While the Super Bowl game is fun to watch for many reasons – the match-up between two great teams, the excited fans, the half-time entertainment – we all know that what everybody really wants to see are the Super Bowl commercials.

Every day this week my morning news show has unveiled a different commercial and I have yet to be disappointed. I can’t wait to watch the game and see them all run live. I also love the after-the-game-successful-commercial debate.

Since airing a 30-second Super Bowl spot reportedly costs a staggering $4.5 million, to many, Super Bowl commercials seem frivolous. But as we all know, brands who get their Super Bowl ad campaign right are big marketing winners.  If there were not a reward, leading brands wouldn’t spend the dollars year after year on Super Bowl ads.  It is interesting to watch these same brands make the most of their spots by pairing them with digital and social campaigns.

In the end, not only is there a winning football team, there is a winning advertising campaign.  What it takes to win a Super Bowl campaign is the same as it is for any really good marketing plan:

1. Have a strategy.
2. Be relevant.
3. Provide meaningful content.
4. Strike an emotional chord and deliver a compelling message that will have people talking for days.

I definitely have my favorite spots already, but I will wait to choose a winner until I see all the ads in all their glory on Sunday evening!  Happy watching!

Chances are your business is using content marketing as part of your overall marketing plan. The objective of content marketing is to deliver valuable information that will engage your audience. Consumers are tuning out the more intrusive marketing tactics. What they really want is great, customer-focused information that helps them make a decision or solve a problem. That’s what content marketing delivers.

I actually like The Content Marketing Institute’s definition of content marketing the best: “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

So when it comes to content marketing, as a marketing professional, your job is to create and share valuable, free content to attract and convert prospective buyers into customers and engage existing customers so they are repeat buyers. The content you create and share should be closely related to what you sell without selling.

The purpose is to build relationships, awareness, branding and overall establish your company as an expert in your industry. You want to educate people and gain their trust so they do business with you.

There are many types of content that form a content marketing strategy including:

• Blogging
• Guest blog posts
• Social media posts and sharing
• Email marketing
• Infographics
• PowerPoint presentations
• Podcasts
• Standard videos
• Micro-videos (i.e. Vine)
• Public Speaking
• Webinars
• Articles

It’s up to you to know what is the best way for your brand to reach those potential and current customers. Just remember the power of great content marketing can make a person stop, read, think and behave differently. The return on investment for content marketing can be huge if executed correctly. And, it really doesn’t take a significant investment!

We were excited to meet with a prospective client partner and learn more about their branding and marketing needs. The company is in the B2B space.

Well into the conversation, my pulse began to race, my leg started to shake and my voice rose an octave.

You see, they have been meeting with several potential marketing partners and being very thorough about their due diligence in selecting the right one. One agency told them that they could … wait for it … manage and execute all their email marketing for the entire year for an annual fee if they handed over all the email content in one meeting.

Whoa! Really?!?!

It sounded good to the prospective client. This was:

• Very cost effective
• Low effort on their part
• Efficient with their time
• Worry-free. They wouldn’t have to think about their email marketing for an entire year.

Yes, friends, but this is wrong in so. many. ways. Hence, me physically reacting to this idea.

Effective email marketing campaigns are, among other things:

• Useful. If you are sending content to your audience that is several months old, you are missing the boat. “We try to include something useful in every email,” says Ben Chestnut of MailChimp. “If the announcement was totally useless, let’s at least give the recipient a case study, or something educational (even if it points to some other resource).”
• Fresh. Our world is changing daily. What is relevant or newsworthy today is not going to be tonight or tomorrow, never mind months from now.
• Personal and relevant. Your current and potential customers’ needs and businesses are constantly evolving. What they want and is the crisis du jour changes hourly. You may learn something in a meeting or on a call with them that you have never thought of before that could be a new product or service offering for your company or a nugget of wisdom for your next company email. Sorry, too late, you can only submit your content once a year … Ugh …

The reality is email marketing takes experience, work and expertise. The good news is we’re here to make it easy, effective and right for your brand.