‘In any industry, buzzwords make their introduction and become today’s hero but how can you tell if the buzzword has staying power? When it works. Content Marketing may be the latest trend for search engine ranking and lead nurturing and it’s only growing in popularity and importance. So why does content marketing work?

Whether your company is B2B or B2C, people want to do business with companies that they trust. Trust is the foundation of relationship marketing which emphasizes client satisfaction and retention over individual sales. Companies need to engage and nurture the connections they form with their customers. One of the best ways to build trust is by becoming a valued resource.

“Write content that answers questions or provides solutions”

 

Consumers during the buying cycle conduct quite a bit of research, both on the product they intend to buy and of the prospective companies that they may buy from. This is the initial point that content and relationship marketing has its impact. Writing content that answers consumers’ questions will set you apart from your competition. For example, why one server is more suitable to their needs than another or how does the customer tell if they need to replace their tires. When a customer views you as a resource for answers and not just in search of “the sale”, the foundation for trust is established. The larger the investment – a house, car, or IT infrastructure, the most crucial trust becomes in the purchase process.

“90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.”⁽¹⁾

 

Creating content that provides value is only the first step. You need to have a clear path for conversion in your content: newsletter sign-up, contact for more information or download a whitepaper. Once you have consumers move deeper into the sales funnel, you can further customize your content to overcome objections and provide relevant data to expedite the decision-making process.

A wonderful side effect of creating and syndicating relevant, unique content is that search engines love it! As algorithms continue to advance and become more sophisticated, search engines like Google and Bing are searching the web for the most accurate answer from the most credible source. A consistent strategy of content creation, implementation and syndication through digital marketing proves to the search engines that you are engaged and a trustworthy authority – hence, ranking your content higher than your competitors.

Writing content for content’s sake is not only a waste of time but will have little to no ROI. Create a digital and content strategy that speaks to all of your buyer personas, answers questions and objections and provides tangible value to the consumer. And last but not least, measure, analyze and perfect.

Source: http://www.cmocouncil.org/content-roi-program-details.php

If I start this blog with the words “back-up,” I’ve already lost you. Talking BC/DR to customers puts them to sleep faster than a box of red wine and a turkey dinner.
But, if I talk about availability, risk management, compliance, and ensuring that your CEO’s fat-fingered deletes are reversible, well, that gets attention.
One of my favorite products on the market is Zerto. Zerto provides enterprise-class business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) solutions for virtualized infrastructure and cloud. They won Best of Show at VMworld 2011, as well as 2011, 2012, and 2013 Product of the Year Gold Awards. It’s the industry’s first hypervisor-based replication solution for tier-one applications.
With Zerto you can sequentially and automatically fail over and back the VMs that comprise your critical applications.
With RPOs of seconds and RTOs consistently less than five minutes, you don’t have to worry about any downtime.
They are hypervisor and hardware agnostic. Vsphere 5.0 to Vshpere 6.0 and back to Hyper-V. 3Par to Zadara to Nimble, etc.
With non-disruptive testing, you can fail over and back on a live environment with no  impact to production. Best of all, Zerto can run the DR test automatically, generate a report of the execution, and deliver it directly to risk management.
That last point gets lost. Let me repeat it. DR testing is non-disruptive.
There’s nothing else like it. Do yourself a favor and check out unbiased reviews at Spiceworks. 5 stars out of 7 reviews. To quote one of them, “Zerto is….dare I say, life changing.”
At Zunesis we also use Zerto for data center migrations. Zerto even lets you try the product for free. It’s an awesome piece of software, and I really encourage you to take a look.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for this year’s Zunesis Invitational! It was a great day of golf and good company.
 

Check out this video recap of the day: