2014 Planning: INSIGHTS FROM MARKETERS LIKE YOU

You know what might help you determine your marketing goals, priorities,

and budgets for 2014? A little perspective from other marketers. To find

out what tactics marketers are prioritizing in the coming year, we reached

out to HubSpot agency partners and asked them 3 questions:

1. What marketing efforts are you (and your clients) prioritizing?

2. What marketing efforts are you (and your clients) NOT prioritizing?

3. How are you balancing short term and long term goals?

Read on to find out what they had to say.

INTRODUCTION.

4. Question 1: What marketing efforts are you (and your clients)

prioritizing?

CONTENTS.

10. Question 2: What marketing efforts are you (and your clients) NOT

prioritizing?

19. Takeaways.

14. Question 3: How are you balancing short term and long term goals?

Click the text above to jump to a section.

Keep an eye out for hyperlinks to other resources to learn

more, too.

What marketing efforts are you (and your clients) prioritizing for 2014? Why?

1 Question

“In 2013, we made a large effort to increase content generation efforts with aggressive blogging calendars. In 2014, we'll continue to invest

greatly in blogging, but we'll also pursue guest blogging as a major focus. We see guest blogging as a powerful way to generate high quality inbound

links, and strengthen search rankings through Google Authorship.”

– Spencer Powell Inbound Marketing Director, TMR Direct

@spowell24 | www.tmrdirect.com

“Very broadly, we're focusing our marketing efforts on combining content with context to consistently deliver the right content to the right people at the right time. In 2014, we’ll focus more on very specific buyer personas, and

we build an editorial calendar around the unique needs of those personas, along with their stage in the purchasing process. Then it's all

about consistently nailing that editorial calendar with compelling content that motivates our audience to go from information to action.”

– Gray MacKenzie Co-Founder, GuavaBox

@sgraymackenzie | www.guavabox.com

“2014 all about proving performance. The general rule is, ‘if you can't measure it, don't do it.’ As marketers continue to feel greater pressure to

produce ROI, every marketing campaign has to be constructed with business goals in mind. Lead generation and conversions are often the

primary goals, which means we're seeing an enhanced focus on activating content throughout the customer journey, and doing everything

possible to personalize the brand experience.”

– Paul Roetzer Founder and CEO, PR 20/20

@paulroetzer | www.pr2020.com

“We are continuing to place more emphasis on improving the quality and focus of all content creation as well as distribution and promotion of that content. While we've all seen and experienced significant progress and

success in growing traffic and lead conversions, we recognize that improving content quality will result in higher lead quality, which yields

greater direct business impact.”

– Greg Linnemanstons President and Principal, Weidert Group

@greglinn | www.weidert.com

“2014 will be all about lead scoring. This year, we saw tremendous growth in leads, and now we’re focusing on putting a system in place to

identify the best leads so that we can pass more from marketing to sales.”

– Kathleen Booth Owner & CEO, Quintain Marketing

@quintain | www.quintainmarketing.com

What marketing efforts are you (and your clients) NOT prioritizing for 2014? Why?

2 Question

“The world of SEO is changing rapidly and we're definitely worrying less about identifying exact keyword matches than we were 2-3 years ago. We're at a point where Google’s algorithm, though far from perfect, has gotten

much better at rewarding those who create excellent content.

Facebook marketing has become less important to us as well. The ROI of Facebook has been comparatively low, especially in the industrial niche we often serve, so it has fallen to the lower end of the priorities scale.”

– Gray MacKenzie Co-Founder, GuavaBox

@sgraymackenzie | www.guavabox.com

“In 2013, our approach was to use Google’s Keyword Research Tool. Now, given Google’s recent move to mask keyword data, we’re relying more heavily on the buyer personas we’ve built to determine which long tail

keywords to target.”

– Kathleen Booth Owner & CEO, Quintain Marketing

@quintain | www.quintainmarketing.com

“We're primarily B2B, and we’re seeing greater scrutiny of show budgets. The first two places we’ll look for budget to reallocate are trade shows and

pay-per-click advertising.”

– Greg Linnemanstons President and Principal, Weidert Group

@greglinn | www.weidert.com

How are you balancing short term and long term goals in 2014?

3 Question

“We always start with our long term goals. We use the past year’s growth metrics as a basis for setting next year’s goals. Then we backtrack to

establish realistic, short term KPIs for each month. We work on agile, one-month sprints using a specific strategy and set of tactics for that month,

and we keep a backlog of ideas for the following months.”

– Luke Summerfield Director of Inbound Marketing, Savvy Panda

@savvypanda | www.savvypanda.com

“The key to balancing long and short term goals is to have a plan. I’ve found that having a detailed blogging editorial calendar to be very helpful in

this regard. Once we map out all of our blog posts, we can get them written in batches, which frees up time to focus on the bigger picture.”

– Kathleen Booth

Owner & CEO, Quintain Marketing @quintain | www.quintainmarketing.com

“We need to be careful that we're first doing all the right foundational marketing before we try stand-alone campaigns. The risk is that the one-time events distract from the mission of achieving critical mass with the

ongoing efforts, which could potentially lead to decisions made with incomplete information.”

– Greg Linnemanstons

President and Principal, Weidert Group @greglinn | www.weidert.com

“Consistently creating awesome content is the backbone of our special promotions, guest blogging efforts, and other one-time campaigns. In the past month we generated hundreds of new leads from guest blogging,

but without lead nurturing emails, relevant blog content, and longer-form content that digs deeper, very few of those leads would convert to

clients. The system built by our ongoing marketing efforts has enabled us to draw those prospects through the sales funnel and grow our business.

Ongoing and one-time efforts go hand in hand.”

– Gray MacKenzie Co-Founder, GuavaBox

@sgraymackenzie | www.guavabox.com

TAKEAWAYS.

� In 2014, many marketers are focusing on elevating the quality of

content and leads through personalization and tailoring content to a

prospect’s buying cycle stage.

�One-time campaigns aren’t substitutes for ongoing content creation,

so set goals for creating content that makes the lives of your target

audience easier on a regular basis.

� Improving search engine visibility by stuffing keywords into written

content has gone the way of the dodo. Instead, create a steady stream

of specific, original, and useful content.

TAKEAWAYS.