Steve Voith, Director of Marketing & Demand Generation

Here are the top five content marketing stories that grabbed our attention this week. We find the best so you don’t have to!

7 Simple Ways to Make Your Marketing More Agile (Marketing Insider Group)

Excellent ways to make your content team function more dynamically–standing scrum meeting not required:

1. Embrace experimentation.
2. Fail small and fail smart.
3. Hire (or build) T-shaped marketers. (<3 THIS!)
4. No more dark marketing.
5. Make meetings matter. (please…for the love)
6. Start hunting for bottlenecks.
7. Consider your culture.

How to Do a Competitor Analysis for SEO (Moz Blog)

Looking for straight forward direction and clear methods for measuring SEO effectiveness? Look no further than this article. If this post sounds basic, that’s because it is. It doesn’t change the fact that most marketers aren’t doing this type of analysis or even taking the time to understand these critical concepts. Do it!

The 6 Key Marketing Metrics Your CEO Actually Cares About (Hubspot)

80% of CEOs don’t trust the efforts of their marketing teams…say WHAT!?! Show em’ who’s boss and throw these stats in their face:

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
2. Marketing Percentage of Customer Acquisition Cost (M% – CAC)
3. Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC (LTV : CAC)
4. Time to Payback CAC
5. Marketing-Originated Customer Percentage
6. Marketing Influenced Customer Percentage

The article has the meat of how you get to the calculations. Enjoy!

[Infographic] Machine-Learning and Artificial Intelligence: The Difference, and What They’re For (MarketingProfs)

This helpful infographic shares the basics of the marketing impact of machine-learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Even better, the graphic showcases current and future uses of these tools. Don’t be scared; embrace the machines as part of your marketing stack…marketing creativity and thoughtfulness will always come from you. 😉

3 Must-Ask ABM Questions for B2B Marketers (KoMarketing Blog)

ABM is one of the most talked about trends in B2B marketing…agreed that it’s not new, simply back in fashion. There are a lot of tools and recommendations on how to do it successfully, but start by reading the answers to these 3 questions:

1. Should you use cookie-based or IP-based targeting? (See table above)
2. What marketing tactics should you use? (HUGE!)
3. How do you measure success? (we might also add, what does success even look like??)

Have some thoughts? We’d love to hear from you; drop us a line in the comments section below.