TopRank Internet Marketing News

While each brand or organization’s online marketing strategy must be unique and tailored to their customers’ individual needs, it’s also important to stay on top of industry trends and insights. These fast facts give marketers a bigger picture view and can help you prepare for upcoming trends, understand macro-level behaviors and align your strategy with best practices for better overall marketing performance.

These marketing insights span social media, search engine optimization, email marketing, mobile and more. We’ve tried to compile only the most recent and relevant facts available!

Social Media Customer Insights & Statistics

• 46% of US small businesses feel they are being “sold to” instead of “spoken to” by other businesses. (Consumer Insight Group)
• 27% of total U.S. internet time is spent on social networking sites. (Experian)
• 85% of fans of brands on Facebook recommend brands to others, compared to 60% of average users. (Syncapse)

Sometimes, online marketing campaigns are dazzling, magnificent in scope and incredibly complicated. Thankfully, there are also great gains to be made by getting back to basics and ensuring best practices are followed across your site and web presence.

A company website is a living, breathing representation of the brand on the web. Over a site’s lifetime, content is added and taken away. Copy changes. Pages may be redirected. Landing pages come and go. Menus and navigation change.

Each of these changes over the site’s life (hopefully) served its purpose and helped the site become more productive for the company and helpful for customers. However, it can also leave the site disjointed, riddled with errors, and underperforming.

Did you know, TopRank Online Marketing started out as a public relations firm in 2001 called Misukanis & Rodgers? That’s right, we’ve evolved in many ways since then, but we’ve also been involved in many ways with the worlds of marketing and public relations – for a very long time.

It may have seemed an anomaly in 2001 to combine marketing tactics with media relations engagements, but today it is that convergence that is helping to define the future of modern digital communications roles.  We live in an age where brands and consumers are both publishers and participants in the always on and ever evolving web of information that drives business.

Content is hot in any industry you look, so look no further for the best B2B content marketing advice than the Content2Conversion conference in New York.

Featuring an all-star lineup of B2B Marketing speakers including: Ardath Albee, Ann Handley, Joe Pulizzi, Michael Brenner, Rob Yoegel and senior marketing executives from Aberdeen Group, Adobe, Avaya, Compendium, Curata, Eloqua, Kapost and more means all bases will be covered.

TopRank CEO Lee Odden will be doing his part to contribute to the B2B content marketing brain trust by presenting on an integrated approach to search, social media and content. Essentially, how to optimize your inbound marketing to drive demand for products and services.

He’ll be sharing the Attract, Engage, Convert model for content marketing optimization that has been instrumental for numerous Fortune 1000 companies as clients of TopRank Online Marketing.

According to research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 9 out of 10 B2B marketers are using content marketing in their marketing mix. With increased adoption, competition has exploded as well and many marketers are looking for what’s next to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage.

To answer the question of “What’s the Future of Content for Marketers“, TopRank CEO Lee Odden will give an hour long presentation in Minneapolis, hosted by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association at Solera on Wednesday April 17.

Lee will present on what content really means, how content teams are structured and what technology and consumer trends are emerging. 

With over 15 years of digital marketing consulting experience with companies including BT Syntegra, HP, McKesson, Randstad, Marketo, Radian6 and many others – Lee will provide his perspectives on the future of content for marketers.

Lee Odden presents at Social Media Marketing World

On Tuesday April 9th, TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden will be presenting at the innaugural Social Media Marketing World conference with over 1,000 registered attendees.  On it’s first go, SMMW is already one of the largest social media conferences in the world.

As companies invest more marketing budgets into social media and blogging, many are still struggling to elevate their effectiveness. Social Media Marketing World has brought together some of the top social media thought leaders and brand practitioners in the world to help companies elevate their social media smarts.

Featured speakers include:

• Guy Kawasaki
• Mari Smith
• Chris Brogan
• Jay Baer
• Mitch Joel
• Sally Hogshead
• Amy Porterfield
• Dave Kerpen
• Michael Stelzner
• John Jantsch
• Viveka von Rosen
• Joe Pulizzi
• Mark Schaefer
• Marcus Sheridan
• Ekatarina Walter

The organizers of this year’s SES New York couldn’t have chosen a better place to hold this 3-day event than the Marriott Marquis because this is sure to be a marquee event! From March 25-28, 2013, the annual #SESNY conference will be THE place to learn how to succeed in online marketing.

From SEO to Content Marketing and Email Marketing to Analytics, this industry bellwether delivers the best in digital marketing year after year. Attendees will hear big brands discuss everything from enterprise level strategy to mobile marketing on a large scale. Outstanding marketing agencies will provide key tactics and takeaways you can implement on your own online marketing plan after you leave.

TopRank Online Marketing CEO, Lee Odden (@leeodden), will deliver a solo presentation entitled “Creative Content Marketing – Winning Hearts, Minds and Wallets” which will give attendees a framework for producing a creative content strategy in the most efficient way possible.

Social media’s quickly evolving landscape leaves many brands and marketers scratching their heads trying to figure out which direction to go.  Luckily, Target Marketing has tapped into the minds of TopRank CEO Lee Odden (@leeodden) and VP & CMO of Zinio Jeanniey Mullen (@jeannieymullen) for some answers.

No matter where you are on the social media spectrum, this webinar will help you decide which networks are most useful for your business, and so much more.  Do you want to know the best part?  This webinar is complimentary!

Join The Social Media Revolution with TopRank CEO Lee Odden

Social Media 2013: What Sites Are Most Important to Marketers This Year
Speaker: Lee Odden

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
2:00pm-3:00pm (EST)

This educational webinar will take some of the mystery out of social media marketing for businesses of any size.  Not only will you receive guidance into which sites are best for your brand, but how social media fits into a larger integrated online marketing program.  Additionally attendees will learn:

In February Incisive Media will host the 14th annual SES London conference.  This 3 day event is sure to deliver the best in digital marketing content on topics such as SEO, PPC, Analytics, Social Media, SoLoMo, and Content Marketing.

Attendees will hear applicable tips, tricks, and tactics from some of the region’s top digital marketers as well as several from abroad, that can be applied to their individual marketing strategies.

TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden (@leeodden) will be giving a solo presentation titled “Creative Content Marketing – Winning Hearts, Minds and Wallets” which will provide attendees a framework for producing content efficiently and creatively.

Lee’s presentation will feature recent research into content marketing in the UK as well as several creative content examples from favourite UK brands.  Case studies of clever content sourcing tactics that generated substantial results will also be presented.

An important first step in launching an online marketing campaign is identifying objectives.  Your objectives will help lead your strategy, implementation, measurement, and refinement.  For example, an ecommerce site may be looking to drive more traffic to their website.  Increased traffic will push more visitors into the top of the funnel, likely increasing the number of visits which convert to a sale.  However, as one company learned, marketing effects for an ecommerce site can impact your bottom line in more than one way.

Company Background:
Leather Bound is an online and in store retailer of leather motorcycle apparel and accessories. Leather Bound Online has been engaged with TopRank since 2010, with the objective of increasing traffic and online sales via their website, leatherboundonline.com.

Current Situation:
Leather Bound Online retained TopRank Online Marketing to strategize and implement a Search Engine Optimization and Content Marketing program which tactics include: