The Year of Big Content: Top 10 Online Marketing Resources of 2013

What is big content? Big content doesn’t just have to come in the form of an ebook. Big content can be an epic blog post. Big content can be a blog post series. An ecourse. An infographic. It can be a series of emails. A video. A series of videos.

According to Peter J. Meyers, big content takes effort, breaks molds and has longevity. It drives ideas.

These 10 “big content” pieces do just that. And they are some of the best online marketing content resources produced in 2013. In some cases, you may have to surrender your email, but in my opinion they’re worth it.

So, in no particular order, here are the top 10 Big Content Resources of 2013.

The Marketer’s Email Conversion Course

By Chris Hexton from Vero

“No two customers are the same. Nor do they act the same on your site…so you shouldn’t send them the same email content.”

An email course sent to you by email. How meta. But in all seriousness, Vero’s 30-day email marketing course will teach you what you need to focus on to send one-to-one emails to your customers.

And it will show you how to optimize your emails as well. Chris will send you 7 emails chocked-full of email marketing tips, tricks and goodness that will help you increase your open-rates, click-through-rates and conversion-rates. After you finish the email conversion course, every email you send will be that much better.

If that didn’t convince you, here’s the full Email Conversion Course breakdown:

• Action Items For Improving Your Conversions Using Email
• Three Quick Wins To Improve Your Email Conversions
• The Email Copy That Increased Overall Sales By 10%
• How To Get Up And Running With Email Remarketing
• How To Convert With An Educational Series Campaign
• The Remarketing Emails You MUST Be Testing
• Boom! You’ve made it. Examples, resources, frameworks, case studies & more.

The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

By Kayla Kurtz, Eric Couch, Carrie Albright, Jacob Fairclough, & Sean Quadlin on PPC Hero

Every now and then, one post just doesn’t cut it. PPC Heroes recognizes this. Rather than produce an ebook, they explore a complex search marketing topic in a week-long series of blog posts.

In August the heroes explored how paid search and Google Analytics work hand in hand. Though technical, these posts have some awesome visuals including screen shots, flow charts, videos and diagrams.

Read the PPC Hero blog post series ‘Making the Most of Google Analytics with PPC:’

• 5 Google Analytics Reports You Need to Succeed in PPC
• Create a Content Experiment in 4 Easy Steps
• 3 Events You Must Start Tracking In Analytics
• Get the Data You Need – Custom Reports in Google Analytics
• How the Visitors Flow Report in Analytics Will Make Your Account Better

The Blueprint of a Modern Marketing Campaign

By Kapost & Oracle – Eloqua

By now, you know that content marketing is key to any inbound marketing strategy. It’s been a major buzz word throughout this past year.

But understanding the importance of content marketing and executing a streamlined strategy are two very different things. Did you know that, according to the ebook, 60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing goes unused? This stat proves there is some serious disconnect between content creators and content consumers.

This ebook will show you how to create a unified content strategy to achieve your specific marketing goals. Here’s the ToC:

• Form an Editorial Board
• Plan your Marketing Campaigns
• Content Pillars: The Key to Efficient Content Marketing
• Distribution: Levels of the Funnel and Key Departments
• Structure: Organizing Your Team and Editorial Calendar
• Exercises for the Modern Marketer

Acquiring Customers with Email

By Gregory Ciotti from Help Scout & Justin Premick from AWeber

The ebook was inspired by the success of the Help Scout newsletter, which turned into a growing community of 35,000+ subscribers.

Packed with research and case studies, it will show you why email is still the most powerful way for you to communicate with your audience and build a relationship over time. Then, once it has successfully proven the value and power of email marketing, the ebook will teach you proven email marketing tactics, from simple opt-in form tweaks to email copywriting tricks.

This 70-page eBook covers:

• Why email marketing is better than social media
• Simple tweaks to convert one-time visitors into subscribers
• How to increase email leads with content and features
• Maximizing newsletter engagement rates
• Using split-testing to improve your bottom line
• The awesome power of segmentation

The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing

By Neil Patel & Kathryn Aragon on QuickSprout

Calling all content marketers far and wide. This guide is the most extensive and detailed guide of advanced content marketing techniques (it really is).

It is full of tactical, immediately actionable ideas that you can implement. It looks slick. It’s logical order is easy to follow. It has useful screenshots and diagrams. And a ton of actionable to-do lists. Best of all, it has no content gate. It is free as free can be.

This massive infographic guide will teach you about all things content marketing, including how to:

• Build a strong foundation
• Plan your content for maximum productivity
• Learn to write content like a pro
• Overcome common content marketing roadblocks
• Optimize for search: The other side of content creation
• Promote your content to increase traffic, engagement, and sales

The 2013 YouTube Marketing Guide

By Steve Young on KISSmetrics

YouTube. Not only is it the largest video site, it’s also the world’s second-largest search engine.

How does Zappos drive more than 250,000 visits a year to its website from YouTube? More importantly, how can you successfully market on YouTube? This isn’t an ultimate guide in the ebook sense. Rather it’s an epic blog post with a combined 1,352 social shares and a whopping 69 comments and counting! That’s some serious social proof. The in-depth post is your guide for marketing on YouTube and will cover:

• How to Set up Your YouTube One Channel
• How to Produce Effective YouTube Videos
• How to Build Your Community

The Landing Page Conversion Course

By Oli Gardner with tips from 11 world-renowned online marketers

You know that you should be using landing pages, but you might not know the best way to go about it. The landing page conversion course is the perfect way to take you from zero to hero in a few weeks.

In this 11-part course, our resident landing page expert, Oli Gardner, will walk you through everything you need to know to create high-converting landing pages with some expert tips and advice from some of the best online marketers around, including Peep Laja, Michael Aagaard, Rand Fishkin, Rich Page and more.

And that’s not all. It also includes step-by-step instructional videos so that you can follow along and create your own landing pages as you go.

Here’s The Landing Page Conversion Course breakdown:

• Landing Page 101
• The 5 Essential Landing Page Elements
• Call-to-Action Design & Placement
• Lead Capture Forms
• Landing Page Copywriting
• Landing Page Design Principles
• The Psychology of Conversion
• Post-Conversion Marketing
• Landing Page Optimization & Testing
• How to Explain the Value of Landing Page Optimization
• Landing Page Examples

Any must-read, must-have Big Content in 2013 that I missed?

— Stefanie Grieser