a small percentage share to be profitable. ("All we need is 5% of the market! Let's roll out the advertising!")

What they don't realize is that even a small share can be remarkably difficult to obtain with a new offering in a highly competitive market. A "shoot for the middle" strategy ignores that there are already plenty of competitors fighting over existing market positions within the core of the market, including common positions such as "low price provider," "best-in-class service" and so on.

By owning an identifiable market position or niche that may appear to be on the fringes of the market, you may greatly improve your chances for survival and success. Your offering will be well aligned with the needs of at least some of the people in the market, as opposed to an offering that is designed to appeal to everybody, but does so only mildly.

So the next time your company (or your client) begins to yield to the temptation of shooting for everybody as their target market for a new product or service, think about these three compelling reasons to shoot small.

1. You are more likely to have an impact

A strong position that targets a market niche is much more likely to help you make a dent in the market. It provides your business with an identity, and gives customers who are unfamiliar with your business a reason to consider dealing with you.

For example, if you are a new realtor, you could occupy the first-time homebuyer niche. Maybe an older couple that has bought and sold 10 times will ignore your market position, but that's OK. The young couple two years out of college will hear your marketing message and may respond because your offering is uniquely positioned to appeal to their needs.

In this way, a niche strategy gives some of the people in your chosen market a strong reason to call you. This is almost always preferable to giving many people in the market a weak reason to call you, or no reason at all.

Making a dent in your chosen market through a niche strategy is critical in gaining some revenue in the early days of your business venture, a key to long-term survival. Many businesses overlook this fact when forecasting sales—the early sales may have a greater importance than future sales, depending on your cash flow position in the first few months of your venture (or the trigger finger down at your corporate office). In either case, pulling in a few dollars early in the game is never a bad idea.

2. You are more likely to be able to defend your business

In any business, you can bet that as soon as you have a few customers, a competitor will be after them. A strong market position will help you defend your growing customer base. Using the above example, a new real estate agent who manages to establish the first-time homebuyer niche position may begin to turn the tide on even the most prolific agents in town by thwarting their efforts to attract first-time homebuyers.

This is true of almost any business. Match your position well against the needs and wants of a niche market, and you'll build a loyal client base that won't easily be swayed by competing offers.

3. You can organically grow your niche

Service the needs of a particular market niche well, and your niche will start doing some marketing for you.

You may start generating referrals or word-of-mouth advertising from within your niche client base that attracts clients who fall outside of your niche. For example, your first-time homebuyers may make a referral to their parents, or neighbors, or coworkers and so on. Despite your niche positioning as an expert in the first-time homebuyer segment, the strength of the positive word-of-mouth promotion may be enough to convince many of these people to do business with you, even if they are buying their tenth home.

In this manner, your strong, defined market position can help you build business in other segments of the market over time, and grow beyond your current niche position.

Of course, word will spread within your niche as well. People within your niche may be alike in certain demographic categories and thus more likely to spread word about your business to peers. For example, first time homebuyers are likely to be of a certain age and are likely to have most of their social contacts within a similar age range, making it easier for word to spread about your position within the market.

A defined market position that targets a niche market is a great opening play for a new business, or a business breaking into a new market. Whether you are leading new product marketing efforts for a major corporation or starting up in the most entrepreneurial of businesses like real estate, a niche position in the market allows for good short-term prospects and the potential for long-term business maturation beyond your initial niche position.

* * *

The next time you look at a market, don't think about getting a small chunk of a big market. Shoot for a big chunk of a niche within the market, and build from there.

The marketing mix in marketing strategy: Product, price, place and promotion

The marketing mix is the set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that a company uses to produce a desired response from its target market. It consists of everything that a company can do to influence demand for its product. It is also a tool to help marketing planning and execution.

The four Ps of marketing: product, price, place and promotion

The marketing mix can be divided into four groups of variables commonly known as the four Ps:

1. Product: The goods and/or services offered by a company to its customers.
2. Price: The amount of money paid by customers to purchase the product.
3. Place (or distribution): The activities that make the product available to consumers.
4. Promotion: The activities that communicate the product’s features and benefits and persuade customers to purchase the product.

Marketing tools

Each of the four Ps has its own tools to contribute to the marketing mix:

• Product: variety, quality, design, features, brand name, packaging, services
• Price: list price, discounts, allowance, payment period, credit terms
• Place: channels, coverage, assortments, locations, inventory, transportation, logistics
• Promotion: advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations

Marketing strategy

An effective marketing strategy combines the 4 Ps of the marketing mix. It is designed to meet the company’s marketing objectives by providing its customers with value. The 4 Ps of the marketing mix are related, and combine to establish the product’s position within its target markets.

Weaknesses of the marketing mix

The four Ps of the marketing mix have a number of weaknesses in that they omit or underemphasize some important marketing activities. For example, services are not explicitly mentioned, although they can be categorized as products (that is, service products). As well, other important marketing activities (such as packaging) are not specifically addressed but are placed within one of the four P groups.

Another key problem is that the four Ps focus on the seller’s view of the market. The buyer’s view should be marketing’s main concern.

The four Ps as the four Cs

The four Ps of the marketing mix can be reinterpreted as the four Cs. They put the customer’s interests (the buyer) ahead of the marketer’s interests (the seller).

• Customer solutions, not products: Customers want to buy value or a solution to their problems.
• Customer cost, not price: Customers want to know the total cost of acquiring, using and disposing of a product.
• Convenience, not place: Customers want products and services to be as convenient to purchase as possible.
• Communication, not promotion: Customers want two-way communication with the companies that make the product.

All You Need To Know About Affiliate Marketing

Everyday more and more companies are establishing their businesses on the Internet, as affiliate programs are rising in popularity as a strong internet marketing tool. Assigned affiliates get rewarded for directing traffic and potential customer to the company’s website. This is an excellent way to earn some extra cash on your website.


Affiliate marketing is a terrific way of making some extra cash. Successful websites can add profits just through driving traffic to affiliate ads. If you are interested, then you should follow these basic suggestions in this short article to help you construct a successful affiliate site.

A great deal of affiliate marketing is touch-and-go, so you have to remember, never be focused on one formula or technique. You will want to try out various banners, various content, various text, and other methods to see which one(s) works finest for you and your general sales numbers.

Using bullet lists in your marketing short articles. Bullet lists add visual appear to a short article by separating blocks of text and provide readers who do not check out the entire article a fast overview of the product or service. Bullet lists are easy for web users to check out, it is an easy way to describe the advantages of a services or product you are promoting. 

Discover the specific location of exactly what is driving your readers to click your affiliate links. Is it the links within your material or your sidebar? Did it originate from a video you put up or an evaluation of a product? When you find what is driving the traffic, focus on that material.

A terrific pointer for affiliate marketing is making sure you don’t get lazy. There are new trends and updates with all your affiliate programs so it is exceptionally vital that you are always as much as date. They will provide you tools that can considerably enhance sales.

Request for more money. As soon as your marketing tactics begin bringing in consumers, ask your affiliate to increase your earnings. A lot of companies will enjoy to do this, since you are adding positive business for them. Just do this after you have actually established your marketing strategies to be profitable, or you will simply appear greedy.

As an affiliate marketer recommend products you trust to people. The first thing you need to do when marketing any product is to check out the product, If the product you’re promoting is trash, your business name might be messed up.

If you prepare to hold a contest with an affiliate company, promote the heck out of it! You’ll need to commit the bulk of your time to publishing the link on online forums, social networks, contest directories, “Linky” lists, and any site which shares a comparable subject to yours. It’s a great deal of work but the increase in sales will deserve it!

As discussed earlier in this article, affiliate marketing is an excellent method to make money, and can end up being a crucial income source. However, you have to put in the effort to create quality content in order to achieve success, and to make sure your site is appealing to your readers. Although you need to put in hard work, if successful, the benefit will absolutely be worthwhile

Discover The Best Internet Marketing Tips Out There

Internet marketing has brought great success and recognition to many small business. It allows business to reach a customer base all over the entire world in the click of a mouse. This article can help you to understand internet marketing and find the niche of it that is perfect for your business.

If you are going to market your website, have a clear goal in mind. Know what your website will offer, who you should be targeting and what you hope to achieve in the marketing. Each marketing push should have a clear goal in mind such as driving a specific type of traffic or increasing a certain aspect of your business.

You need to research and treat Internet marketing serious. Choose a trusted mentor that you admire online. If you are unable to find a free mentor, you may be able to find a consultant to guide you through internet marketing for a fee. When choosing a system for internet marketing, make sure it suits your work style. It may start slow, but it is worth the time you put into it.

Broken links will turn off visitors, especially multiple broken links. The web keeps changing and moving and unfortunately this means that links break. If a customer keeps running into broken links on your site, they will stop trying to click on them. Make sure to test out your links often to confirm that they are still working.

Analyze the statistics on your website, especially the traffic that comes in and out during a day, week, or month. This will give you a great idea of when the most people come to your website and what times during the day are the most efficient. Also, over the course of the year, this can help establish seasonal trends for your product.

To get your website's name out there, take advantage of local business directories, many which are free. There are many directories online, enough free ones, that it is not necessary to pay for a listing in one. Get your business listed in as many directories as you can find. By doing this you will get more visitors and more business.

Research what kind of content your competitors are providing and improve upon it. If you know what you are up against you know what areas you need to focus on. Do your competitors have the info but it's boring? Or is it all flash but no substance? Make sure you do better in the areas that they lack.

You have already learned that internet marketing can bring amazing success to your business. You can attract customers from all over the earth into your business by using internet marketing to reach out. By following the advice in this article, you can claim the share of internet customers that are just waiting to hear about your business.

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Power of Article Marketing

Why is article marketing still so important to your online business? It's because article marketing is really content marketing, and as such, it's the starting point for a number of other widely used communication platforms.

You can take the content of a good, informative article and use it as the basis for producing a powerful video, which not only helps a handful of viewers, but may actually go viral. If this happens, that same content could reach millions.

Now, obviously, not many videos go viral, but it does happen everyday, and it is feasible that your outstanding content which started as an article could in the end go viral.

Perhaps it's more likely that the information you put in your article may be picked up in social media, by posting it in one or several of the most popular sites, like Facebook and Pinterest.

Additionally, you can post the content of your article in your blog, or website where it can benefit your subscribers.

Article marketing is nothing more than content you are offering your audience. Great content is a powerful way to get noticed, and to increase your authority status in your niche. It's a great way to increase your visibility online.

And you don't need your name or your website to be seen everywhere. You just want to be noticed by the people who are in your niche, the people who form your target market.

Before you can sell anything online, people have to be find you! But you only need to be found by people in your niche, people in your target market.

This means you don't have to appeal to everyone, only people needing a solution to the problem you are addressing in your articles.

Sending interested people to your website is relatively easy. This is because people search keywords which address the problems they want to solve with information they hope to find online.

The keywords may quite likely take them to the website where you have posted an article rich with valuable content addressing a specific problem. People searching keywords related to the content you posted in your article will find you.

If these people get tips form your article which promise to solve their problem, they will want to get more information from you. Your resource box will promise additional information if they visit your website. Presto! You have acquired a valuable prospect.

Traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. As mentioned above, articles are content, and it's content promising solutions to peoples' problems which will bring you the traffic you need. Articles are also the source of content for other forms of communication.

People who come to your website after reading your articles, will most likely end up on your mailing list. You will then have the opportunity to talk to them again via emails, and build the all important "know, like and trust you" to build that relationship which is needed before they will ever buy anything from you.

As you can see, article marketing should be at the base, or staring point in your online marketing. It will allow you to get targeted people to your website and to your email list, which will become the greatest asset of your online business.

Niche Marketing: Is It Right for Your Business?

Niche marketing is all the rage these days, but what exactly is it? More importantly, is it right for your small or midsized business?

A niche refers to a specific, focused and easily identifiable market segment. A business cannot be all things to all people; it may be more successful to aim to be the "go-to" resource for a subsection of a larger population. By focusing on a niche, a business can generate deeper, longer-lasting loyalty, identify specialized products or services and exceed expectations for customers with a specific need that can be fulfilled by the company's services.

3 Steps to Identify Your Niche

Niche marketing hinges on identifying your company's unique opportunities to market to a certain group. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Determine your best customers.

You can determine your best customers by examining your sales database. Review the data to see if there are any common characteristics among your best customers. Some businesses assign lifetime value scores to customers based on their purchasing history. These figures may lead you to discover that your best customers fall within a specific niche group.

2. Refine your product or services.

Once you've discovered your niche, you can maximize potential sales by refining your product or service offerings. Look for ways to increase the number of products or services that will appeal to your particular group. Adding on more may make sense if you think the niche has potential to grow or if such additions can be profitable.

3. Test the niche.

After identifying your niche and products that appeal to it, it's time to test whether it's right for you. Test your advertising or marketing materials to the targeted group. If your guess is correct and you've found your niche, sales should be stronger to that group based on your ability to match your business to their needs.

Is Your Niche Too Targeted?

Small businesses may not be in the best position to serve a niche market if the identified group is too small for effective sales. Consider your target customer group and your average sale. If you sold to every single member of that group at the average dollar amount of a typical sale, could you still make a profit?

As the numbers of possible sales in the niche drops, gather your best estimates of gross and net profits. While it's true that successful niche campaigns can engender strong customer loyalty and repeat sales, if there aren't enough potential customers, it won't be worth your time.

Successful niche marketing campaigns enable you to focus your marketing messages on a smaller customer group. With enough customers, you'll find your message resonates strongly with them. Repeat sales, increased business and higher profits are all signs you've successfully found your niche.

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22 List of Affiliate Marketing Websites

1. LinkConnector - Affiliate marketing network.

2. Amazon Affiliate Program - One of the most popular affiliate networks due to the breadth of products you can market. Pays generally between 4-6%, higher payout for more sales. Best part is you get paid for whatever someone ends up buying after they click on your link, even if it’s not the product that you advertised.

3. Avangate - Leading cloud commerce provider for online software businesses and cloud companies looking to grow their digital revenues. Sell popular computer software titles.

4. Clickbank - ClickBank is a privately held online marketplace for digital information products. It aims to serve as a connection between digital content creators and affiliate marketers, who then promote them to consumers. It is extremely popular.

5. Clickbooth - CPA Affiliate network

6. ClixGalore - An  affiliate marketing network that allows you to easily build and start your own 'sale - CPA', 'lead - CPL', or 'click - CPC' based affiliate program.

7. Commission Junction - An online advertising and internet marketing company that specializes in affiliate, media and tracking services. There more than 1000 companies available to choose from.

8. CPA Lead - CPA Affiliate network

9. DigiResults - Similar to Clickbank.

10. EBay Partner Network - Earn money with the eBay Partner Network by driving traffic to eBay or one of their partners.

11. Epic Direct/Azoogle – Affiliate network

12. E-Junkie – E-junkie provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website, eBay, MySpace, Google Base, CraigsList etc.

13. Forex-Affiliate - Forex Affiliate is one of the longest running and most successful financial affiliate programs worldwide.

14. GetAds - CPA Affiliate network

15. Google Affiliate Network - Similar to Commission Junction.

16. LinkShare - Pays commissions for every product you lead and promote.

17. MaxBounty -A unique CPA network providing weekly payments, as well as a $1000 performance bonus to new affiliates.

18. Neverblue.com - Specializes in lead generation, client acquisition and mobile advertising, and provides tools like banner rotators and api to promote products.

19. Offer Vault - Find affiliate programs, affiliate networks and affiliate marketing resources.

20. Offerweb - Affiliate network

21. ShareASale - ShareASale is an affiliate marketing network similar to clickbank and commission junction.

22. ThinkAction - Affiliate network