March Marketing Madness 2018

Got your brackets filled out?

Should be an entertaining month of basketball with upsets, Cinderellas and, maybe, Virginia not winning it all.

A few years ago, Honeycomb client Ostrato asked us to create a fun video to celebrate the NCAA Tournament.

Click the image to watch...



After that video production, we helped Ostrato execute a "startup pivot" and rebranded the company as ParkMyCloud, which has been super successful, leading to high numbers of new clients and a new round of funding.

While you are watching your favorite teams and updating your brackets, take a few seconds and check out these articles:

1. Unilever CMO Keith Weed: Three things all marketers can do to eliminate ad fraud, Marketing Week
2. 7 Mistakes You’ll Make in Marketing Performance, MarTech
3. Five Big Business Trends to Watch in 2018, Fortune
4. Google Tag Manager Checklist – 68 Ways To Prepare A Website, Reddit Marketing
5. Startups are cheaper to build, but more expensive to grow – here’s why, Andrew Chen

If you have a few marketing priorities that aren't getting enough attention, email me and we'll schedule a quick call to review Honeycomb's capabilities.

New Honeycomb Website!

As last, we finally updated and refreshed the Honeycomb Consulting website. Please take a look and share your thoughts and feedback. Greatly appreciated!

My first marketing projects back in the 1990s were hand coding and designing websites. The technologies available today make that process much easier, quicker and cheaper.

Here are a few client websites we've worked on over the last few years, in various capacities:

• RedSeal- https://redseal.net 
• ParkMyCloud- http://www.parkmycloud.com/ 
• Scarab- http://www.wearscarab.com/ 
• Priveo- http://www.priveo.me

After checking out the new corporate site (www.honeycomb-consulting.com), spend a few minutes perusing these must read articles:

1. 20 of the Best Website Homepage Design Examples, HubSpot 
2. 10 Brilliant Examples of How to Open Your Next Blog Post With a Bang, Michael Pollack 
3. CMO audit series, Part 3: Media channels (it’s not what you think), MarTech Today 
4. 263 Self-Driving Car Startups to Watch, Comet Labs 
5. How the Bitcoin protocol actually works, DDI

Drop me a line if you want to hear about our latest marketing projects or discuss your upcoming marketing priorities in the second half of the year.

Marketers Continue to Rate Email the Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactic

Link to content: http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/marketers-continue-to-rate-email-the-most-effective-digital-marketing-tactic-46295/

Good Examples of the ROI from B2B Content Marketing

Top Rank blog is generally a good source of usable information. This article is particularly rich.

Want to see content marketing in action and real world examples of the value it can generate...

11 Examples of Killer B2B Content Marketing Campaigns Including ROI

Read the whole article for more info on these campaigns-

SunGard – Created awareness amongst IT professionals for SunGard Cloud offerings with a zombie themed campaign. The zombie themed effort resulted in exceeding download rates by 300%, a 5.7% email open rate and 20+ leads.

Limelight Networks – Implemented a “For Dummies” themed education campaign drawing attention to success and failures for companies and their digital presence. The campaign gained exposure through nearly 10,000 social media and news release views and $200k+ worth of sales opportunities.

Logicalis - Using content assets such as emails, microsite and ebook, Logicalis developed a thought leadership effort that supported sales teams by enabling custom messaging based on the prospects interaction with the campaign. With a target audience of about 2,000, nearly $8 million in new pipeline business was closed.

Sales Benchmark Index – Targeting prospects that were newly hired VPs of Sales, this campaign focused on providing a toolkit that identified corporate pains when VPs of Sales fail as well as case studies of successes. The promoted ebook was downloaded by target VPs 5,781 times.

Lattice Engines – Partnered with a research firm to create a study showing the impact big data has on sales. A robust mix of content marketing tactics were used to promote the report including: ebook, blog posts, guest articles, video interviews, Slideshare and an infographic. The report was downloaded 500 times, covered by 15 blogs and industry media sites and 1,500 views of the ebook.

Optum – Created an integrated marketing campaign to support the launch of a new solution, support sales and build thought leadership. The content marketing mix included: advertorials, display ads, email, direct mail and a campaign website. The successful campaign earned a 23.5 lead to conversion rate, 475% increase in website traffic, 2,500+ resource downloads, 28% increase in YoY blog followers and $52 million in contract value of new business with less than $ 1million invested.

ADP – Developed a content marketing campaign to connect and engage with their target audience on a ADP solution using white papers and a diagnostic assessment tool. The campaign generated over $1 million in new sales opportunities with several deals closed within the first 3 months of launch.

Demandbase – This education campaign was designed to help B2B marketers make the right content technology investment by using a white paper, infographic, webinar, Slideshare and a live presentation to spotlight tools that can maximize the power of content. The results of the campaign included 1,700 leads, 125 webinar participants, 5,000 views on Slideshare and $1 million in new business.

Xerox – Created a targeted “Get Optimistic” campaign to connect with 30 top accounts and partnered with Forbes to create a magazine that offered relevant business tips. 70% of targeted companies interacted with the microsite, readership increased 300-400% over previous email campaigns, added 20,000 new contacts, generated 1,000+ scheduled appointments, and get this: yielded $1.3 BILLION in pipeline revenue. Yes, BILLION.

OpenText – Created a personalized new customer onboarding site offering a variety of assets (white papers, checklists, product pages, ebooks, case studies) and content to welcome new clients and provide upsell, cross-sell opportunities. The campaign also included a two phase nurturing program. 1,700 new contacts were identified along with 31 new opportunities worth $1.8 million.

Crowe Horwath – Using 48 pieces of content in 4 different topic areas, this campaign targeted C-level prospects in financial institutions with $1 billion or more in assets across the buying cycle. Content tactics included: executive briefs, case studies, infographics, checklists, Q and A, and Brainshark video. 778 contacts were engaged with a 70% open rate (vs. 10%), 2 engagement worth $250k in revenue.