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- What Is Dropshipping, and Is It Best for Your Online Retail Business?
E-commerce businesses have options for shipping: do it yourself, outsource to a fulfillment center, or dropship. Explore the pros and cons of each to find the right option for your company.
The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule applies to everyone. Yes, there is a specific exemption for B2B calls, but marketers must understand the law and use caution.
Is your team spending too much time on manual tasks, such as cleaning up data? The good news: there are easy-to-implement processes to free up your team and improve your ROI.
See why contests are so effective for marketing, and follow these eight steps to create a contest that will help you generate leads, collect valuable data, and give your customers and prospects a great experience.
A/B-testing has always been an effective way to optimize conversion rate, but new technologies are optimizing your optimization.
Even without grabbing the top spot in search engine results pages, you can be at the top. How? "Featured snippets"! Here are the various featured-snippet types, along with step-by-step instructions on how to claim your spot at the top of SERPs.
Selecting the right marketing tech stack can be overwhelming. All-in-one solutions are enticing, but sometimes individual tools that solve specific challenges are more useful. Here are three considerations for choosing your marketing tools.
Your email program is vital for turning one-time buyers into loyal customers. Here are some tips to make your emails effective in improving customer retention and encouraging loyalty.
To get the most out of your video investment, here's how to create the right types of video for each stage of the buyer's journey.
These six online tools can help all types of marketers level-up their graphic-design skills.
Writing better copy isn't difficult, but it does take a reset of how you think about marketing copy. Follow these five steps to find your brand's authentic voice and connect with customers.
Webinars offer a perfect platform to engage and train your B2B customers. See how to make them interactive and offer value to your attendees.
The mounds of social media data available offer a goldmine for marketers, but sorting through all that data can be overwhelming. That's where AI comes in to help you monetize your social data.
Marketers have access to overwhelming amounts of data, but acting on that data can be a challenge. Integrating qualitative and quantitative research can result in information that helps you sell your products and improve customer experience.
If you had sonar that could pinpoint great B2B leads for you, you'd use it, right? That's what buyer intent data can do for your lead generation efforts, putting you far ahead of the competition.
Here are five ways to overcome low search volume and drive more revenue from your paid search campaigns.
Content is king, right? Well, not so fast. Technical SEO is vital, too. Follow these tips to make sure your content can be easily discovered online.
Employees can be a brand's most influential advocates. Put that often-untapped resource to use by empowering employees to be your brand's best ambassadors.
Should companies allocate precious resources toward professional development and training for their marketing teams? Yes... but you need to ensure training effectiveness. Here's a four-step process for doing exactly that.
Innovating existing products and services rather than chasing the shiny and new is a smart use of resources and energy. And it has a far higher chance of success. It also protect your iconic status, the highest and most profitable form of branding.
B2B marketers have long assumed that business decisions are based primarily on rational motivations—and that emotion is exclusively B2C territory. But it's become increasingly apparent that emotion plays an important role in B2B as well.
Personalization is a powerful marketing tool, but with great power comes great responsibility. Misusing personalization can diminish consumers' trust in a brand. Here's how to be transparent and effective.
When Marketing and Sales collaborate, everyone wins: Customers get better content, and businesses see better results.
Your customers drive your business, so consider their habits when you're setting up your e-commerce site.
Exceptionally strong content can help you fulfill many goals at once: increasing website traffic, earning backlinks, and reducing bounce rate. Here's how to create that type of content.
You've heard the term "Blockchain," and maybe you're familiar with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, but what does all that have to do with marketing? Here's what you need to know.
Storytelling is key to successful marketing and advertising, but how can you make your audience really feel the story and be captivated enough to hear more?
Many marketers see a return on Google AdWords, but they don't know which keywords are performing best. Here's how you can understand that key info and make your AdWords advertising even more effective.
Pricing can be one of the most sensitive parts of a marketing proposal, but these four tips can help your prospects focus on the value of your services rather than the dollar amount—and give you their Yes.
Marketers have a lot to do these days. The right processes and tools can save you time, improve your marketing, and give you the information you need to be more creative and effective.
What are B2B marketers' priorities for growth? Branding, followed by innovation and customer satisfaction. The good news? Budgets and optimism are up. The bad news? Challenges still exist.
ABM does take time and effort, but the results can be extremely rewarding. These five steps (and one bonus tip) will walk you through how to set up your ABM program for success.
Discovering what drives your top buyers—and applying that info to prospects—can help you get more stellar customers.
GDPR goes into effect in two months, but most US companies are not prepared. Here are seven questions marketers should be asking themselves and their companies to ensure compliance—and avoid fines.
Businesses spend billions of dollars each year on advertising—but are they spending it well? Marketers need a better way to determine which advertising activities are the true drivers of sales so they can focus their resources accordingly.
Think videos are just for B2C? Think again. They can be a powerful tactic in the B2B sales journey as well. Here's how to use video effectively in your B2B marketing.
An effective case study starts with a great interview. These five tips will help you ask relevant questions and elicit answers that build persuasive case studies.
Social media isn't just for collecting likes and follows: It can help you increase sales—when it's used right.
Both PPC and SEO are incredibly valuable components of your search engine marketing strategy, but they are even more powerful—and can get you even better results—when they come together.
Don't let the stories scare you. Some of the email axioms we believe to be true just aren't—at least, not anymore. See whether you've fallen victim to some of the most common email myths.
Done right, humor sells. But you probably don't sell a product or service that's inherently funny. So how can you create funny content that's just right for your business?
Get your readers past the headline and into the content with these helpful tips for leveling-up your headline game.
Understanding your buyers' journeys is key to providing them with the right information to move them along the buying path. See how the right tools—and AI—can make your job as a marketer efficient and effective.
All the technology in the world won't give your customers great experiences if your customer service team—the face of your brand—isn't trained and supported properly. Here are three ways to make sure they are.
With new technologies and more data available than ever before, it's easy for marketers to get bogged down in things that don't always help them meet their goals. Here's how to stay focused on what matters.
What can marketers learn from the techniques that Brexit supporters used to convince a majority of the population to vote for what's been called "the stupidest thing any country has done"?
If you produce a marketing video but no one watches it, does it have any impact? Videos must be optimized for search to have the reach and ROI you want. Here are three tips to improve your video SEO rankings.
You can't be in more than one place at a time—but your brand can, and it should. Your customers are on multiple channels at the same time, and marketers need to keep up with them to be successful.
What do people see when they visit your LinkedIn profile? Ask yourself three questions to boost your profile and generate more leads from the professional networking platform.
Millennials are known for being a tech-savvy group, but ad overload means many digital ads are simply ignored. One way to capture Millennials' attention: go offline with billboards.
Creating a social media strategy can feel overwhelming—especially when there are so many social platforms. These tips will help you focus on the basics so you can find your audience and get up and running.
Do Millennials really have unique qualities, and do they really present unique challenges to marketers... or are we simply dealing with recurring clichés? Let's dispel three of the most commonly repeated myths about Millennials.
Artificial intelligence offers customers better experiences and makes marketers' lives easier—and it's not has hard to implement as you might think. Here are some considerations for using AI in your marketing efforts.
With a mobile device in nearly every consumers' pocket, many marketers have found success with SMS campaigns. As you explore this channel, keep these three key tips in mind.
As Google shutters its Site Search, these three key questions will help you avoid a scramble to find a replacement. They'll also help you determine which technology will work best for both you and your website visitors.
Gamification allows you to capture data, increase brand loyalty, and provide memorable and exciting customer experiences. These five tips will help you integrate gamification into your experiential marketing campaigns.
Up to 80% of customers in subscription-based services cancel their subscription in the first three months. Across the customer journey, here are the four personas you should be aware of and the actions you should take to retain them.
For your website, 2018 will be the year of legal compliance and user respect, and savvy brands can't afford to be left behind. Implementing these five techniques will get your site ready for this year—and beyond.
Although we marketers may not be the ones implementing security applications in our workplaces, what can we do (if anything) to help prevent security breaches—or ease their consequences?
Four out of five readers won't get past the first sentence of an online article. For marketing content creators, today's reading habits can be challenging. But here's how you can win over impatient or distracted readers and get your content read.
SEO and content marketing, particularly blogging, are a powerful combination that can build your website's authority and drive valuable search engine traffic to your site. But content marketers tend to make these five SEO mistakes. Here's how you can avoid them.
Message personalization has become a buzzword in marketing. But in most cases what’s really being used is easily captured demographic and geographic data. To send messages that are truly personal, businesses need to tailor their messages to behavior.
Don't be fooled by viral social campaigns: They look deceptively simple, but successful social campaigns require thought and strategy. Check out these simple steps to build effective social campaigns.
The problem many marketers face when trying to learn about marketing automation is that the topic seems overly broad and too technologically nuanced to tackle. But that's not so! You just need the right resources to move you from newbie to wizard.
Holiday buyers don't have to stay just one-time purchasers. See how data collection plus a simple email program can turn them into loyal customers and keep them engaged all year.
Prior to last week, Crock-Pot wasn't even on Twitter—because, honestly, who wants to talk to Crock-Pot? Yet, a week later, the hastily assembled @CrockPotCares Twitter feed was still defending itself from attacks caused by the unlikeliest of sources.
There's an elite cadre of CEOs out in the marketplace who have a clear advantage over their counterparts: They have marketing backgrounds. Here's a look at what gives marketing-focused CEOs a leg up in the business world, and what you can learn from them.
Although there are no marketing silver bullets, cinemagraphs are fairly shiny and new—and still rare enough to have impact. Find out what they are, how they're different from GIFs, and how to make one.
In the world of marketing, there's a perception that B2B marketing is serious and logical, whereas B2C marketing is fun and creative. Yet, the role that emotions play in both B2B and B2C marketing is strikingly similar.
In the new year, a combination of technology advances, organizational cultural shifts, and buyer-behavior changes will push B2B marketing in new directions. Here are four trends that will start to mature in 2018.
Journalists and writers may not be trained in marketing, but they can bring valuable and practical content-creation skills to marketing organizations.
Trying to continually strike a balance between creating engaging, high-quality content and producing it at scale can seem like a bad dream. But here's a proven process to help you dispel four common content creation nightmares.
In our age of information overload, engaging your audience is more challenging than ever. But what if, rather than trying to divert customers' attention, marketers could meet customers where they're already spending time?
A lot of ABM and sales-enablement vendors talk about how companies can use technology to scale customer contact. Despite the promises about futuristic things like artificial intelligence, you'd be paying to fail if you don't take the human touch into account.
Imagine you're tasked with planning a trip. Now imagine trying to do that without knowing the trip's starting point... Tough, right? It's the same with a brand-awareness campaign. You won't get far without first knowing your brand's current standing in the market.
Customer advisory boards can deliver amazing benefits to host companies and participants, but they can easily backfire if not managed, budgeted, or resourced properly. Here's how to make sure your CAB program succeeds.
Voice search is gaining in popularity, and your brand has just one chance to get to the top of the search results and be the featured answer. This guide explains how to do that and why you'll want to get started today.
Content creators have a tough gig. Too often, our colleagues view us as short-order content cooks who can whip up content at a moment's notice. Fortunately, there's a process designed to protect the content creators of the world. It's called Agile, and it works beautifully in marketing.
Marketing campaign success isn't determined by diagnostic metrics (think website visits and the like). Don't fall into the trap of letting those middle metrics dominate your campaigns. Take these three steps instead.
To pick a side or not to pick a side? That is the question plaguing many brands in today's politically polarized environment. Pick a side, and you risk potentially losing a wide customer base that holds opposing views. Don't pick a side, and you may be viewed as inauthentic.
If your client, CMO, or manager views content not so much as king but as bastard prince, it's time to go to battle, breach some preconceived walls, and prove content's prowess. These eight tactical measures will help you do all that.
Using SlideShare for content marketing (think videos, documents, infographics, e-books, presentations...) can increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. But how can marketers use SlideShare for lead generation?
Selecting the right marketing technology is often a messy process with iffy results, but it doesn't have to be. Do the work to evaluate the company behind the product, and you'll put yourself in a position to succeed. Here's how.
The thing about "Big Data"? It's overused and misused, but it isn't meaningless. Big Data can seriously improve your marketing. The biggest problem? A lack of people who know how to use Big Data. And that right there is your big opportunity.
What changes or innovations will alter how we email in 2018? What will go away or become less relevant? What role will video play? What are some top tips for email marketers in 2018?
Influencer marketing has successfully transitioned from being considered a passing fad to being allotted a respected place in the modern marketing mix. It will continue to rapidly evolve to meet marketers' needs, so keep your eye on these five trends.
For decades, marketers have meticulously segmented audiences on demographics and personas, but these methods are growing irrelevant. There are stronger predictors of buying habits.
Getting people's attention on social media is more difficult than ever. But giving up isn't an option. So... what should marketers do? Create well-conceived, well-written campaigns that cut through the static, of course. Here's how.
As a marketer, you're used to marketing products and services. But what about yourself? Do potential employers know your value? Read on to find out how to set up your own career for success.
Today's inboxes are more crowded than ever. But using smart design and tactics, marketers from brands big and small can build effective email campaigns. For inspiration, check out some of the best emails from 2017, along with tips to ensure your emails stand out.
If you're looking to move your marketing career forward, you may have considered an MBA. But does the investment of time and money pay off? Read on to find out how the degree can help boost your marketing career.
With all the talk about the future of marketing, we sometimes forget about the changes happening right here, right now. Like voice search, which is already affecting search results. Here's how to capitalize on it with the right optimization techniques.
Generating qualified leads remains a top challenge for B2B marketers. Here's how you can address three key B2B buying trends to earn buyers' attention and trust—and improve the quality of your lead generation.
For any marketing campaign to be successful, marketers must find innovative ways to interweave the brand's core values with the cultural context of the intended audience—its ideologies, tensions, values...
Design trends are often the result of shifts in technology, pop culture, and the political climate, and they often point to larger cultural shifts. Here are four of the most compelling design trends that will be influencing 2018.
Getting an email program up and running is tough under most circumstances, including when you're first starting out. But you can take steps to stack the email marketing deck in your favor.
Livestreaming is fraught with risks at a time when a little bit of bad publicity can go a long way. But it's also a game-changer full of potential. It would be wise to explore how to use livestreaming to reach your customers on their preferred social channels.
Marketers need to understand customers and offer truly personalized experiences, delivering the right content or services to the right people at the right time—i.e., the right context. Here's how to lay the foundation of a customer experience program and team.
As social media users, we think nothing of creating videos that are fun and entertaining. Yet, when it's time to use video in a more structured environment, say for marketing, suddenly videos are intimidating. But they don't have to be.
Marketers can no longer afford to view technology as a "nice to have." In 2018 and beyond, our performance will rely in great part on our martech stacks. Those without an adoption strategy will find themselves unable to keep up with competitors who use technology more effectively.
Video plays an important role in driving consumer purchase decisions, so using your YouTube channel could be a great way to drive sales. But how can you convert subscribers into customers?
E-books are valuable fuel for your content marketing engine. They assist in positioning companies as thought leaders, they provide value to customers and prospects, and they generate leads. But what should your e-book be about? And how do you decide?
Ad tech trends seldom mature overnight, but as the industry figures out how it can improve user experience as well as increase revenue, 2018 will be a rough ride for most.
Why is it that some brands seem to achieve success with social advertising, whereas others struggle to find the right formula? Read on for five secrets from Facebook marketing pros to learn how your Facebook ads can have real impact on your bottom line.
Here are three effective ways you can use lateral thinking to reinvent your marketing and unlock new revenue growth for your business.
Deciding where to focus your marketing and sales efforts in the coming year can be hard. So we reached out to experts, practitioners, and analysts and asked a simple question: How are you positioning your sales and marketing teams for success in 2018?
By working in lockstep with data scientists, marketers can better understand who their targets are, what they desire, and what their challenges, behaviors, and motivations are. Marketers can then devise more effective campaigns to influence consumers.
When you have strong thought leadership content, you want to get it in front of the right audience. Twitter can be a helpful channel when it comes to reaching not just readers, but also influencers who can help create more conversations around your content and your brand.
Video is ever changing—from '90s video clips on MTV to vanishing Snapchat Stories—and the platform that airs the content helps shape and refine both video and how it's used. So when you're considering using video in your next social media marketing campaign, also consider this advice.
People are busier than ever, and increasingly they are learning by listening to podcasts while multitasking. Accordingly, audio content might be the perfect choice to market your business or brand.
It's a battle as old as time: You've been assigned to an important project with a tight deadline, but your inspiration's running dry. How can you possibly be creative when the clock is ticking and the pressure is mounting?
A customer-centric mindset is vital for marketing success, helping campaigns resonate with prospects and leading to more sales and greater customer satisfaction. So how can busy marketers implement a customer-centric mindset?
By testing various creative treatments, prioritizing the role creative plays in ads, and choosing the right tools for ad creation, marketers can do more of what they do best: offer creative solutions to their customers and prospects.
If you forgot to tend to your technical SEO while you were busy surviving all the recent Google algorithm updates, who can blame you? But now is the time to shore up your technical SEO fundamentals in preparation for 2018.
With the year quickly coming to a close, many companies are looking to ramp up their sales efforts to hit or exceed their projected numbers for the year. These six platforms can help B2B sales departments close out the year strong.
Relying solely on analytics tools when making business decisions can lead to misdirected targeting, causing major consequences for an organization's bottom line.
We are in the next great Golden Era of marketing, and with this new era comes an entirely new set of possibilities—along with commensurate customer demands. Here are five megatrends we marketers need to be aware of as we move into 2018.
It's that time of year when marketers are figuring out how to allocate their resources. Here are some important things to keep in mind as you build your marketing budget for the upcoming financial year or quarter.
Keyword research is vital for success, because it's all about determining user intent. And without user intent, there is nothing guiding the content we create, the backlinks we aim to earn, and the on-page content we optimize.
If an explainer video is a snack, a long-form documentary (think 15 minutes) is the marketing equivalent of a four-course meal. The thing is... no content strategy can live on snackable content alone; sometimes, you need to serve up a full meal.
Brand-specific hashtags in your Tweets can be helpful, but it's also important to use trending hashtags. Each day of the week comes with its own commonly used hashtags, and your brand can get in on the action.
Getting holiday-season email delivered and opened without irking your recipients is a challenge. Luckily, we've compiled a few tested tips and tricks that will help you refine your emails to bring your organization more cheer this season.
Marketers and retailers have a huge opportunity on social media during the holidays. Being prepared for the holiday rush is a huge advantage, but some brands can easily fall behind this hectic time of year. Stay ahead of the competition with these seven key steps.
Those who consistently score likes, comments, and engagement with their Instagram posts aren't doing so by accident. By understanding the ins and outs of Instagram's most popular types of posts, you can fine-tune your own content strategy.
Customer experience (CX) leaders generate more revenue than companies that fail to prioritize CX. Brands become CX leaders by personalizing engagement in relevant and valuable ways. Here are four guideposts for getting CX right.
Many of us in marketing recognize that Taylor Swift is a cunning, calculated positioning savant, and the new, edgy, and angry Taylor is nothing but a brand refresh. Here are three takeaways for your own company or brand.
If used properly, user-generated content can be a huge asset for content marketers. UGC can save you time and money, and boost your credibility. Here are six UGC benefits—and ways you can profit from them.
Fully 40% of holiday shoppers begin searching and purchasing before November 1, which means search engine marketers need a game plan now to make some jolly-good sales this season.
What exactly is identity resolution, and why does it matter to you as a B2C marketer? It may sound outrageous, but your company's most loyal customers have, on average, six completely different identities in your marketing systems.
The home stretch of the holiday season is a unique opportunity to retool digital strategies that carry you into January and beyond. Here's how retailers and marketers can connect with consumers even after the wrapping paper is tossed out and leftovers are gone.
How can your business react to consumer behaviors—and try to beat the retail giant that is Amazon? Here are a few new, innovative ways to keep driving revenue this holiday retail season through next-generation remarketing.
Content marketers tend to focus on external communication channels, such as social media, video channels, and blogs, but it would be a mistake to neglect other important touchpoints. These three effective tactics can extending your content marketing reach.
Despite the annoyance, budget planning is an absolute necessity. Without it, you can't proceed or succeed. When planning for 2018, here's how to avoid and correct the top 4 mistakes almost all marketers make.
Instead of targeting just the C-suite, today's B2B marketers must target groups of buyers and influencers who range from junior procurement specialists in their 20s to senior executives in their 50s and 60s.
Are machines going to take over your job? Not quite yet, but search engine marketers need to stay on top of trends in PPC and AdWords automation if they want to stay ahead in their careers—and be ready when the machine overlords do come for us all.
The success of a direct marketing campaign depends, to varying degrees, on your list, your offer, and your creative. Getting those three things to work together in sync—in online and offline channels—will explode your results. Here's an overview, in interview format, of the fundamentals of direct marketing.
Twitter is a powerful tool in any marketer's arsenal, but it's only as useful as the information you can extract from it. Read on for tips from Twitter Business about how to use Twitter Analytics to help tell your brand story and deliver useful content to your audience.
As a marketer, you always look for ways to give your company or clients a leg up. You have Google Analytics experts, dashboards, reports on demand, and more. GA has worked well for you so far. But recently you've noticed there's a whole new playing field.
You worry that members of your sales team are not following the right messaging guidelines in their cold outreach to prospects. The solution: you give them email templates proven to work.
At the end of the day, lead generation is B2B marketing's primary task. It is also the trickiest. Getting disconnected from what customers want happens a lot more and faster than you think.
The specter of the General Data Protection Regulation has loomed large. With GDPR taking effect next year, efforts to comply with the new regulations should already be well underway. That's simply not the case at many companies, however.
As marketers, we're all artists, and our currency is persuasion. But to become among the most sought-after, elite marketers in the world, we must know what actually persuades. And for that we must understand—and intelligently apply—attribution.
As marketers, we need to know how to build excitement for our product or service without overhyping and disappointing customers. And the best way to master walking that fine line is by better understanding how and why expectations alter experiences.
Welcome to the world of Instagram—an immensely creative and engaging platform where you can connect with millions of users and promote your brand effectively. Read on for salient pointers on how you can use Instagram skillfully to promote your products and boost sales.
As we near the end of 2017, retail faces significant profitability issues. In turn, marketers are facing pressure to capture and retain customer attention, and they're resorting to flashy new approaches. But email remains unmatched in helping to build brand, convert, and make sales.
There's plenty of autumn left, but the holiday season is fast approaching. You might think you still have lots of time to launch your holiday email marketing campaign, but now is the time to prepare. Check out these holiday email marketing tips from the experts.
Voice search has begun to take center stage, signaling a dramatic change in the way consumers search online. Here's what you need to know, including current trends, potential growth, likely effects on digital marketing and SEO, as well as opportunities and barriers marketers may face.
Most B2C marketers aren't capable of approaching omnichannel just yet, so it's a huge opportunity for your brand to stand out from the crowd. Learn more about taking your marketing this holiday season to the next level.
To account for shifts in consumer behavior, marketers have to adapt their video marketing approaches to a mobile-first world in which text and video are forming a symbiotic relationship.
The essence of creating a positive experience is making customers feel that they are heard and important—before, during and after a transaction.
The need for high-quality content cannot be overemphasized, which is why you need a team that knows how to implement your content strategy. Here's how to build and nurture a content team that gets the job done.
This article provides a tool for B2B marketers—the "event effectiveness matrix"—to evaluate events and choose the one with highest lead-generation potential.
In a world of mass emails and stimulus overload, personalization has become critical to B2B marketing. Buyers are becoming harder to identify and increasingly like consumers: They want personalized outreach and one-to-one interaction...
Some marketing organizations excel at marketing performance management and, as a result, achieve better growth for their companies. How? They operate Marketing as a center of excellence (CoE). Here's how to turn your marketing organization into a CoE.
Customers today have seemingly contradictory demands: super-fast websites and immersive experiences. Web publishers would be wise to optimize their image-based assets, lest they lose visitors—and revenue—to slow pageload speeds.
Articles are a fundamental tool in your content marketing toolbox. Here are three places your articles can find a home, each of which serves a different purpose and offers unique benefits for your content strategy.
In marketing, we talk nostalgically about the "corner store" as the epitome of customer relationships. But that Norman Rockwell version of customer loyalty is dead. Which is why we need to get back to fundamentals. Here are three ideas on how.
The right booth space and location on the exhibit floor are vital for maximizing event ROI. The location selection process, however, can be complicated. So here, in a handy guide, are all the important factors you need to take into account.
What is dark data? It's the unstructured data that's all over social networks, and it's full of valuable insights you can use to generate revenue and improve your business. And it's highly likely you're not using it—yet.
So how do you stand out from the crowd as a B2B social media marketer? Here's the advice you need to ensure your company engages with potential customers and develops a social media following that converts into what you really want—sales!
It's time to talk about your website relaunch—and a frequent crucial misstep by too many marketers. Before moving too far along the relaunch process, ask (and answer) these seven questions.
We are all after content that converts readers into customers, gets shared, builds backlinks, and ranks high in search results. But you can't get any of these results unless your content manages to engage your target audience.
What if Google assigned a "content score" to every page on your website? Experts think that's exactly what Google does. So, to get more organic traffic to your site, you need to know the answer to this critical question: How do you improve your Google content score?
How can you overcome a fear of public speaking? How can you deliver a winning presentation that encourages your audience to applaud, give you high marks on post-presentation surveys, and seek you out for a chat after the microphone is turned off? Here are a few recommendations and best-practices.
Congrats, you're 99% of the way done with your new or redesigned website project, but it's not time to relax just yet. Follow these website launch tips for a seamless go-live transition.
What marketing tools should your company be using right now? Here are 17 for 2017—some new, some tried and true, all totally useful.
A loyal base of followers is key to your marketing—to bring in steady website traffic and ensure positive word-of-mouth that helps your business gain traction. To avoid ruining your relationship with your social following, use these three strategies.
If your marketing calendar is a cobbled-together spreadsheet, be prepared for a content-related nightmare. To maximize your marketing calendar's effectiveness, make sure these three components are in place.
Blogging is a great way for sales reps to establish credibility, but it's up to us marketers to ensure the brand's best face is put forward with clear, concise, and appropriate messages that aren't too salesy. Here's how.
To build your online reputation and your personal brand, you need to present yourself as an expert, someone people will want to hire or buy something from. A blog is an ideal way to hone your personal brand online.
Companies that don't support messaging apps risk creating a negative customer experience—and having competitors fill the gap. A messaging app program, with chatbots or without, helps you be responsive to consumers in a way that humanizes the brand through conversation.
With nearly 5,000 solutions in the B2B marketing technology and PR technology landscape, it can be daunting to decide which technology your company should use. So here are four important areas of consideration and related questions to help you identify the best solutions for your organization.
Facebook recently introduced new features that help advertisers garner more return on their social media advertising investments. These three features, especially, are worth a try.
Personalization. It's all the rage in e-commerce marketing. But the needed level of personalization isn't easy to achieve. The only way to get close is continual segmentation so that you can offer potential buyers the right message, at the right time, in the right channel.
Whether you're trying to contact a prospect, pitch an investor, email a press release to an editor, or strike up a conversation with a potential employer, email is one of the best ways to connect. But what if you don't have their email address?
At the core of every consumer-generated content (CGC) program is the ability to collect and share ratings and reviews. But there is much more marketers can do to increase the effectiveness of their CGC.
You just got the green light to create a public relations program for your startup. There's a lot to do and you don't have enough time or budget to do it all. Where should you begin?
Customer or market research and intelligence are essential to fact-based decision-making. Here are six best-practices for conducting research and reasons for considering external resources to help you avoid costly mistakes.
Even the greatest content needs an early boost to gain traction in social media. Paid promotion and influencer marketing can help, but they can be costly. Fortunately, virtually every organization has a captive audience that's willing—even happy—to share content with their networks for free.
Today's consumers connect with brands through more channels and devices than ever before. And though many companies have some process in place to measure marketing ROI, few are doing it right. What do you need to know to get right?
Many marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs think innovation is synonymous with invention—and that to move the needle, we need to come up with a shiny new product, market, or idea. But some of the most innovative brands of our time prove otherwise.
User-generated content is here to stay. And as the marketing landscape begins to shift to a more user- and UGC-centric direction, what steps can you take to capitalize on this authentic marketing tactic?
With 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook, the question is no longer whether you should advertise on the platform—but how. Here are four types of Facebook retargeting that can help you increase e-commerce revenue.
When it's time to outsource copywriting or content writing to bolster your marketing, you need to be clear on one thing: Should you hire a copywriter or a content writer? We'll explain all the differences (and similarities!) so you can hire the writer that's right for your project.
SaaS companies can ensure nurturing and upsell campaigns are consistently successful across the entire buyer's journey, from initial contact through the trial/freemium phase to after commitment. Here's how.
It wasn't always obvious that marketing operations would become such a central part of B2B marketing. But it has, and it's now the core engine making Marketing smarter, faster, and more cohesive.
Social media monitoring has become an important part of digital marketing. Though most marketers understand its necessity, the details aren't as clear. The most common question: What keywords should I monitor?
These are the five key KPIs that marketers must regularly measure. You'll learn how to measure them, followed by tips on how to improve the performance of each.
The right marketing technology stack is key to understanding your buyers and meeting their needs. But there is no standard, one-size-fits-all marketing technology stack that will work for every organization.
To survive and thrive, nonprofits have had to develop approaches and skills that for-profits can also use to improve their competitive position, customer relations, and long-term health and value.
You did it. You built a solid hub of corporate content. But now what? You've got a well-planned content machine, but is it sustainable? Here's what happens when a good blog goes bad, and gets killed before it has a fighting chance to thrive.
As influencer marketing grows, audience size is taking a back seat and engagement is becoming the No. 1 indicator of success—i.e., relevancy and leads. And that's where social media micro-influencers come in.
Social media influencer marketing is still a relatively new practice, which means making mistakes is unavoidable. Here's how you can avoid three of the most common influencer marketing mistakes.
Data can help deliver insights that marketing leaders can use to collaborate with CEOs, CFOs, and sales leaders. And these four essential data points and relationship-building strategies will help you demonstrate ROI and Marketing's value.
Today, few terms generate as much buzz as "influencer marketing." But is the result more heat than light? Here's a look at three top challenges of influencer marketing, along with a big-picture view of this marketing strategy.
Looking to get hired as a marketer? Or to hire one yourself? Here are the five attributes that a modern marketer needs—and the ones that marketing leaders need to look for when hiring a high-functioning marketing team.
These 15 email marketing tips and best-practices (with real life examples) for e-commerce are entirely actionable, and you can easily implement them to increase your conversion rate.
Multichannel automation, content personalization, social sharing tools, analytics... a marketing Cloud makes it possible to juggle the numerous tools necessary for today's marketing. But do you get a turnkey solution, or do you build your own?
When corporations mess up, the online outrage and media recrimination seem devastating. But, these days, the result is often increased brand awareness. What does a business have to do to really fail?
Many companies find themselves asking the same question: How do we authentically engage with customers throughout their entire buying journey to keep them satisfied and buying more? The answer, up until now, has been complicated.
Social marketing is different because your audience talks back—immediately, directly, and sometimes not in your favor. If you're developing a social advertising strategy the way you would for PPC ads or email, you're missing a huge opportunity to capture market share.
An effective B2B email marketing strategy has much less to do with email, per se, than you might think. The best programs nurture and engage leads while also working to close deals. Which is where managing your contact database comes into play.
If you're able to make even a small increase in your conversion rate for second-time purchases, you'll see serious revenue growth. It's time to shift some of your marketing focus from finding and engaging new customers to nurturing and convincing your existing customers. Here's how.
What is the secret to an engaging headline? Everyone has an opinion... but what does the data say? After analyzing 100 million headlines, we found that the essence of an engaging headline comes down to a few core principles.
The Millennial market: such a tempting conquest, yet so frustrating to conquer. Connecting with this elusive and lucrative demographic is not easy. Here are four major insights to help you market to—and win over—this tough crowd.
It's a multibillion-dollar problem that's shaking the confidence of thousands of marketing decision-makers. But what is it, exactly, and why is it leaving CMOs fed up and frustrated?
Imagine graduating from college with a marketing degree and being able to immediately function as a marketer in most any company or situation. Education has forever grappled with the the "theory vs. practice" problem. Here's how to balance the two approaches.
Drawing inspiration from some of the brightest B2B content marketers, here are five ways to help solve the problem of planning your content marketing and elevating the content experience of your customers to meet their evolving expectations.
In today's consumer environment, we marketers must take risks, otherwise we risk getting lost in the clutter and sinking into irrelevance. Success lies in understanding the difference between taking risks... and being risky.
The point of sale (POS) has evolved from the cash register to the online cart and now to voice-activated devices—and soon to virtually anywhere, anytime, in myriad automated ways. The one constant for marketers: user experience.
Developing new products and services in today's economy requires adaptive innovation—an ability to adjust to the fast-changing needs of target markets. Three fundamental steps are necessary to support that process.
Indecision, internal squabbles, poor protocols, and fear of finishing and "shipping" can paralyze marketing initiatives. But your content program doesn't have to go down that rabbit hole. Here are tips for quickly instituting a content marketing program.
Marketers have lately been talking much more about how augmented reality and virtual reality will change marketing. It's time to take a step back and put a practical spin on AR and VR—on what is likely to happen and what is simply hype.
Budgets aren't sexy, but they are vital for high-performing marketing organizations. If you can master these three keys, you'll create a best-in-class marketing budget—and you'll be well on your way to marketing success.
From raising awareness, to educating prospects, to completing the transaction, to enhancing customer service and beyond, predictive analytics can help you anticipate customers' needs and desires throughout their circuitous buying journey.
Do email newsletters still work, or are they a thing of the past? See what 17 successful digital marketers have to say about the effectiveness of email newsletters for online stores.
The potential power of the press release is sometimes misunderstood by marketers who aren't studied PR practitioners. Acting on those false beliefs, however, can be fraught with problems, so here are some best-practices regarding press releases as marketing tools.
The appeal of some products is obvious; they practically sell themselves. Other, "boring" products? Not so much... There is hope, though. Here are 11 powerful ways to market products that, on the face of it, seem totally unsexy.
Why in this digital world would you operate your digital marketing communications without a solid strategy and plan? Set your foundation on the right footing now, and you'll save time (and money) later. Here's how.
Marketing attribution is becoming a business imperative, but focusing on measurement is a new competency for many marketing teams. So how do you prepare? What initiatives do you need to think through? Here's how to kick-start your attribution efforts.
Influencer marketing grew out of celebrity endorsement, but with nearly everybody now on social media... it turns out that relatively ordinary, down-to-earth people are often the best influencers. But how do you find the influencers most suitable for your business?
Businesses resistant to new tech and ideas have often fallen behind or lost the ability to compete. VR and AR may still feel out of reach, but the technology will quickly become more accessible both to creators and to users.
From rules such as think big but start small and with the basics, to take an action-based approach, pick your battles, and beware of small sample sizes... in this article you'll get sound advice about data-driven marketing.
B2B mobile usage is intensifying throughout the entire buying cycle. Here are four ways B2B companies can use mobile marketing to keep pace with the customer journey.
If you've never done it, working with a B2B digital marketing agency can feel like a bold exploration of unknown territories. To make sure you don't lose your way, ask these 10 questions of your potential marketing partners.
Just because B2C brands cater to a different type of audience doesn't mean you can't pull a page from their playbook for your B2B marketing. In fact, doing so may bring a little more clarity—and a little more bang for your buck.
As an email marketer, you test subject lines and calls to action for optimal performance, but are you submitting your copy to the ultimate test? If you're not testing it for readability, you may be missing out on clicks, conversions, and revenue.
You lost your prospect to a competitor you've been enviously watching win again and again. What's happening? And how can you stop it from happening yet again?
Content is still one of the best ways to engage your customers—but you must rethink it... It's not about beautiful stories about your brand; it's about high-value, behavior-changing content about, and for, your customers and their aspirations.
In today's digital world, marketers manage thousands of images and videos. What's the best way to manage your marketing materials? Here are five best-practices to consider.
Communication matters. In organizations without effective communication, leaders can't lead, products don't sell, and projects don't get funded. Which presents a paradox: if it's that important, why does most communication fail?
To stay competitive post-IPO, Snap needs to not only maintain and grow its user base but also convince marketers of the value of using the platform for marketing and advertising. Here's what it has going for it.
If customer lifetime value is not your top marketing metric, or at least one of the top metrics, you're missing out on a massive opportunity to grow revenue quickly and easily—and profitably.
We now live in the Testimonial Economy, where what we say about ourselves doesn't matter, what others say about us is what sways opinion, and bad reviews can override even the best marketing plan and the most strategic sales plan.
To join the growing number of businesses using the proven power of influencer marketing—to the tune of a $6.50 return on each dollar invested—take these 5 steps to ensure a successful influencer marketing campaign.
You want your customers and potential customers to think of your content less as annoying advertisement and more as valuable, useful, or enjoyable marketing. Consider these seven types of content proven to help you increase leads and optimize conversion rates.
Learn how we marketers can graduate from the tried-and-true daily blast email to take a more personalized, targeted approach—and why it is so critical to our businesses that we do so.
Just because freelance writers aren't employees doesn't mean they aren't a valuable part of your marketing team. Here's how to seek out those who are right for you and bring them on board, and what signs to look for that they might not be working out.
Sometimes, your content crashes and burns. That might mean no one reads your article, it doesn't get shared, or you get bombarded with nasty comments. But, all that's OK. In fact, it might be for the better.
When a brand story is crafted correctly, consumers will be proud to associate with and represent your brand, and they will market it of their own volition via word-of-mouth.
Branding is vital in today's crowded marketplace of companies, ideas, and products. And though most of us understand visual branding with images, colors, logos, etc., few understand that sounds and music can align perfectly with brand attributes—and set your brand apart.
Videos are one of the most effective types of marketing content around. But using the right type of video for each marketing goal is key.
Black Friday might seem like it's a long time away, but some of the most worthwhile holiday marketing activities require months of planning. If you want to build out a micro-influencer program for the holiday season, this 5-month plan will get you started.
Copywriters know that creativity doesn't always come right when you need it. Here are four common causes of creative block—and ideas for overcoming them.
Before salespeople can convince a prospect to buy, they have to convince that buyer of the need for change. Facts and figures that are devoid of emotion often fail to persuade, but stories based on these four plots often succeed.
The Web continues its march toward becoming more image-centric, and any e-commerce site not willing to invest in product photography or video is already being left behind.
Brand tracking—collecting data from a static group of consumers on a regular basis—can assess and scrutinize shifts in KPIs and consumer attitudes and behaviors. You can track and benchmark everything from brand awareness to customer satisfaction to the effectiveness of an ad campaign.
A hook is the initial sentence (or single word) that grabs the attention of readers and entices them to keep reading. Here are six ways you can approach writing a tantalizing hook.
Most e-commerce businesses are still being run on email service providers (ESPs) and a patchwork of point solutions, leading to disconnected marketing, fragmented customer experiences, and no way for marketers to understand why and how customers are shopping.
Today's marketing software landscape is flooded with thousands of solutions offering myriad features and benefits. It can be nearly impossible to find the right software for you. But fear not, here's some help.
Rather than sticking to time-tested basics, marketers sometimes jump into channels they know little about. After all, what if that shiny new platform is the one you've always dreamed about? In the end, though, you're only hurting yourself.
Today's survey tools allow marketers to add more flourishes than ever to customer feedback surveys. But, it turns out, less is more when asking customers for input. See which top 3 feedback misconceptions most need busting.
Email is a highly effective channel for delivering loyalty program content and experiences that get your first-time shoppers to stick around—and drive up your customer lifetime value.
As Google's deep-learning algorithm assesses what is the most relevant and authoritative Web content, LSI keywords will continue to become more important. Jump on the bandwagon now to stand out before your competition does.
2017 is nearly halfway through, and you may already be feeling you're behind your 2017 revenue goals. No need for your anxiety to turn into a midyear panic attack, however. Instead, keep your eye on some key strategic areas and avoid these three mistakes.
Determining which technology pieces matter to your marketing team can be daunting. You need tools that help you navigate omnichannel shopping behaviors, meet customers where they are, and deliver useful experiences. Here are three essential tools road-tested by leading retail brands.
Digital video's best-practices are becoming increasingly apparent—and, with them, ROI performance is improving. Digital video is moving from a branding to a sales and branding tool. Here's what you need to know.
Marketers know: The need to create great content will only increase. And so, doing things the usual way—the way everyone else does it—may help you tick the quantity box, but you'll fall short on quality... And that won't drive results.
Tired of brainstorming? It works if done right, but it's not the only way to shake loose creative ideas. Here are 5 effective ways to uncover core brand elements, reframe concepts for stronger appeal, generate fresh approaches—and unravel other marketing and communications problems.
Small content teams are expected to do big things these days, even though no company—large or small—has enough time or budget for content. So how can you create enough content to satisfy the voracious demand for it?
By harnessing the voices of people who are your customers, you create social proof—and advocates. Better yet, they are already familiar with your messaging and brand. Here's how you can kick off a customer-generated content strategy using reviews.
Long-form content is highly effective, but producing it can burn through time—our most precious resource as marketers. What can busy content marketers, who must create more and more high-performing content, do?
Infographics are everywhere on the Web, but it isn't easy to come up with good designs to create your own. Here are five the most popular types of infographic templates, the reasons they work so well, and tips and tricks to help you make them your own.
A friend shared an image on Facebook. Intended to be a funny political meme, it instead offended many who saw it... Should she have shared that post? Could she have lost her job? Might the issue have been avoided? Are people just overly sensitive? Let's explore those questions.
Combining creativity with B2B marketing is an ongoing challenge. How do you build an emotional connection with your customers and inspire deep-seated brand loyalty when you lack the direct tactics of B2C campaigns?
Marketers know they should be following up leads with an email autoresponder sequence. But many don't know what to write, and so never get around to creating follow-up emails. Use these five approaches to stay top of mind without annoying your prospects.
This article gives search and other digital marketers an idea of how the most significant changes in Google's paid products will affect search advertising strategy in 2017 and beyond.
Facebook is intentionally giving more organic exposure to live videos, which is why Facebook Live dominates the News Feeds of most users these days. What does that mean for businesses and B2B marketers? Here are a few ways to use Facebook Live to benefit your business.
It's jarring to realize you've been designing customer experience all wrong because you've prioritized scale over end-user satisfaction... But how do you set things straight? Change is notoriously difficult, but it is possible; these three steps will set you well on your way.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the sexiest conversation in email marketing, but few marketers are ready for it. Here's what the buzz doesn't tell you, and what you can do now to prepare for an AI-empowered future.
Everyone is publishing content today, at a blinding rate, and your undifferentiated content is getting lost in a sea of equally indistinguishable content. Bad news: Your content has become a commodity. Here's what you can do about it.
People's product preferences are undoubtedly influenced by media, and your audiences have no qualms about using media to share stories about their brand experiences. So here's how you can harness UGC to influence your target audience.
Google updates its search engine algorithms up to 600 times a year, but it no longer announces major algorithm changes. So search engine marketers have been left speculating about their ranking changes and guessing what the future holds. Here's some help.
What's so hard about engaging people who were already convinced enough about you to have made an initial purchase? These are five big mistakes companies make in their relationships with customers.
Social media's importance in the sales/marketing funnel is by now undisputed, but visibility into the insights each platform can provide is often clouded by meaningless metrics. Here's how your team should be using social insights to guide major marketing decisions.
Communities offer you an opportunity to better understand your customers by capitalizing on the data they provide online. You can then use that data to offer personalized content at various points in the customer journey.
It's no secret that video has become a more and more significant piece of the content marketing mix—and livestreaming has become a rapidly growing and effective tactic. The tips and tricks in this guide will help you get live video right.
Machine-learning (ML) startups are flourishing, and companies are predicating their value proposition on artificial intelligence (AI). That's because both ML and AI will likely have immense impact on profitability—and transform marketing.
With consumer trust of brands at an all-time low, customer reviews are more important than ever—both to buyers, who use them to make decisions, and to brands, which should be using them to boost revenue. How? Here are some tips on how to harness the power of online reviews.
How can you ensure a constant flow of new and engaging content to maintain your following and reach new audiences? And how can you improve your SEO? By cleverly recycling old content, you can solve both problems.
Coca-Cola has decided to eliminate the position of CMO; instead, Coke has created a chief growth officer role, in charge of both its customer and its commercial teams. Here's what marketers can learn from the shakeup.
Over 2 million blog posts are published each day. No wonder many marketers struggle with generating fresh content ideas to fuel their marketing efforts. Here are seven tactics to overcome your idea-generation hurdles.
A good content workflow makes your publishing process a lot more effective. Here's how you can organize the work of your content team and simplify the production and distribution of marketing content.
Go figure... The online reputation management industry has an image problem. So it's time to pull an Elon Musk and share a blueprint of how to do it right. These are the details you won't see anywhere in public, not even at conferences.
If you want your marketing and your business to succeed, you need to make the most of your lead generation campaigns and achieve the highest-possible ROI. Here are a few ways you can do that.
We've become used to hearing about Millennials as "the next generation of consumers." That's no longer the case. Millennials are adults now. They're the current generation. And they're your customers. Here's how to reach them.
The revenue number can hide successes as well as problems, and it tells you little about your customers. Here are six key performance indicators that are better at measuring the pulse of your business.
Many components of content marketing are controllable and predictable. What isn't? Your audience's response. Here's what you can do when a piece of content you've created simply doesn't produce the right results.
In the past year, Google made changes to AdWords intended to open up new channels for marketers on mobile devices. Here are four easy tweaks that will make the most of those new channels to get you more leads and conversions.
Moments that lead to a mobile or digital action in a consumer's daily life may seem trivial, but they can hold large opportunities for brands. Those "micro-moments," as Google has termed them, occur when consumers turn to a device for a specific need, anytime and anywhere.
Too often, salespeople don't understand the buyer's world or needs, and don't know to communicate real value. But whose fault is it? The sellers'? They often get the blame, but it might well lie with Marketing...
We've seen the shocking viral videos. The rage-inducing photos. The fire-and-brimstone calls for a boycotts and firings. How did it all go so wrong? More important: What lessons can we learn from United Airlines' ongoing struggles?
Here's what you need to know about fake news, why you should consider fact-checking in your own content marketing, and how to implement a fact-checking process.
Instead of hypothetical ways that might increase your site's organic traffic, here are proven approaches that 17 SEO experts themselves use.
The proliferation of digital devices, coupled with a deluge of short, "snackable" content, has given consumers greater choice than ever in how and where they consume media. How can you get them to notice your ads?
Just 18 words. Marketing and Sales pros who know this powerful stat, fly; and those who don't, die. (Well, their emails do.)
The time for personal branding is now, and today is the best day to start developing your personal brand. Here are 26 tips, from A to Z, to help your personal branding efforts.
From the tiniest startups in Silicon Valley to the largest global organizations, consumer and B2B marketers are pouring more resources than ever into video. But if you're just now getting into video marketing, these tips will help you catch up quickly.
To garner full value from their social intelligence strategies, CPG companies should be mindful of incorporating these three initiatives into their social plans.
Too many nurture touchpoints, too many pieces of outreach, too many really bad email messages. Buyers are beginning to shut down, and that's going to be a big problem for marketers. Unless...
It seems so obvious: Businesses that take a proactive approach to customer success, going out of their way to anticipate customers' needs and offer help rather than waiting to be asked, are more likely to have loyal and repeat customers.
Let's be honest: Website visitors hate to fill out your lead generation forms. Luckily, there are proven ways to reduce form friction and get prospects to hand over their valuable information.
The good news: The proliferation of new ad platforms and formats has created a lot of opportunities for publishers. The bad news: The proliferation of new ad platforms and formats has created tons of confusion and a whole new set of challenges.
Between two similar videos, what makes one buzz to the top of the YouTube charts, and one languish in obscurity? Experts weigh in.
When planning an experiential marketing campaign, it can be tempting to sink a titanic budget into the splashiest one-day event ever conceived, but that single-minded pursuit of buzz is risky. There are icebergs in those waters.
In the fast-moving world of marketing, it's easy to feel stuck. Here's what you can do to get your career moving forward.
Whether you're focused on building a content strategy, creating and distributing content, or measuring content performance, even one-person teams can achieve content marketing success.
Perhaps it's time marketing and advertising agencies re-evaluated their mission statements and standard operating procedures. Here are three still-relevant catchphrases from Jerry Maguire that agencies can learn from.
Marketers are known for late nights and jam-packed days. Unfortunately, that kind of schedule can lead to diminished productivity at best, and burnout and turnover at worst. There's a better way.
When you scale your content creation efforts with user-generated content, and use real customer photos alongside branded content in your marketing, you'll gain credibility and authenticity for your brand and marketing—and help generate sales.
Although Facebook and Google dominate mobile advertising, marketers run the risk of relying too much on them for the results their brands need. Spreading spend across a variety of channels increases the likelihood of optimal ad performance.
Account-based marketing might be thought of as an enterprise-level tactic, but that doesn't mean ABM, albeit scaled down, can't provide outsized results for your small-to-midsize business.
For many companies, selling beyond their home market is essential to business success. But selling into new markets is easier said than done. Here's sound advice for European B2B companies that want to localize marketing for the US.
Neuroscience can give marketers deep insight into what works and what doesn't in persuading customers to buy a product or service. These five neuromarketing principles will boost your marketing efforts.
These five steps for successful audience targeting will enable you to pair audiences with the right messaging to communicate in more personal and meaningful ways, ultimately allowing you to reach your business goals.
If you've decided that your business needs a digital asset management (DAM) system to take over from your old, complex legacy systems, demonstrating business value may be fairly easy. If you've never had any comparable tools before, your job may be harder, especially if budgets are tight.
The biggest challenge for a lot of distributed marketing organizations is that they don't have sufficient visibility into the co-op spending of their independent partners.
Star ratings are simple, but they have an immense effect. They increase social proof, boost word-of-mouth marketing, and improve the results of paid ads. And, most important, they influence purchases.
Not all influencers are the same. In fact, there are plenty of phonies and lame ducks out there. So how do you determine whether they can make a difference for your ROI? Here are three ways.
Search engines want to show the world your content, but not if you've made mistakes that undermine the user experience and search engines' guidelines. So give them what they want by avoiding these eight common mistakes that content creators make.
The SIC and NAICS classification systems were developed in an era of relatively little technology, but they provide a useful framework for the hundreds of industry verticals that manufacturing marketers address every day.
Even if consumers don't actually purchase via mobile, chances are mobile was a part of their customer journey. Here are three lessons from four top retail mobile apps to help you create mobile experiences your customers will love.
Marketing videos create awareness. But then what? What do viewers do after they click the "Play" button? If you want to know a lot more about your customers and your videos, get them interacting with each other. It's easier than you think, and you'll get data while your customers and prospects get a personalized experience.
You can't get answers if you don't ask questions. And if you don't get answers, you can't make informed decisions. Ask these nine questions, and you'll be on your way to owning your content-job interview.
If you're on the content bandwagon, but you don't know your customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV), you're playing a dangerous game: How do you know spending all that money on content marketing is worth it?
Donor retention is top of mind for nonprofits. And rightly so. But less than 1 in 10 take the most efficient and affordable action for combating decreasing donor retention: executing a welcome series.
You don't have time to do marketing yourself, but you know you need to if your business is going to succeed. Hiring an outside firm can be an option, but it can also be a risk. You need to clearly weigh the potential pros and cons.
Content publishers have mountains to climb in trying to reach and monetize their audiences in this mobile-first, ad-averse world. How can you reach readers, viewers, and listeners—and keep them coming back?
As with any marketing tactic, there is a right way, a wrong way, and a really wrong way to use SMS, too, for marketing. These best-practices and tips from experts will help you avoid pitfalls and guide you on the path to good SMS marketing.
Tradeshows and in-person events are powerful marketing tactics. Read on to learn what to do before, during, and after a tradeshow to drive engagement and sales.
This detailed guide can help you and your brand benefit from guest-posting—to position you as subject-matter experts, drive traffic to your site and generate leads, increase your audience reach, make connections with influencers, and much more...
What do your employees actually think about your brand? Do they trust your leadership team? And when they talk about the company publicly, does what they say support or undercut your marketing goals?
As a leader, building up the confidence of your marketing team is among the most rewarding things you can do—both for yourself and for your company. Give these five confidence-building techniques a try.
Changes in healthcare marketing have much in common with the shifts B2B marketers across industries have experienced in recent years. So there's plenty B2B marketers can learn from the world of healthcare marketing.
It turns out that having a C-level executive in charge of content marketing has not been realistic, but the need for content—and content leadership—remains. So who's going to lead the content team, and what skills should team members have?
To improve performance, optimize spend, and enhance customer experience, marketers must inject data and analytics into every phase of their marketing. Here's how you can avoid five common pitfalls of measuring marketing and media performance.
We have entered a new age of search experience optimization—and marketers the world over are on the hunt for the best recipe for cooking up a profitable search experience.
Here are some real-life examples of how an account-based marketing and selling approach on LinkedIn can drive not just reach and awareness but also demand and revenue.
Call tracking is one of the most powerful tools for your inbound marketing efforts. It results in clear-cut, actionable campaign data, enabling you to better optimize your inbound marketing strategy.
Marketers are using more digital channels than ever, and they are under pressure to prove the ROI of those efforts. Many look to attribution solutions to understand how channels are contributing to sales. But it's not that simple.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) become keys to optimizing your marketing only when you apply what you learn. Here's how to take a smarter approach to marketing with KPIs that guide your decisions.
Content marketers strive to create content that not only speaks directly to their target audiences but also compels those audiences to take action. Easier said then done, of course. But these three steps can help.
The annual marketing plan you created last quarter already feels out of date. How on earth are you supposed to plan for an entire year when marketing technology and platforms are changing at the speed of light?
Consumers can afford to be selective: Global competition is the norm today, and your retail competitors offer comparable prices and user experiences. To stay competitive in this environment, retailers and brands must make four key trends a priority in 2017.
Any detail of your branding efforts can have a negative or positive effect on your customers' decision-making. These visual hacks will help you get attention and enhance your branding efforts.
The challenge? Measuring Marketing's performance and value to the business. The traditional approach to metrics simply perpetuates the myth that marketing activity equals value. Here's how to measure Marketing's true value instead.
The mobile and digital revolutions have changed the way national and global brands can reach consumers where they are, and when and how they want to be reached. Here's how to do local right.
Part 1 examined stimuli that get the attention of the decision-making portion of the brain. Part 2 explains how specific tactics appeal to the brain and improve the effectiveness of your marketing.
Choosing the right social network for your marketing campaigns is as important as the quality of the campaign's content. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and YouTube offer discrete opportunities and challenges.
For healthcare professionals, the days of hanging a shingle and waiting for patients is long over. So what are the best strategies for healthcare organizations, doctors, and physician practices in today's digital world?
Here are five ways to get smart about planning, implementing, and measuring video to ensure your video marketing campaign engages your audiences and achieves your objectives.
Measuring the impact and influence of organic LinkedIn activity is not easy. The social network's analytics features are limited for organic (i.e., not advertising-related) activity. But it's doable.
Tradeshows can feel overwhelming unless you have a few tips and tricks up your sleeve. Luckily, you know exactly what you need to do to make a fantastic impression—thanks to an article you read about nailing your first tradeshow...
Having a strong understanding of your customers helps you spot warning signals before sales go completely south, as well as discover trends that can lead to new areas of growth and opportunity. Here are five steps you can take.
Customers buy on convenience—because they want to make their job or their life easier. Automatic renewals are as easy as it gets. And from a business standpoint, it guarantees repeat business—the lifeblood of well-run organizations.
Are you becoming an annoyance in your customer's inbox? Avoid these six worst-practices and learn how to instead get your messaging to resonate with your audience.
Content marketing experts Scott Abel, Ardath Albee, Michael Brenner, Ann Handley, and Robert Rose share a heap of insights on content. If you know content marketing, you know that's quite a squad.
Just about anyone, not just the talented few, can be creative. Here are six techniques for coming up with loads of creative ideas.
To ensure your marketing communications engage and convince your audiences, you'll need to understand how the human mind works. These are the six characteristics of the decision-making part of the brain you should be using to your advantage.
Why are case studies so useful in sales and marketing? Because they can trigger the underlying emotional drivers of buyer behavior. So here are five ways you can apply psychology to supercharge case studies—and content, in general.
As marketing technologies, channels, and platforms evolve, so must the skill sets of digital marketing professionals. Do you and your team have the most important digital marketing skills needed for success in 2017?
Before you create marketing content, you need to ask why, what, when, and where—the 4Ws. And because content creation is as much science as it is art, you need data about the 4Ws of marketing content.
Addressable TV is a powerful advertising tactic. Its advantages lie in the data available for targeting, its ability to significantly reduce waste, its ROI measurability, and the post-campaign data that helps you optimize traditional TV buys.
Just-in-time marketing reduces marketing waste and drives revenue growth. Investing in the right capabilities, models, and technologies can transform marketing operations and achieve a competitive edge.
In an age of algorithms and artificial intelligence, marketers don't just need to be tech-savvy... they need to be tech-everything. That may sound like an exaggeration, but have you looked at job postings lately?
To build loyalty and retain customers, marketing teams can take these four steps that improve customer insights and the overall customer experience—and build lasting customer relationships.
Which of your social media connections are potential advocates for your B2B company, and how do you build an advocacy system around them?
In 2017, marketers will be at the mercy of politics. Net Neutrality, a pillar of Cloud-based content, apps, and services, faces extinction. If the Web becomes a pay-for-performance utility, Cloud-based marketing strategies could become prohibitively expensive.
Mark Zuckerberg said at the end of 2015 that we would be in the "Golden Age of Video" for some five years. So... it's not over yet, and business owners' and marketers' growing access to video will only further the shift in our social feeds in 2017.
Jargon isn't necessarily gibberish. Use it right, and you can make your content more effective. But the most commonly used jargon doesn't do that at all.
The past year provided fertile ground for social media goofs and gaffes. Many marketers apparently didn't do enough thinking before they clicked on the tweet, post, publish, or share button. Here are some of 2016's biggest social media fails and the lessons they can teach us.
Social media is already an important part of the customer experience. Which is why marketers are using social listening for better targeting during the customer journey. Here are the social listening capabilities you need in your marketing strategy for 2017 and beyond.
A panel of senior business leaders at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum discussed their careers and offered advice on the path from modern marketer to CMO or CEO. These four common lessons emerged from the discussion.
Video content is becoming indispensable for your marketing efforts... Here's how you can create engaging videos and use your video content to build a loyal audience.
For nonprofits, social media marketing can be just as advantageous as it is for businesses. It's a great way to build support, grow your ranks of volunteers, and increase donations. But you need to be vigilant.
Just because we marketers understand the power of video doesn't mean we use it to its full potential. If you're not using video in all the stages of the marketing funnel, you're leaving conversions and sales on the table.
People check their smartphones obsessively—dozens, even hundreds, of times per day—and they open most of their emails on mobile devices. Here are five ways we email marketers can use those mobile habits to better reach our customers.
What if, rather than thinking of your blog as a chore on a to-do list, you were to view it as a savings account, with each post a long-term investment that generates increasing traffic and relevant leads?
Myth: creative content is the result of a smooth, linear process, thanks to inspired designers, writers, illustrators... The idea appeals to project managers and heads of marketing who love their Gantt charts. But the reality is more goat rodeo than Gantt chart. There is a better way.
We know a good tradeshow display when we see one: It's usually the booth attracting a ton of visitors and leads. Sure, success depends on more than just display design, but design helps you stand out in a sea of exhibitors.
At a time when tips and tricks for running an online business are so readily available, it should be easy to learn about achieving success. But how can you tell the difference between sound advice and seemingly sound myths?
As he moves from provocateur to President, what can Donald Trump learn from marketers about how to build relationships, grow influence, and sustain engagement? He might consider these four marketing-tested ideas.
All of us face a low-cost or low-price competitor at one time or another. The solution isn't to lower your prices and engage in a price war; that just means low profitability for everyone. So what can you do to compete?
Push marketing. Pull marketing. Content marketing. Social selling. Sales enablement. All are in the playbook that Marketing and Sales use to grow the business via digital channels. Here's what content marketers need to know about their role.
There are four main messaging channels your mobile app can use for marketing. Find out which of the four you should be using in specific, real-world situations.
Social media monitoring—AKA social listening—can help you build brand loyalty among your customers. Here are some simple steps you can take to encourage customer loyalty.
Facebook ads can be powerful, but only if you avoid some common mistakes. Here's how your customer service team can help you do just that so you can create better Facebook ads.
Collecting marketing intelligence on our competitors and rivals has long been a headache in search of an aspirin. We've had to use Google and scores of standalone tools to conduct competitive research. But it looks like we might have a cure in sight, in the form of a chatbot.
In 2017, three major shifts in how we create, promote, and measure video content will bring about the tipping point that changes the game and puts us squarely on track for the Golden Age of Video.
Ask B2B marketers to identify what they are focused on, year after year, and they will say "revenue." Enter marketing performance management. As we enter 2017, five key changes will make MPM a greater priority than ever for B2B organizations.
Marketers know that collecting and using customer data is central to generating positive business results. But, as always, the devil is in the details. Use these five tactics in 2017 to get more value from the customer data you're collecting.
If 2016 was anything to go by, we marketers should be excited about marketing automation in 2017. If you want your automation efforts to pay off this year, keep these seven predictions and best-practices in mind.
Marketing technology has been instrumental in helping marketers reach their audiences in 2016. Here's what you can expect from martech in 2017.
2016 was a big year for mobile marketing, but 2017 will be even bigger. A few tech trends looming on the horizon are going to make a deep impact on every mobile marketer’s work—whether they know it or not.
Did you sigh when you heard Google is revoking free access to its Keyword Planner? Your first reaction was probably something like "Google is sticking it to us again." But there's an easy, inexpensive workaround: a small PPC campaign.
Even as marketing changes at breakneck speed, some things stay the same. The four pillars of performance have withstood the test of time, so keep them in mind to improve your marketing campaigns' chances of success.
Marketing campaigns that take months to plan, launch, and execute may still have a place in today's always-connected world, but if you aren't also jumping into real-time marketing, you will lose out.
Customer churn is a normal part of doing business. The reasons customers leave you are diverse, but they fall in two categories: voluntary and involuntary. Understanding the differences between the two can dramatically improve your customer retention.
The experience economy gives us the opportunity to do more than just sell goods and services; we can now create unique memories and experiences for our customers—and in the process achieve competitive advantage.
SEO has evolved significantly, especially over the past few years: It is no longer search engine optimization, per se; our content efforts are now aimed at users, not search bots. These tips will help make your own SEO content more engaging in 2017.
No matter your audience, their fear of missing out (FOMO) can work marketing magic for you, especially in the age of social media. But beware: If you don't make use of FOMO responsibly, it'll backfire.
Writing isn't supposed to be easy. But that doesn't mean it has to be painful. Here are a few things I do to power through. Call it a list of struggling-writer affirmations.
Could a network of partners be your ticket to accelerated growth and market expansion? If so, where do you start? How do you build a solid partner ecosystem and ensure it's functioning as it should?
If you're considering investing in marketing video in 2017, you'll want to read these useful tips for creating an explainer video that can help you drive more sales.
Live video is a powerful, authentic, engaging, measurable, and cost-effective marketing option that more and more brands are turning to, for good reason. Here are some helpful tips to get you started.
To many midmarket retailers today, Amazon.com seems unstoppable. It's not. An underdog, however, doesn't win by beating a giant at its own game—but by outwitting, outmaneuvering, and out-strategizing it.
The insight you can derive from your own customers is invaluable. It will help you to not only increase the effectiveness of your content marketing but also reach your business and growth goals.
Scenario analysis is an essential part of creating agility. Scenarios help you anticipate. They help you ask better questions and prepare for the unexpected. They increase your readiness, which is what sets the stage for agility.
Last year, I wrote about five SEO trends you needed to know in 2016. Much has stayed the same since I made those predictions, but much has changed, too. Here are five of the hottest SEO trends you can expect to see in 2017.
This B2B positioning health-check will tell you how effective your positioning really is. And it'll help you overcome preconceived notions about positioning effectiveness and give you a proven way to perform a realistic assessment.
In the debate of paid traffic versus organic traffic, which wins? Is that even the right question to ask? Here are some lessons learned from a recent campaign.
Along their buying journey, customers are often in uncharted territory, stressed and disoriented. Your job is to keep them on track to reach their (and your) desired goal. Various types of online community can help.
Influencer marketing hoped to reclaim authenticity in advertising by influencing the conversations consumers are already having with experts and one another. Along the way, it strayed. Here's how it can reclaim authenticity.
How do you unify efforts with different team members, initiatives, and strategies for your blog, email, and social media marketing? You need a content strategy that accounts for each channel. These five steps will lead you to a cohesive cross-functional marketing plan.
Never sit through another irrelevant keynote again... Learn how to spot the next big-name speakers—and gain truly useful information—instead of paying too much for the same-old faces.
What Google Analytics data should marketers home in on to help executives understand the impact of marketing content and online efforts on delivering value through the sales funnel?
Don't spam your contact database with generic holiday email greetings; they will be ignored, your time will have been wasted, and your brand will lose credibility. Instead, make your efforts count. Here's how.
Account-based marketing is built on six processes that flip the focus from generating leads to courting the companies you want to do business with. An added benefit: total sales and marketing alignment.
Here's how to apply loyalty best-practices to your social media marketing to increase customer retention and long-term loyalty.
You've found yourself in the midst of the most crowded market imaginable—online content. The best shot you have at attracting and maintaining audiences is relevancy. And the foundation of relevancy is personalization. Embrace it.
Marketing has readily accepted the power of referral programs. Their reach, trust factor, and ability to target the right people combine to quickly and effectively boost customer acquisition. But some common mistakes undermine success.
Finding your way to content marketing success is not always easy. Here are four lessons and a few secrets to help you on your journey.
Traffic, acquisition, and sales have been critical priorities for marketers. Yet customer retention also plays a key role, though it is often neglected. Consider these marketing and retention trends and ideas as you finalize plans for the coming year.
Here's real advice for optimizing your website in a way that is both strategic and natural. Learn how to avoid Google penalties for over-optimized content, and get best-practices and character limit guidelines for optimization.
Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) allows you to check your website's indexing status and to optimize its visibility for searchers. Here are issues you're like to face and how to deal with them.
Various ranking factors contribute to ranking your website and content high in search results, but the one that is seemingly ignored among them is consistently identified as the one with the biggest impact: links.
"Enriching benefits" have a strong influence on how much consumers admire a brand. Such benefits inspire consumers, moving them to action and engendering loyalty toward the brand.
What really motivates buyers to act? When using content, many B2B companies struggle to engage buyers. Here are eight engagement tactics that work, according to research, but marketers use them too infrequently.
At what point does a buyer persona mutate from a useful marketing tool into a meaningless collection of bullet points, stock headshots, and random guesses? Here's what we really need to know about our prospects to motivate them to respond.
Email marketers don't often go too far beyond conversion-, click-, and open-rate data. Yet, to create email campaigns that engage your subscribers and increase ROI, you'll need to.
The success of an e-commerce store can be determined by whether it generates enough quality traffic that ultimately turns into sales. SEO can effectively drive traffic for all websites; e-commerce, however, presents unique challenges.
In the world of marketing operations (MO), words like "enterprise" and "scale" are common, but we rarely hear "small business" enter the conversation. Ironically, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) need MO the most if they are to grow into the company they want to be.
Content that not only works but also makes users want to share it? It's possible when you understand the basics of contextual marketing.
The digital, multi-device era has disrupted traditional brand storytelling—fragmenting story plots and making genuine engagement rare. But here's how brands can still tell captivating stories that bridge channels and devices.
People often use Facebook Events to connect and meet up in the real world. So why not marketers? Facebook can help promote your in-person events—which are among the most effective B2B marketing tactics you can use.
Positive word-of-mouth (WOM) has long been documented as a powerful growth tool. The good news: unlike our B2C brethren, we B2B marketers can strategically manage WOM. Here are three ways to ensure word-of-mouth skews positive.
Lasting brand admiration is achieved when your business becomes part of who people are (think "Mac people") and what they stand for. That kind of relationship isn't accidental or the result of good fortune.
If you are part of a nonprofit struggling to gain donor support, get your team in the same room and ask yourselves two questions.
A unilateral or bilateral business model, whereby vendors sell to customers or via business partners, is old-school. Today, forming an ecosystem is the way to increase shareholder value, foster customer relationships, and enhance brand equity.
You don't have to do the verbal equivalent of dressing up in a burger suit and jumping up and down at passing cars. You can give your sales page copy some rhythm and oomph with these more subtle jazzifying moves.
How does the explosion in marketing tech help your team get stuff done today? It doesn't. So until you evaluate, decide, deploy, integrate, and optimize your marketing stack, try these lightweight but useful tools that cost little and are simple to use.
Beyoncé is a shining example of how a public figure and a brand can intertwine. But it's not just individuals who can learn a great deal from the renowned and meticulously built Beyoncé brand; companies can, too.
It's exciting to be part of a growing business. But growth can also be stressful, especially for Marketing. In fact, sometimes growth can cripple your business if you do not have the resources to adequately support it.
Clearly, developing a customer journey map is beneficial to your business. But how do you ensure that all of your work in mapping the customer journey will be properly implemented within your organization?
Just five years ago, in small-to-midmarket companies, 1-2 people were typically involved in the purchase decision. In recent years, that trend has shifted; now, 3+ people must approve purchases, even those below $50,000.
Content marketing can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Either way, six fundamental content principles should be guiding how you create and distribute your work. The trouble is, many marketers ignore at least some of those principles.
Enablement. Enticement. Enrichment. Those three E's are the very foundation of brand admiration. And they are important for any brand in any industry. So how should they be fostered?
If you want to help overwhelmed, time-poor searchers to find you and your business online, then it's time to think hard about what you publish, where, when, how often, and—most important—why. Enter the content calendar.
Most of the tricks and tactics that worked on Facebook a few years ago no longer work; today, they can actually harm your page's ranking potential. Here are some mistakes you might be making—and tips on how to avoid them.
Word-of-mouth marketing is nothing new, but digital influencer marketing is... and all parties involved have a lot to learn still. Which is why many brands are approaching influencer marketing the wrong way—and souring the results.
As technology becomes a driving force in marketing and sales, B2B companies need to better understand the art and science behind launching and executing a successful lead generation program.
An instant is all it takes to threaten your business's sterling reputation online. These five reputation management tools are some of the best for tracking mentions, discovering influencers, and managing online reviews as they happen.
PowerPoint files, and the information contained within them, are a valuable business (not just marketing or sales) asset. Presentation management unlocks the value of that asset, empowering everyone to make better presentations—before they ever open PowerPoint.
With the summer over, many companies are starting to think about capturing consumer attention in the run-up to the holidays. If pay-per-click advertising on Google or Bing is in your marketing plan, here are a few tips to help you get ahead.
It doesn't matter how much time you spend on crafting your marketing campaign: You have no guarantee it will pay off. Sometimes marketing just doesn't work the way you want it to. Here's what to do when that happens.
Becoming known as an eco-friendly brand isn't easy. Especially when so many brands present themselves as environmentally minded, and make so much noise on social and traditional media, even if their actually practices don't follow suit.
A consistently successful e-commerce site depends on myriad factors, and it is near on impossible to control all of them to guarantee success, but one thing you can do is to plug the holes that drain your sales.
Word-of-mouth marketing is not new, but companies are putting a new spin on it to help their marketing, sales, and recruiting: Instead of customers, employees are the ones spreading word to their social networks via employee advocacy programs.
How would customers react to your company's mistakes and missteps if it had long ago made sure to invest in becoming an admired brand? Certainly not the way they would to the mistakes of a brand they didn't admire.
Getting people to grasp new ideas and ways of doing things is especially critical to the sales process in tech companies. Which is why applying teaching and learning principles to scripting and producing marketing videos makes so much sense.
You market and sell to businesses. So, if you're going to create B2B sales and marketing material (which—make no mistake—your explainer video is), keep in mind these five tips for writing a video script that converts.
B2B marketers live in a world powered by stats and facts; no wonder data visualization has become a thing, especially since so many people are visual learners. But data visualization isn't about pretty design, it's about telling a great story.
If you develop a new offering, will customers buy it? That's the perennial challenge for today's companies, and it's increasing as pressures to innovate "first and fast" intensify.
In love and in email marketing, you have to learn to admit when a relationship isn't working—especially when email subscribers you're attempting to woo are instead getting you blocked or blacklisted. Here are four types of offending addresses and how to deal with each of them.
Marketing rules and tactics for professional services providers (accountants, attorneys, physicians, dentists...) are often different from those for product or service marketers. Here's how newsletters work exceptionally well for professional services.
Modern CMOs know that to be successful they must integrate multiple data streams to glean valuable, actionable information for Marketing, Sales, and the wider business. Here's how to tell whether social efforts are having an impact on your company.
Today, Google ends support for Converted Clicks in AdWords. If you're still using this metric in reports or for Target CPA bidding, here's what you'll have to do.
You've probably noticed that you (and a lot of other advertisers) have recently been paying more for PPC campaigns than you used to. So how can you pay less, short of putting a stop to your PPC campaign or lowering your bids?
Until the Perfect Landing Page is created—an imaginary creature, no doubt—we will continue tweaking and testing and arguing the merits and faults of every landing page element. But these three unexpected tips will improve your landing page.
People like to be catered to, but not pandered to. Doubly so when they're at the receiving end of a marketing campaign. And especially so if they're Millennials. So here's advice from a Millennial on how to actually reach young customers.
Just how valuable is brand admiration, and what impact does it have on your brand's bottom line?
The story of the Trojan Horse seems a simple tale, but it was a stroke of strategic genius that took concerted effort to pull off. And there are important business and marketing lessons to be learned from it.
In our fast-paced, always-on, agile, want-it-yesterday, mile-a-minute world... there is a critical need to slow down. Why? Because doing so allows you to achieve real results—faster.
Print collateral is still an important sales and marketing medium. To produce strongly branded, high-impact print media, you need to know what materials work best together. So here are must-know basics about printers, ink, paper, and collateral types.
Your product is naked in front of all of your prospects, and they're highlighting not just its obvious beauty and strengths but also its small blemishes, stained teeth, and bad haircut. That's not a nightmare. That is the reality in our age of technology.
Most marketers strive to communicate as effectively as possible—except, unfortunately, when they're training fellow marketers. Because that's when, for some reason, PowerPoint takes center stage.
Developing strong messaging and activating it across your organization ensure that everyone can communicate clearly and consistently about your company's value. And that vastly increases your chances of attracting customers you want to attract.
Use these tips—straight from the mouths of journalists—to help your press release stand out from the ineffective and soon-to-be-deleted competition in your target journalist's inbox.
We're all familiar with the 3 Rs from elementary school. These days, though, every marketer—especially those working in e-commerce—should have a firm grip on three other essential Rs: retention, retargeting, and re-engagement.
Photo-sharing social network Instagram recently launched its most significant and talked-about feature to date, Instagram Stories. Here are five ways you can use Stories as a creative marketing tool.
Respect for a brand—for its identity, purpose, and achievements—increases brand credibility and influence, results in forgiveness of mistakes, and creates access to better partnerships and talent. How can you go about gaining such respect?
B2B marketing leaders who have experience with rapid growth give advice on the role of Marketing in such growth, what it means to think like a growth marketer, what challenges arise with scale, and how to approach those challenges.
"At work upon a client query, while I pondered, bleak and bleary, / Over many a bloated and drab volume of marketing lore, / While I nodded, nearly blotto, over another limp marketing motto, / Came to my cell a tweet so branded, deftly done, not underhanded..."
From time savings and increased productivity to usage rights, asset protection, and more, DAM's day as an essential tool for creative directors has arrived. The rewards are plentiful, and the risks of not investing in it are too great to ignore.
If you don't have video experience, video marketing can be intimidating. But it doesn't have to be. Here's a cheat sheet to get you started making great videos for YouTube.
Customers of businesses that don't focus on good customer experience are leaving in droves. Here's how to monitor customer experience and why a more holistic approach to doing so will benefit both your business and your customers.
Content curation builds trust and credibility for your brand because it keeps customers informed. You can communicate industry news, trends, how-to tips, or whatever your business goals dictate. Here's how to get started.
Is your email marketing growing stale? If you're up for trying something different, possibly even a little scary, try these somewhat unconventional ways to give your email marketing that much-needed boost.
Businesses need a strong mobile engagement strategy, but people use the mobile Web, apps, and SMS in different ways. How can you use each mobile medium for real-time communication with consumers?
Content now spreads in nanoseconds, so there's more risk in marketing than ever before. Brand reputation is at stake. Thus the importance of good storytelling. Because bad stories live forever online as a black scar on your brand's reputation.
The fear of public speaking is as old as humanity itself. Snakes in the stomach. Sweaty palms. The urge to run away... If you can relate, maybe it's time for a new approach.
If you cultivate and foster brand trust correctly, your company won't need to constantly throw piles of money at rebuilding and repairing trust with customers.
MMM and attribution measure the value and performance of your marketing activities. Both are sophisticated models for measuring cross-channel marketing activities, but they work in different ways, for different reasons.
Navigating call-tracking offerings can be difficult, especially if you're not sure of what to look for in a provider. Keep these four things in mind as a checklist of criteria when shopping for call-analytics software.
Calls from search, social, and display ads are often the most lucrative type of conversion, but also the most difficult for marketers to measure and optimize. Here's a basic lesson in how call attribution works and how it can benefit you.
As any good journalist will tell you, you don't have to have a degree in a topic to write about it well—and confidently. Even so, creating content for a company is often a different beast.
Without a doubt, data and analytics have become central to every organization's business strategy. Find out how to enable your marketing organization to successfully use data and analytics to drive business decisions.
Maybe? A little? Probably? Yeah... a fast-loading website contributes both to better results via search and to better user experience. And it need not be difficult or expensive to speed up your site.
The more relevant, interesting, and even entertaining the content that you share or publish, the more your audience will view you as a trustworthy source of information, and not just a provider of a product or service. Content curation can help.
Businesses depend on email as the glue that pulls marketing tactics together, yet many otherwise savvy marketers misuse email in a way that ultimately alienates customers. Here are six common blunders.
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