Strategic Decision Ungated content can often feel like a missed opportunity. Advertisers typically determine when to gate content based on the value of the content versus the behavior or sentiment of the target audience. Advertisers can take the perspective of their clients or target audience when valuing content, but there is bias inherent in being the creator of the content. Brand reputation, content quality, and context (placement) all must be considered when evaluating the value of specific content. Irrespective of the value, “to gate or not to gate” is a strategic decision. Chris Walker, CEO of Refine Labs, in an [...]

In the Lead… Every sales and marketing professional knows the definition of a sales lead: a person or business who may become a customer. In the thrill of the hunt for a sale, leads are digital footprints of the quarry. They have the potential to create a sale with the prospective person or business. Leads come in a variety of flavors, so for perspective, imagine a pyramid, and at the top, you have the generic sales leads, followed by marketing leads, followed by service leads. Generic sales leads are further split into hot, warm, and cold, qualified, unqualified, marketing qualified, [...]

Where Would We Be Without Plans? Best-practice marketing is built around planning. You can get by in marketing (and in life) without planning, but the results can be messy. Following are some planning considerations: Strategy. What do you want to accomplish with your marketing resources, and where do you want to expend your energy? This includes business goals, marketing Key Performance Indicators, competitive goals, and market share goals. (Check out the D2D Advertising Guide from DeveloperMedia for help defining your goals and strategy.) Budget. Where do you place your bets to get the best return — the biggest bang for [...]

Why Bother Advertising? Humans rely on repetition to learn, and successful advertising is all about frequency and repetition. Promoting your brand through advertising is a core function of marketing. Iconic brands like Apple, IBM, Nike, and Coca Cola earned their status by curating their brands through consistency and by maintaining a presence in front of their audience through advertising. Uber-icon brand status is achieved when the brand becomes genericized (think products like Kleenex, Xerox, and Coke).  However, genericized status is not necessarily a good thing. What’s important to recognize is that advertising is necessary for the success of your [...]

Advertising and Search Advertising and search should be viewed as complementary tactics which can be used to move your target customer from peripheral interest to purchase-ready. Using the Attention – Interest – Desire – Action (AIDA) funnel as a guide, we can see how both fit into the buyer’s journey. The AIDA funnel encapsulates a process; its steps are tunable filters designed to qualify and nurture. By customizing the four filters in the funnel for developers (as we have below), you can achieve your campaign goals and address the needs of your developer audience. Funnel Vision The function of [...]

Attention: Marketers, Content Managers, Creators On August 28, 2022, Google began rolling out a “Helpful Content Update,” which is a new method they are using to evaluate content and the way web pages are ranked. Google is using this to improve results for searchers so they can find helpful, original content, as opposed to content which is posted for the sole purpose of ranking high in search results. The rollout will start out with English language web pages, and is expected to take two weeks to complete. This new update is intended to support Google users with more original [...]

Defining the Target Audience Where does the developer audience fit in the B2B world? While many of the attributes of the B2B, B2C and B2D markets overlap, there are significant differences which should be taken into consideration when developing your marketing and sales strategy targeting developers. You may think that marketing to B2B consumers would be considered a more personal interaction since you are appealing to them on a highly emotional level, but because those sales are more transactional (low cost and high volume), a personal relationship is never fully developed.  In contrast, in business sales to developers, the [...]