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- Three Agile Marketing Tips for the Post-Pandemic Economy
The popularity of Agile Marketing is growing, and it's easy to see why: When plans are turned upside down by a black swan event, marketers are naturally drawn to an approach that lets them change course quickly. Here are three tips for adopting Agile methods.
Many of us still rely on traditional content types to drive our content marketing and thought leadership. It's time for that to change: Your company podcast contains all the content you need in easy-to-repurpose conversations. Here's the why and how-to.
The full effects of 2020 on marketing budgets in 2021 have yet to be felt, but it's safe to say marketers will have to focus more than ever on ROI. To ensure your marketing strategy gets peak returns this year, emphasize these three important areas.
The accelerated transfer of B2B business to digital-only formats has emphasized the importance of sales enablement technology. Even after the pandemic, digital-first attitudes are likely to persist—so ensure your sales enablement tech strategy measures up.
Going green is usually associated with consumer awareness, so it may seem irrelevant to consider for a B2B company. Not so: from financial benefits to positive PR opportunities, B2B marketers have a lot to gain from embracing the sustainable practices of their B2C counterparts.
Content creation is one of those tasks organizational leaders should do but rarely find the time for. Extracting content, or even content ideas, from executives and internal experts is a major challenge for marketers. Here are six practical ways to get the content you need.
Why are we producing content? To generate leads, drive sales, and build authority. You'll need to bring readers in at the top of the funnel and work your way down to drive sales. Here's how.
However 2020 played out for your company, it certainly illuminated some universal marketing obstacles that we can all learn from. Going into 2021, we can take advantage of those struggles and turn them into opportunities.
Experiential marketing doesn't have to rely on physical interaction. B2B companies can learn from their B2C counterparts by hosting virtual events that offer an interactive way for people to "leave" the house. To that end, focus on these three tactics.
The MarketingProfs team convened a virtual roundup of marketing-expert friends to get their take on trends and predictions that CMOs will need to be aware of to succeed in 2021. Here's what they predict.
The generic "customer" doesn't exist: To reach buyers, marketers must view their customers as real people with personalities, drives, and interests. Especially in a Covid-altered world, the best way to visualize those customers and their needs is to create buyer personas.
Branding and direct response marketing must work together. Marketers should therefore understand the key differences between the two so that they can employ the right blend of tactics when executing their overall marketing strategy. Here are five differences to keep in mind.
As a marketer, are you telling stories that connect, or are you treating your audience like an algorithm would? People are craving connection, especially now, so it's time to humanize your company's communication in these seven ways.
Objectivity, availability, and budget are among the many advantages of hiring contract writers for marketing content. If selecting and managing a group of outsourced writers intimidates you, these guidelines will help make it a painless process.
The pandemic has given B2B marketers an opportunity to become better marketers—and build stronger marketing teams—by embracing a culture of innovation. But that change entails rethinking professional development plans. These three sample plans can help you develop innovative B2B marketing teams.
Running a B2B blog is a lot of work, but the rewards can be abundant if you build yourself a faithful audience. To establish yourself as an authority in your industry and gain your readers' trust, follow these five tips.
Potential buyers tend to consider peer review sites as more objective and more helpful than vendor sites. A paid subscription to the right peer review site can provide insights into your buyers' preferences and intent, as well as generate new business. Learn more.
Have a topic for a post or other content? That's a great start, but to reach your target audience on search engines, you have to know how to rank for that topic—which requires a lot of organization and research. Here are some tips for how to create content that ranks.
Reaching customers with quality content and thought leadership is more important than ever, but so is maintaining a unified voice for your company. The best way to do both is to develop content marketing guidelines.
Are your marketing and finance teams at odds? It often appears that their goals lie at opposite ends of business strategy, but it doesn't have to be that way. For ways to improve your Marketing and Finance relationship, check out these three tips.
Recent work-from-home initiatives have created record demand for telecommuting, team chat, and employee tracking apps. If your B2B company has an app, it's time to look into app store optimization (ASO) to maximize your potential customer base.
How are marketers keeping their events relevant and engaging in the mostly virtual world of the COVID pandemic? Three major trends are emerging—and here's how to take advantage of them successfully.
It's time to check your mailbox, not your inbox. The pandemic has upended traditional marketing—and, with it, the usual marketing channels. Here's how to find and use your prospects' home addresses to stick out from the competition with direct mail.
Technology has made account-based marketing more feasible than ever, but you can't get by on tech alone. Here's how to combine the emotional side of brand-building with the personalization of demand gen to create marketing messages that will truly resonate.
What are your marketing metrics telling you? If you rely on standard measurement tactics, probably not much—especially about your sales. It's time to upgrade to advanced measurement strategies that directly align with business goals—and drive sales.
Successful demand generation relies on effective content and reliable data—but marketing content can stagnate, and data can be intimidating. Here's how to use both to build a demand gen foundation that can withstand even the most tumultuous times.
Attitudes and behaviors have shifted during the COVID pandemic. Now that marketers and the general population, including B2B buyers, are using social media more than ever, it's time to re-examine how working with influencers can help your company.
LinkedIn is more popular than ever with businesspeople and sales reps, but you can't just use a copy-and-paste method to pitch to your new connections. There is value in being genuine. Here are four ways to rise above generic LinkedIn messaging.
In a rapidly changing world, B2B marketers are taking on a new, consultative role—that of solutions architect. Here are six ways to embrace the change and step out ahead of trends to make yourself an even more valuable business partner.
Mistakes in marketing are inevitable, but too many can ruin your budget. Here are seven common pitfalls that are easily fixable by adjusting your strategy. Learn how you can avoid them.
That was the question we at MarketingProfs started asking ourselves earlier this year as we realized our annual event, scheduled for San Francisco, wasn't going to happen. As we planned and put on our B2B Forum as a virtual conference, we learned these four things.
In 2020, the limitations on travel and face-to-face meetings have brought about the switch to virtual-only selling. Nevertheless, the fundamentals of needs discovery remain, even if in some ways it has become more difficult. But the shift to virtual has given organized sellers an even greater advantage.
Thought leadership needs a rethink. Articles and interviews that focus on tactics and coincide with product launches don't have the impact they once did. People are craving stories that guide and inspire. Here's how to get thought leadership right.
2020 has rebooted marketing. As companies move to finalize 2021 planning, we have an opportunity to accelerate progress in the direction that we've known for years we need to go toward. When planning for next year, keep these three key factors in mind.
In B2B marketing, it's just as important to keep a customer happy as it is to convince a new prospect to buy. Customer marketing programs help to grow customer advocacy and build long-lasting relationships. Here are five easy tactics you can use.
Email marketing gives you space for customization, direct communication, and easy tracking. But scaling and consistency are hard to achieve. Here are four ways to integrate AI into your email strategy without sacrificing a human touch and all the while achieving consistently better results.
If your ad measurement depends on third-party cookies, you'll be facing profound changes within less than two years, as Web browsers phase them out. But cookies have their drawbacks, and this article argues that marketers will be better off without them.
When you think about what an Agile Marketing team looks like, what comes to mind? Chances are, you imagine marketers who are fast, flexible, maybe even frenetic. But, especially in volatile times, Agile doesn't mean working feverishly.
Link-building is an indispensable part of B2B marketing. But what are the best ways to grow your site's backlink profile? This article will guide you through the most effective and sustainable link-building strategies.
Technology has allowed us to form connections and maintain strong business relationships even while we are unable to meet in person. But making contacts in the digital world is different. Use this article as a guide for how to adapt.
Some of the world's most successful people identify as introverts, which might seem counterintuitive. But they've adapted a strategy that can teach us a thing or two about successful networking. Here are four networking lessons we can learn from introverts.
Market research is an essential first step for launching any product or feature, but too many of us want to jump in and use our instincts instead of collecting the data we need to ensure success. Here are 10 tools that will make your research easier.
The quality of its customer experience can make or break a B2B company. To make sure your customers' experiences keeps them coming back for your products or services, follow these five steps.
If you want your website to rank high in Google searches and attract visitors and potential business, you need to be investing in SEO. And because many businesses don't invest in SEO at all, even a small amount of optimization can put you ahead of the competition.
The love-hate relationship with our CRMs is real. They often fail to meet promises made during selection and implementation, and they can fall short of their potential to drive revenue. But we can't live without them. To get more out of your CRM implementation, ask and answer these two questions.
Chief marketing officers often find themselves defending the CMO role and its right to exist. It's time to actively assert the role's value by reframing CMOs as chief market officers. Here are 4 key areas to focus on when reasserting Marketing's place in the business.
B2B companies are increasingly relying on pay-per-click tactics to obtain leads. Here are six ways to ensure your company is getting the highest-quality leads from its PPC ad campaigns.
When your employees are working remotely, email and messaging apps are a natural fallback for internal communication. Find out what their limitations are and how to solve complex collaboration problems. Read more.
Don't let company disagreements get in the way of creative solutions. Use these conflict-solving tactics to improve both internal and external business relationships. Check out the article.
We're all familiar with the way influencing plays out in sponsored posts on YouTube and Instagram and various other social platforms, but it can also be a valuable strategy in the B2B world. Here's how to get it right for your company.
In today's competitive landscape, many B2B companies are reviewing their strategies, and that often includes a more careful segmentation of target audiences—both to sell more accurately and to budget more efficiently for marketing. Find out how to best segment your target audiences.
The exercise of creating a messaging framework helps you better understand your company—not just what it does but also how and why. Most important, it helps you determine how you should communicate with your market. Here's the what, why, and how of messaging frameworks.
One of the biggest sources of friction between B2B demand generation and sales teams is attribution, which often results in finger-pointing and blame. But it doesn't have to be that way.
The pandemic has changed customer relationships, and in the process we marketers have become more valuable than ever. We've known the power of digital, and mastered the strategy, tactics, and technology to harness it. Let's seize the opportunity to help remake Marketing and Sales.
Sales and marketing teams can often seem aligned—even when they aren't really. In fact, alignment levels have been decreasing. Take the three steps discussed in this article to ensure Sales and Marketing are communicating, collaborating, and working harmoniously.
Planning events in the post-pandemic world will require an audience-focused strategy to enable innovative adaptations and messaging that will engage attendees. Learn how to do that effectively by using this checklist.
Software as a service is becoming essential in both our work and our social lives. For SaaS companies looking to drive traffic, build awareness, and generate leads, PPC is one of the most powerful tools available. Check out these five tips to make PPC work for you.
Some people think content operations isn't necessary—that everything will work fine without it. But it won't. Without content operations, there is content chaos. And you'll suffer huge opportunity costs. Here are 10 steps to avoid that chaos and those costs.
B2B? B2C? B2B2C? The pandemic has changed the business landscape into one that is universally B2P: business-to-people. Find out what that means and how you can derive its many benefits. Read more.
Marketing can be difficult at a time when so many of us feel assaulted by discouraging information. Use these techniques to fine-tune your strategy for customers who have crisis fatigue.
B2B sellers have relied heavily on tradeshows, user conferences, and other in-person interactions to launch products and services, generate leads, and nurture relationships. But B2B marketers must now replicate the impact of in-person events online. These 12 tactics will ensure you succeed.
This year, businesses have had to grasp at every opportunity to drive interest and sales. Luckily, YouTube has become a useful option. Video is great for user engagement, and YouTube can drive traffic—and leads. To that end, these 15 tools can help you optimize your YouTube content.
Like chefs, marketers regularly combine a variety of "ingredients" to achieve a desirable result. Unfortunately, two of those ingredients—inbound and outbound marketing—are routinely set up as competitors even though, like salt and pepper, they're actually complementary.
We all want warm leads—those who already know us and our company—because they always out-convert cold leads. So how do you find more of those already-warm leads? Find the buyers who've moved on from current clients.
In the fleeting digital world, empathy toward your customers is an invaluable asset. But companies that fail to let their audience peek into their own human side also fail to build trustful and lasting customer relationships. Doubly so in B2B. Here's how you can solve that problem.
We all know the pain of staring at a blank page, waiting for inspiration to strike. This ultimate guide—full of techniques, processes, tips, and tricks—will explain how to capture, create, explore, refine, and implement those seemingly illusive ideas. Find out more.
Links remain crucial to search engine optimization. But it can be tough for B2B brands, especially when there's no major launch or corporate-level change to attract publishers. Regardless, you can use "tangential content" to build links throughout the year.
To get the most out of video marketing, use the sales funnel concept to tailor video content and messaging to buyers' stage in their purchase-decision journey. You'll improve the chances of conversion—and increase sales and revenue.
The abrupt changes caused by Covid-19 have shocked our personal and work lives, forcing us to rethink how we do business. But some things have not changed—like knowing what the most important metrics are... yet not being able to improve in those areas. However, you can bridge that gap and drive revenue.
Particularly when you're dealing with B2B prospects and clients, product videos provide a direct and effective form of communication that can speed up the decision-making process. If you do them right.
Marketing automation workflows can engage customers and generate significantly more conversions and sales than ad hoc email campaigns. These are seven workflows vital to successful campaigns.
Rumors that the CMO role is going the way of the dodo bird have been circulating for years. The devaluation of the role is partly the consequence of outdated notions of what CMOs do and misconceptions about the scope of the job. But the current crisis is proving the CMO role is vital.
Take a moment. Calm your thoughts. Form an image in your mind of what your career and your job as a B2B marketer can look like—how fulfilled you could be with your work. Is it all just wishful thinking? It doesn't have to be.
Whether it's a global pandemic or a data breach, a crisis of any kind can negatively impact your company's operations and reputation. So, what can marketers say and do to keep customers informed and satisfied until the crisis is over? Here's useful advice.
If you've just added the not-so-simple task of "Marketing Campaign" to your to-do list, you might find yourself struggling to get started. Planning an entire campaign is no easy feat, and it can be hard to know how to begin. That's where a checklist can be useful. Like this checklist.
Account-based programs demonstrate higher conversion and close rates than traditional demand programs. So, companies of course want to focus on winning and growing target accounts in the year ahead. But there are ways you can make ABM even more successful and maximize ROI.
These principles of social media engagement, along with 10 tried-and-true tips and social media tropes that connect with audiences, will help you write engaging social media copy on behalf of your B2B brand. See how.
As more businesses increase their digital advertising efforts, fraudsters, scammers, and bots lie in wait. Some marketers are aware of the looming threats, but many aren't. The good news is that telltale signs of ad fraud can be spotted.
As the demise of third-party cookies draws inexorably nearer, many marketers are growing concerned: How will they track and gather customer data online? But despite the handwringing, marketers can reap long-term benefits from the end of cookies.
Who wouldn't be excited at the prospect of identifying what led to a customer's making a purchase decision? Though marketers continue to improve and refine the process, one challenge to truly meaningful insight remains: how to marry offline and online marketing attribution.
Platform fatigue. IP targeting's limitations. Challenges of evaluating campaign performance. The impact of economic uncertainty. The disappearance of in-person events... B2B marketers are facing a host of unresolved issues and questions. Here are some answers.
As a B2B marketer, your work does not start or end with passing along generated leads to the sales team. What's more important is empowering them with targeted content assets to deliver a more personalized and engaging experience to prospects and buyers. Like these 6 content assets.
New forms of marketing seem to rise to the top of the priority list every few months. But being able to read and respond to your customers' actions is arguably the most valuable currency for engagement. And, for that, an interactive marketing strategy is a priority.
B2B marketers, who relied on tradeshows and conferences, will be itching to go back to how things were before the pandemic hit. But maybe not exactly how things were—because there is a better way to reach people in-person: experiential marketing (yes, for B2B, too).
It's more important than ever to communicate with your customers with messages that are authentic, that build relationships—and offer useful information relevant to their business right now. These 3 types of content are well suited to the current environment. Learn more.
Reopening during and after the pandemic is fraught with challenges but laden with opportunities. For marketers, it's an ideal time to take advantage of new marketing and communications approaches to differentiate your brand for the "new normal" in your industry.
Though marketing teams can produce content marketing that resonates with prospects and customers, executive-team buy-in and participation can elevate their efforts and open more opportunities to attract higher numbers of qualified leads.
Are your brand guidelines working for your team and company? Is the content being shared internally and externally consistent and aligned, no matter which team it's coming from and in what format? If not, it's time to start making some important changes.
Many of us are missing a huge content opportunity on LinkedIn: long-form articles. The marketing benefits you reap are tangible while the effort you expend can be minimal—if you use the right approach. Read more for practical advice and real-world examples.
Business buyers are inundated with pitches and content, most of which isn't relevant to them. That's good news for B2B marketers: Your prospects are hungry for a personalized experience. Here are three practical ways to make your ABM more successful.
Unusual times call for unusual thinking and strategic engagements. In the current business environment, to fully realize the objectives of live events that can't take place, take the path mapped out in this article to deliver an experience that exceeds expectations.
Best advice for a marcomms leader to handle a crisis? Take off your marketing hat for a moment because your marcomms experience won't get you very far. But if you need to tackle a menacing issue or an emerging crisis—and you don't have years to retrain—here's how to handle a crisis now.
Outsourcing content creation and relinquishing some control over your content can be stressful. But you can maintain a collaborative relationship with your content partner to execute a content strategy that achieves your content marketing goals. Here's practical advice for doing that.
Your B2B SEO strategy must be geared toward reaching the right decision-makers. If your sole intention is simply to rank for a keyword, your B2B keyword strategy is already a lost cause. Here are some handy tips to get it right.
Content marketing has matured to a point where you need at least some automation. But if you aren't careful, you'll turn people off: Your loyalists will notice if your content is lower quality or less tailored. To maintain customer trust while streamlining your workload, use these three tips.
As marketers consider their options for providing digital event opportunities, one question is top of mind: How do you create an engaging attendee experience? The key is to make real connections in a virtual way. These three tips will help.
You know what's not only extremely short-sighted but also potentially disastrous? Assuming the current public-health crisis is a temporary pause in business-as-usual. You can't afford to wait for "it" to pass. To put yourself in a better position now and down the road, try these five strategies.
Lead gen is responsible for one of your company's most valuable assets—customers. But establishing an effective lead generation process is no small feat. To create a process that yields high ROI demands contribution and investment from the leadership team. Here's how, exactly.
What happens when a global crisis hits and your marketing emails are suddenly one of the last things a customer has time to think about? The answer: don't proceed like normal. To ensure your email program remains effective and authentic, follow these five practical steps.
Sales Navigator offers up a big opportunity for marketers to up their content and outbound games. Marketers, just as much as sales reps, can use the powerful functions of Sales Nav to identify, reach, and engage with audiences. Here's how, in three steps.
Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to build a connection with your audience. But how can marketers build narratives that resonate with customers on an emotional level? Here's what brand storytelling involves, why using empathy to drive narratives is important, and how to do it.
Marketers are accustomed to a changing environment—from algorithm updates to new acquisition channels and technology. Even so, the widespread cancellation of live events made even experienced professionals take a deep breath and rethink their strategies. But it can be done.
The legends of copywriting agree: It can destroy or skyrocket your marketing campaign. "It" is your headline—the first thing that gets noticed. If people don't read your headline, they don't go on to read your content. Here's how to easily write headlines that get read.
The challenge for events in 2020 and beyond is how they can remain profitable while keeping the best interests of the industry they serve—and the safety of speakers, sponsors, and attendees—at the forefront. Here are some likely scenarios for the future of events.
The definition of "employee advocacy" is straightforward: the promotion of an organization by its staff members. It's a low-cost, high-return way to increase brand awareness, drive engagement and attract talent. But can you show how that impact is related to business goals?
As a B2B brand, the last thing you need is to miss the post-pandemic rebound of the economy when it happens. These five marketing strategies can help you come out of the recession as strong as before—or even better positioned.
As marketers, we know that effective marketing puts the customer first. But how do we do that? How can we harness our most human of superpowers to deliver real value both to the customer and to the business? Start using empathy in marketing.
The B2B customer journey is undergoing rapid transformation—accelerated by the ongoing pandemic. To reach today's—and tomorrow's—self-directed buyers, marketers must personalize. But, soon, even that won't be enough. You need to prepare for that already-near future.
With loads of information readily available to buyers about potential vendors, sales reps are now expected to deliver insights and articulate value if they are to generate real opportunities. But that can't happen unless you close the gap between Marketing and Sales.
We marketers are trying to find our bearings in an environment unlike any we have known. Some changes we are experiencing will persist, forming a new foundation for how businesses function post-pandemic. What will that look like? How can you prepare your team for what lies ahead?
As with any marketing undertaking, you need measures in place to track the effectiveness of your content marketing. So, whether you're focusing on SEO, lead generation, or thought leadership with your content, see which metrics you should track to monitor content marketing success.
"Make friends with your Web designer" is smart advice for an SEO practitioner. This article covers a few best-practices that require effective collaboration between SEOs and their friends on the Web development team. Read on for more.
It didn't take more than a few months in COVID-19 lockdown for a good number of workers to realize they could adequately perform their jobs without having to set foot in their office ever again. Do you have a strategy for workspace options once it's time to reopen?
We think our online writing is inviting. But, to readers, it can feel like falling into a hidden temple where the walls are spewing poison darts and they're being pursued by a big, bone-crushing boulder. It doesn't have to be that way.
The pandemic has forced sales professionals to adopt digital approaches in lieu of face-to-face meetings. And without in-office support, marketing and sales leaders are struggling to support their sales teams. Here's how to set up your salespeople for success.
Instagram is not a platform that businesses can afford to ignore—but it can be challenging for businesses that don't have "Instagrammable" products or services to share. Especially if yours is a B2B brand. But Instagram is worth your time and investment.
In the past two decades, content marketing has become an effective strategy for generating leads and nurturing them through every stage of the buying journey. Now, AI is poised to take marketing content to the next level.
Analyzing critical search data trends during crises can help marketers pivot so they generate relevant content for their audiences, in turn improving website traffic and boosting sales.
One of our biggest problems as marketers is a tendency to be so customer-focused that we forget to apply our talents within our own organizations. Here are four ways we can position ourselves as leaders and catalysts for much-needed change.
We spend countless hours planning, building, and testing landing pages. Yet, they don't always perform as we expect them to. This article will provide inspiring examples and practical advice you need to make sure your next landing page is incredible.
Let's face our tough new reality: It's not easy to drive demand during this work-from-home era. Now, it's all about building operational agility into your marketing and customer experience. Here are three effective, data-reliant ways you can address your soft pipeline.
B2B sales and marketing have evolved rapidly. Digitization has transformed the way buyers research and procure products and services. Sellers no longer have control over the flow of information, and buyers' expectations have changed. Here's what B2B suppliers need to do to attract today's buyers.
Our reality—living in a state of isolation, bombarded with messages about the importance of maintaining separation—is influencing the way we think and communicate. Our lack of social interaction is limiting our ability to communicate effectively. Including in our writing.
How do you vet a PR agency you want to hire? You want a strong agency partnership, but what does that even mean, and how do you start building one? Ask these seven questions when you're vetting and interviewing an agency.
Marketing events have been canceled because of COVID-19. But what about post-pandemic? If events resume, will people even attend? And most important, do we now have an opportunity to make live events more valuable for everyone involved?
How do you access the analytics you need to measure your online marketing ROI effectively? You need the right tools. This article highlights five tools that provide insights into your marketing results.
Now, more than ever, organizations are depending on digital channels to maintain customer connections and plant seeds for future growth. Here's how marketers can be responsive and provide leadership during this crisis.
With some version of reopening on the horizon, marketers are having to rethink their marketing efforts, especially email—since so many of us have been relying on digital communication more than ever. What should our approach be now?
If your salespeople aren't effective presenters, they'll never achieve their full potential—even if they're good at selling. Which is why it's critical to understand and monitor this vital skill. Here's how to measure and evaluate sales presentation skills.
B2B influencer marketing has become "a thing"; it is alive and well and available to use as a tactic in your marketing strategy. Based on research and experience, here are five best-practice recommendations.
The true economic fallout of the current coronavirus crisis is far from certain, and many marketers have been asked to freeze all nonessential spending. If you're one of those marketers, your budget may now be sheltering in place alongside you. But you can, and must, keep marketing.
All professional services agencies entering the third decade of the 21st Century have many responsibilities... but they have only one essential task: They must—constantly, continually, and rapidly—adapt to change and innovate.
To take best advantage of evolving business technologies, it is essential to stay agile, flexible, and open to change. Which is why in marketing technology, open-source software hits the bullseye.
In today's digital marketing landscape, many marketers still downplay the importance of images. Yet decades' worth of scientific research consistently demonstrates that people are much better at remembering pictures than words. Visuals just might be the most important marketing tool we have.
The Dutch word "averechts" refers to when someone does something to avoid a problem, but that action backfires—causing the very problem they were trying to avoid. That is precisely what is happening to most companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Avoid your "averechts" moment.
These are some of the most common and costly mistakes that marketers make when adopting, implementing, and executing ABM. But you can avoid making these 7 mistakes. Here's how.
Visual design is having a moment of prominence—and perhaps reckoning. Many companies no longer treat design like frosting for their messaging; often, the design is the message. But can marketers stand up for artistic design while still getting the ROI the C-suite execs expect?
LinkedIn has been testing a new conversational format—LinkedIn Stories—to be released "soon." So, what does the introduction of LinkedIn's own version of Stories mean? Will it "kickstart conversations" and "nurture relationships," as LinkedIn hopes?
You're interested in Agile Marketing, and you have questions... Here are some answers to some major queries about Agile teams, leaders, measurement, and many other FAQs. Let's dig in.
Supply chains throughout our economy will undergo volatile supply and demand shock waves over the next year or more. Most companies' automated supply chain systems will be incapable of handling that volatility, resulting in chaos—unless managers adopt a different way of managing their supply chains.
If this pandemic has blindsided your business, you've been asking questions like these: How should we talk to our prospects and customers? Should we ditch our editorial plans, or stay the course? Is content promotion still acceptable, or is it a definite no-no? You need a content strategy for this crisis.
The needs and wants of customers have shifted dramatically in the past two months, and companies that continue to move forward without adjusting will struggle for some time to come. Here are four ways B2B companies can provide helpful, impactful, and timely customer experiences during this crisis.
How do you generate more leads in what is the digital marketing jungle of today? It helps to understand current trends that on-the-ground practitioners are seeing in digital marketing. Here are some do's and dont's based on their advice.
To turn your first encounter with potential clients into an effective account-based marketing (ABM) relationship, you must engage your audience, establish credibility, and ask them for an easy "yes." Here's what you need to know.
Email marketing experts will urge you to follow the latest and greatest best-practices—from personalizing your content to segmenting to cleaning up your database. All that's well and good if you want to create optimized email campaigns. And who doesn't? But what if your metrics are off?
Today, more than ever before, your customers are online and spending more time on social media platforms. If you need to expand or improve your social media team (internally or externally), you have options. To hire? And whom to hire? Those are the questions.
With the Coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on businesses around the world, companies may be unsure of what role their customer advisory board (CAB) might play during the crisis. But now is an ideal time for your CAB to take a proactive, leadership role during the current crisis.
We are living in a time of great disruption. Disruption in the market breaks paradigms. It creates as much opportunity as loss. It is easier for our minds to envision the downside of our losses than to see new opportunities. Though harder to spot, the opportunities are there.
Trying to predict our post-COVID B2B marketing future may be a fool's errand. Still, there are enough breadcrumbs left by previous crises and recessions to help us make some educated guesses. So here are five realities that B2B marketers will likely face in the next 2-3 years.
Of course content marketing and SEO have a symbiotic relationship, but many content marketers are making seemingly small mistakes that can add up—and end up sabotaging their SEO. Here are 8 ways you unfortunately might be doing exactly that.
The concept of "brand elasticity" refers to how sensitive customer preference is for a certain brand when it stretches beyond its positioning or expands into new categories. It's important to understand so you don't stretch a brand to its breaking point.
The idea of account-based marketing (ABM) isn't new. But recently we've moved beyond basics, shifting into full-on strategies and mindsets around how B2B marketing needs to get done. And when you think about that, it's a lot like dating.
Product marketing and sales enablement teams share an ultimate goal: to help sales teams sell. In many organizations, however, they plan and execute in silos, with misaligned efforts and priorities. And that simply undermines Sales. Here are ways to instead build collaboration and drive revenue.
Upselling makes sense when business is booming, but how about in times of economic uncertainty—like now? Companies that can strategically and compassionately navigate business development conversations in these times will be the ones that emerge intact and in good standing.
Marketing strategies were not conceived with disruptions like coronavirus in mind. For many organizations, COVID-19 has turned the 4Ps—product, place, price, and promotion—into 4Cs: confusion, calamity, chaos, and complexity. That means we must reassess and adjust the 4Ps.
The Coronavirus crisis and crashing economic demand have resulted in rampant downsizing in numerous industries. Depending on how it's done, downsizing can weaken or strengthen your organization—during a crisis and for years afterward. So where should you deploy your precious resources?
You need to know what's being said online about you, your brand, your competition, your industry, and other topics you're interested in. At first, Google Alerts might seem the most obvious choice, but it's notoriously unreliable.You have options, though, including these 4 alternatives.
B2B marketers who rely on in-person interactions to connect with clients and drive lead generation now need alternatives. One strategy to continue promoting our brands is digital advertising—including programmatic. And it doesn't have to be complicated.
In addition to being easier to understand and consume, video in general is more likely to be shared by users, making it an excellent marketing tool. They're also capable of being viewed or listened to by anyone, including those with disabilities—which is why you need to create accessible videos.
It's never been easier to monitor what's being said in traditional and social media about companies, brands, individuals. But it's also never been more complicated: There are dozens of platforms, and they make all kinds of claims. Here's what you need to know when evaluating media monitoring services.
It's been nearly 40 days and 40 nights since the US got serious about acknowledging and responding to COVID-19. Like everyone else, marketers have been overwhelmed. The floodwaters surrounding us may be muddy now, but as the currents calm the sediment will settle. Then what?
The instability created by the pandemic makes it tricky to simultaneously navigate brands' most pressing and longer-term needs. But one thing is clear: It's more important than ever for Marketing to stay agile, relevant, and ready to adapt—if necessary again and again. Here are a few emerging best-practices.
Our CX efforts are not selfless: We provide a positive customer experience because it drives repeat purchases and long-term loyalty. But what happens when there is a once-in-a-century pandemic? CX can't be about maximizing lifetime value.Yes, it's time to get real about customer-centricity.
Is your brand relevant to the various audiences—customers, influencers, the media—you want to reach? More specifically, how can you find the untapped opportunities for establishing relevance? How can you identify what they want so you can provide it?
If you look at the list of Fortune 100 companies of 50 years ago, you'll see that most of them no longer exist. Why? Nearly all of them failed because they focused on winning their battles—and in the process they lost their wars. So, how can you win your wars?
What does good look like when you are an email marketer, and how do you go from good to great if your email marketing program has plateaued? For answers, let's look at six things high-performing email marketers do that are better and different.
Marketers know that marketing initiatives can take months before achieving ROI. Clients, though, may want to see immediate results after launching a campaign. Setting expectations is necessary, but it can be difficult. These five tactics will help set lead-gen expectations.
There is a true golden ticket of marketing. With it, you can create effective, targeted communication that helps build lasting relationships with current customers and allows you to reach ideal customers in larger numbers. It can help you pave a path to strategic results.
Half of all searches on search engines no longer result in a click on an organic search result. And no wonder: there's barely any room on the first page of engine results. Sometimes, the "top" organic result actually ends up at the bottom of the page. Here's how marketers can adapt.
To be creative is to try imaginative, innovative things. To be data-driven is to go with what works, based on the numbers; it's a safer bet. As a result, marketers have been transformed from a creative brain force into a hands-on-keyboard labor force. But there is hope for creativity's resurrection.
Marketers create content to capture buyers' attention and move them to buy. But without "compelling reason to buy" messaging, potential buyers are left guessing about what your product does and how it can help them. Here's how to craft compelling, convincing messages.
As marketers scramble to refocus their strategy now that live events are canceled or postponed, it's a struggle to get budgets approved for ideas that will result in ROI similar to events'. Here's how to get buy-in and approval to fill the void created by the pandemic.
No matter how much value you provide, some customers will drift away. But if you put in some effort, you can create an offboarding process that leaves a positive impression and keeps the door open for future business. Here's what you need to know.
Is your organization trapped by history? Surprisingly, most companies are more shaped by their history than designed to respond to today's or tomorrow's opportunities and challenges. This problem influences virtually every aspect of a company's structure and its managers' behavior.
Google Ads (the erstwhile AdWords) has become far more intuitive and easy to use than in years past. But despite a simplified interface, greater data transparency, and more features, it still has its share of nuances and complexities. These 5 tips will help you become a better PPC advertiser.
Paid search remains a key digital advertising strategy for gaining customers, and Google is the dominant player, but companies are now looking to diversify their search ad spend to decrease their dependence—and instead use platforms that offer more cost-effective conversions.
"Content operations" refers to everything that helps content marketing efforts run smoothly and drive impact for a business. That includes people, technology, and processes. Marketing needs well-oiled content operations, including these five essential elements.
You can come up with a marketing strategy that impresses the C-suite, but if you don't have the right people to execute it, your hard work will have been wasted. So how do you attract and keep great marketers who work at their full potential? A people strategy.
Accumulating content on your website without a content strategy hampers SEO instead of boosting it. A content audit can help you formulate a plan of action to align your content with your long-term strategy. Here's how to conduct an effective audit of your content.
To capture leads via your content, you need to provide value and engage your audience. That's where interactive content comes in—from quizzes to contests and giveaways. Here are five excellent tools you can use to create interactive content and capture leads.
As the world faces the global coronavirus pandemic, B2B CMOs face a critical problem: Reaching and persuading buyers will be extremely difficult for the foreseeable future. So, what's to be done?
Search is often the first, and sometimes only, channel that customers can use to tell you what they want from you. It can also be an opportunity to build credibility, engagement, and loyalty. As you "listen" to customers' searches, you'll want to ask (and answer) these six questions.
You're not alone in thinking industry trends move at the speed of light. Which is why you need to be keenly aware of industry trends—while remaining agile to deal with the unexpected. So what's truly affecting the SEO industry today? Experts from Moz answer that question.
Five rules form the cornerstone of an effective customer management program in a time of supply disruption. If you get it right, the upside is enormous. If you get it wrong, you will suffer consequences for years to come.
Constantly expanding customer touchpoints and cross-border commerce make the optimization of product listings and data difficult—but no longer optional. Product experience management can help you meet the needs of customers in today's marketplace.
You're used to finding marketing know-how and strategy in this space. So the tone and format of this article/letter probably feels a little different to you today. That's because these are unprecedented times. This is NOT business as usual.
"The show must go on," but until when, exactly? What do you do when a calamity or crisis turns your conference, training course, or event upside down? Do you continue, cancel, reschedule?
Employee advocacy is a proven marketing strategy. But preparation ahead of implementation is key to ensuring advocacy programs' effectiveness—and success. Do these three things to prepare.
You've invested time and money to implement creative and cost-effective ways to bring relevant traffic to your site. You've even collected reviews from customers. So what's still missing? Thoughtful product descriptions that convert.
What must marketers think about today to ensure they and their companies are performing better than ever 10 years from now? Here are five ways to future-proof your career and ensure your company's success.
If you're considering rebuilding your in-house marketing team and reducing your reliance on outside agencies, these are your first steps on the path to gaining more control.
Today, data is the most important ingredient for crafting truly personalized experiences, delighting customers, and delivering exceptional value. The marketer's dilemma in the age of data regulation is how to collect that data. Here's what we need to do.
Selecting a new website content management system (CMS) is often a significant challenge and investment. Too often, when the time has come for migration, enterprises fail to keep SEO in mind. The ramifications of that can be significant.
We've had it drummed into our heads that inbound leads are the Holy Grail of our marketing efforts. We've come to believe they are the quickest and most effective to convert. But is that really the case?
Content marketing helps you build an audience that enjoys your content, engages with it, and shares it with peers. The result: a strong content-led company that attracts new and repeat customers. How can you build an ardent customer base with content marketing?
In the new era of data privacy and more stringent privacy regulations, marketers need to turn away from third-party data. To build trust while maintaining personalization, marketers are turning to zero-party data. So... what is it, and how can you collect it?
Trade publications are inundated with references to, and hype for, artificial intelligence. Everywhere you look, AI is being touted as the answer--even to some questions we aren't asking. Marketing is not immune to this push for AI. Quite the opposite, actually. But is it warranted?
Because the online content landscape is so crowded, audiences value originality that engages them. One way savvy content marketers are responding is to create compelling interactive content. Here are 4 types of interactive content you can build.
The CRM market seems saturated. But that's all about quantity. Quality is another story: Only 1 in 5 CRMs receive 4-5 star ratings. Those low satisfaction rates suggest startup CRMs can be an alternative. Especially since they have an inherent edge (several, in fact) over large CRMs.
Price wars create a seemingly unsolvable dilemma: Match the competitor's price and risk losing profits, or ignore the competitor's price and risk losing revenues. Yet, based on a vital but universally neglected business principle, there is a powerful solution to winning—and preventing—price wars.
How is your loyalty program doing these days? If it isn't thriving, the four issues outlined in this article could be at fault. They're among the most common problems afflicting loyalty programs today.
Marketers know that people gravitate toward a brand they relate to, and they respond to marketing and advertising messages that in some way mirror their lives. But when consumers' views of themselves change, as they inevitably do these days, how can we respond?
Companies invest billions in data, analytics, and technology to better target and predict customer behavior. We are collecting more data than we know what to do with, so we think we no longer need qualitative research. Big mistake: We need to go beyond data to truly understand the customer.
A platform-heavy marketing tech stack—email solutions, social media tools, mobile marketing platforms, automation tools, and everything in between—creates a world of obstacles, including inevitable data disparities. Which will cost you.
A widely cited buzzword, "experiential marketing" is now recognized as the powerful tool it actually is—though the true definition, the reasons for its growth, and the secrets to its longevity are not quite as familiar.
No one can predict what the future holds for the agency-client relationship. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Marketing is moving closer to being in the boardroom. How can agencies and clients ensure they're prepared for the shift?
Investing in your team's skills and know-how can help improve your company's performance and create an impressive talent pool for future openings in your organization. Encourage professional development to reap the benefits of having loyal, motivated, and skilled employees.
For PR professionals and marketers in general, Valentine's Day is the perfect time to remember best-practices for showing the love to the press. Here are a handful of ways you can do that and build a mutually beneficial relationship.
The future of marketing is all about performance—lead quality and revenue contribution. So, very soon, marketers' best friend will be conversational AI. Bots. User interfaces that rely on artificial intelligence and machine-learning to engage users, deliver leads, and increase conversions.
Allowing employees to work some or all of the time outside your offices offers tangible business benefits, but also challenges related to communication, collaboration, and management. These lesser-known tools can help you mitigate the challenges and reap the benefits of remote teams.
Today's enterprises must effectively and efficiently deliver, manage, measure, and archive content. Robust content management capability is critical. But there are myriad systems on the market. How does one choose the right set of tools, and what needs to be considered in the process?
If you're a CMO, or plan to be one someday, and you're in job-acquisition or job-preservation mode, you're probably contemplating the skills a high-level marketing professional will need to stay relevant, employable, and successful in the coming years. Here is what you need to know.
Marketers covet Page One of Google search results for a reason: It's chock-full of possibilities for website traffic, leads, and conversions. Here's a tried-and-true process for creating content that ranks.
It doesn't matter whether you believe climate change is the great existential threat of our time. "Green" or "eco" branding doesn't always cut it. So how do we do what's right for the planet while still bringing in a healthy profit? Here are four ways to cut through the noise.
There is broad consensus that customer experience (CX) is critical as a competitive differentiator. And customer data is now available at an unprecedented scale, along with the technology to enable meaningful, positive customer experiences. So, why is it that CX efforts so consistently fall flat?
Without easy-to-follow guidelines, it's hard to ensure proper CCPA compliance, including the involvement of those (internally and externally) who have a role to play in compliance. So, if you feel behind or lost, or you don't know what to feel about CCPA, this article should help.
Today is the last day of National Clean Out Your Inbox Week. It's a good time for us marketers to think about how we contribute to our subscribers' email stress... and how we can instead lend a helping hand—and in the process improve the return on our email marketing investment.
The term "disloyalty program" is not what it may seem. In fact, it's a form of effective loyalty-building based on a partnership premise, and it's gaining marketing popularity. Here's all that you need to know.
You can't carry on launching marketing campaigns, creating content, and paying your team just because you think marketing efforts are affecting your sales in some positive way. You need data that tells you what's working and what isn't. Marketing analytics tools to the rescue.
As text marketing technology has evolved, it's become accessible and affordable for every level of sender, giving marketers unprecedented access to their customers' attention. As a result, digital marketing is facing disruption at the hands of SMS and MMS.
Content marketing was once mostly about launching a website and posting on blogs. Those days are long gone. Today, it's a critical, multifaceted discipline that drives brand awareness as well as sales leads. Still, content campaigns could be even more successful than they are--if only we didn't succumb to these myths.
Marketing is not about bombarding customers with messages and hoping they'll purchase a product; it's about gathering data and listening to what they want. Here are four ways to use data to deliver the end-to-end experience customers are craving.
There may not exactly be a magic formula, but there are steps you can take to write for humans that will also appeal to the Google bots that determine whether your content will ever see the search engine light of day.
Here's why having a single writer—or small, connected team (think agency)—can be ideal, and how you can mitigate the risk of your content machine's crashing and burning if that resource leaves.
To stand out, brands must convey their messages distinctly. A unique, visually appealing packaging design is an excellent attention-getter and differentiator, and it can deliver the right message to a targeted audience. Here's how to create a lasting positive impression through packaging.
The positive correlation between ABM and sales outcomes is impossible to ignore, but many B2B marketers still struggle with ABM execution and measurement. There's no silver bullet to demystify ABM, but these tips provide clarity and actionable advice to unlock ROI.
In 2019, email held on to its crown as the monarch of marketing channels. As we begin a new decade, let's reflect on some of last year's most talked-about and important moments in email.
Privacy concerns have reached a boiling point. Consumers, regulators, Web browsers, advertisers, brands... all are evolving to meet the changing privacy landscape. Marketers are considering how to best reach customers while respecting their privacy and earning their trust. See what lies ahead in 2020.
As we enter a new year and a new chapter in digital marketing, it's imperative that your email campaigns reach their intended destination. Here are 5 best-practices to boost and maintain your email deliverability in 2020.
Thanks to the social-driven economy, consumer demand for convenience, and a culture of "I want it now," subscription and direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce is booming. The industry is evolving quickly, and heading into 2020 these are five trends to watch.
Big Data is taking over. Most of its seemingly obvious payoffs are mirages at best, or quicksand at worst, whereas others hold the potential for high returns. So, what are the keys to Big Data success?
Thinking of a customer experience in digital-only terms is limiting. For brands to stand out and truly capture (and keep) customer attention, they must incorporate physical elements and appeal to all of a customer's senses. Here are three ways you can do exactly that.
The early-warning signs of a recession are all around, and most economists expect a recession by the end of 2020. Recession-proofing takes time and steady effort. These five tactics will ensure marketers are ready for ups and downs, whatever the economic climate.
Marketing has evolved, as has the customer experience: A signature on the dotted line is now just the beginning. CMOs—all marketers—have new roles and so need new skills; foremost is the ability to wear many hats at once. These 5 guiding principles will help you navigate this new world.
Email marketing doesn't work well if you don't understand your audience, their needs, their wants. Take these steps to learn more about your audience so that you can then segment them and improve your email workflow—and conversions.
In three weeks, on January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), goes into effect. As a result, for the first time, US businesses will be subject to a far stricter set of privacy regulations in-country.
Revenue operations is a hot trend in B2B marketing. But what is it, why has it continued to gain traction, and—most important—how can marketers benefit from it? Here are answers, including three reasons why marketers should embrace revenue operations.
Mobile has become the primary channel for consumers in virtually every demographic group—allowing them to connect anywhere, at any time, and driving a shift that has transformed the consumer landscape. What does a successful mobile strategy entail in today's world?
Shopper behavior is fundamentally different during the holidays. Marketers can't rely on the same data and algorithms that they leverage at other times of the year. If brands don't adjust to holiday shopping behavior, it could cost them big.
It's no secret that the holiday shopping season can have an outsize impact on a small business's revenue for the year. Here are four areas businesses should prioritize.
New digital experiences continue to disrupt customer journeys, leading marketers to rethink the traditional funnel. A new customer journey has taken shape, creating more meaningful touchpoints and potentially leading to increased revenue.
Creativity can be highly useful in marketing, but it won't get you very far if your message strategy is off the mark. Because message strategy is the foundation for everything you do in marketing. Here's how to build a foundation that doesn't crumble.
Being a marketing leader in 2019 is more challenging than it was in 2018. In 2018, more challenging than in 2017... and 2016... and so on. Marketing gets faster, more frenetic and challenging every year—every month, week, and day. But there's much to be thankful for.
Video is getting hotter by the day, becoming the most popular of mediums for content marketing, and marketing in general. If you're considering using video, here are seven tips to help you build a solid video marketing campaign.
Much has been written recently about how consumers should be the "owners of their data." But can marketers perform customer analytics while respecting customers' wishes and following the law? Are we on a collision course, or is there a better way?
These days, e-commerce businesses have more marketing options at their fingertips than ever before. It can be easy to choose the wrong ones. As a result, many e-commerce companies are losing out on some seriously lucrative revenue streams.
Today's outdoor advertising has to grab attention faster than ever, since consumers are bombarded with ads and conditioned to ignore "noise." To stand out, companies are using billboards in creative ways to capture consumers' imagination, attention—and business.
Paid search and social are both performance channels with particular strengths and weaknesses. Used intelligently together, these two channels combine for a powerhouse multichannel campaign. Here's what you need to know to successfully integrate your search and social campaigns.
Launching a new product can be a lot like throwing a dart at a map—while the map is in another room, the power is out, and you're fresh from the optometrist and your pupils are dilated... But you don't have to launch products—or even campaigns—with guesswork. Here's what to do instead.
For 20+ years, shoppers have bought stuff online. But people don't just buy, they also like to shop—reveling in the experience of discovery. And they have now begun to extend that shopping behavior online. Brands need to capitalize on this shift—because it's the inevitable future of e-commerce.
Salespeople can be the true voice of the customer: Through daily conversations, they intimately understand what problems prospects are experiencing—right now. Here's how marketers can harness that knowledge for content marketing and PR.
Along with keyword research and website optimization, strengthening your backlink profile through off-site SEO is a critical way to boost your organic search rankings and traffic. The challenge? It's really hard... What's a marketer to do? Execute the following three highly effective stratagems.
At some point, we all learned about the 4Ps of marketing: place, price, product, and promotion. Those still hold weight, but marketing has been undergoing drastic changes, and companies now face a host of new challenges. These new 4Ps of marketing are the way forward.
We know that serious social media influencers can create an "unfair advantage" for you because they are trusted and their audiences listen to them daily. The big question for marketers isn't whether influencers create value for brands. It's what that value is—or, more specifically, how do we measure it.
Gen Z members are young, with the oldest barely past age 20, but they hold an estimated $143B in spending power. Brands are attempting to reach them, but a connection with Gen Z is almost impossible without incredible content. Here are some tips to make engagement more likely.
If you're not already doing ABM, then you're likely thinking about doing it. Taking a tiered approach allows you to scale your efforts. Here's how to win the biggest, most attractive deals in your market.
There is such a thing as too much content. And if you're creating marketing content for its own sake (i.e., without a clear business need), you've taken a wrong turn onto a dead-end path. Instead, take these four steps on the road to creating the right amount of the right type of content.
You've built your marketing career by creating compelling campaigns that capture calls, clicks, likes, shares, and sales. You've mastered the art and science of SEO. But are you ready to market to the next generation of consumers? Are you ready for voice commerce?
For most marketing teams, the top success metric is leads. But as marketers and sales team members alike will tell you, not all leads are created equal. How can you pass along only the best, most-qualified leads to Sales? Here's what you need to know.
Building, editing, and sharing a compelling presentation isn't an easy task; it's not particularly cheap, either—because they're often one and done... But there's a way to develop engaging presentation assets that can be used over and over again.
Nearly every marketer will be asked to manage a project at some point in their career. But not every marketer will have formal project management training—or feel confident in their planning or leadership skills. Leading and managing marketing projects doesn't have to feel overwhelming.
The entire retail industry is at a crossroads: store closures, CMO reshuffles, and competition from Amazon. But retailers still have a lucrative opportunity to differentiate themselves and win over undecided shoppers, who are large in number. Here's how.
Different companies have different methods and tools for content creation. What's important is that the team creating the content is capable of implementing a content strategy and achieving its objectives. So when putting together a content marketing team (or outsourcing to an agency), what should you be looking for?
More and more companies are seeing the benefits of implementing technology. Many are also seeing the pitfalls of selecting the wrong technology. In marketing and sales, the most commonly used tools are customer relationship management systems. When selecting a CRM, what should you look for?
Odds are, you don't need convincing to get on board with email marketing. Most marketers these days use email. But are you using it to its fullest potential? Here are 14 ways to get the most out of email.
AI shows great promise, and marketers are still learning how to use it effectively and integrate it with, or use it to complement, the processes they're already using. One thing is clear, though: Email is an area where AI can offer significant advantages.
More than 1 billion Stories are shared every day across the Facebook family of apps: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Stories as a social media format are here to stay. Marketers and brands that invest in this trend will reap the rewards.
To write the perfect sales pitch in a short amount of time, you need a basic structure that you can then tailor to each prospect's needs. To do so effectively, take these six steps.
Social media tools can help build your audience and attract sales. Usually, popular tools come to mind when you need a solution. But there are lesser-known, yet amazing, tools that can significantly improve your social media campaign results. Here are five such social media tools.
Even the most complex material can be generated and fleshed out in simple ways—via straightforward processes—to produce amazing whitepapers. These 10 ideas for collecting information can quickly translate into high-quality whitepapers that engage B2B audiences.
Online shopping has transformed both retail and customer experience. But all's not well: Today's online shoppers face some big issues. Before you lose customers to industry Goliaths like Amazon, you'll need to mitigate those challenges.
You put a lot of effort and time into creating the perfect email content for your subscribers. But no matter what you write, or how well, people may not even see it if the subject line doesn't get them to click. These 10 types of subject lines will get subscribers to open your emails.
Keyword research is one of—if not the most—crucial SEO activities. But quality keyword research can take a lot of time and effort, especially when done manually. So arm yourself with powerful keyword research tools: Check out these seven reliable (and free) keyword finders.
If you're going to run a successful marketing campaign on Instagram, you need to understand it and its audience inside and out. Here are tips as well as tools to help you succeed on Instagram with video marketing.
Customers today have choices. One unfortunate experience with your company and they won't think twice to switch to a competitor. If you don't focus on customer service, you will bleed revenue. But delivering live-chat support to customers can make all the difference.
As consumers are inundated by marketing, they are resisting anything that looks or feels inauthentic. And they're posting about product and brand experiences on social media. The availability of that authentic content, including pics, means it's time to ditch stock photos.
This article is for ambitious marketers. If you're one, you know that publishing the occasional blog post, though worthwhile, isn't enough to build authority. So, what can you do if you want to make a big-time dent in the infosphere? You need to do more—such as these five potent authority-builders.
Infographics are incredibly effective marketing tools. Even the simplest infographic could drive a thousand potential leads to your website. Here's how to take advantage of infographics in your marketing efforts.
As the first place more than 50% of all Americans go to search for products, Amazon is the e-commerce and advertising platform most brands can't afford to ignore. But using Amazon as a platform is not as straightforward as you might think. Here are five steps you need to take to stay in control.
The rise of artificial intelligence is dramatically changing the way businesses understand and communicate with their audiences. Nowhere is that truer than in the fields of experience management (XM) and marketing research. See five ways AI is the future of research.
With so many options for different types of tools that manage, cleanse, transform, combine, and help you act on data, how do you know which one is right for you? And what does each of those tools even do?
You want a guaranteed method of going viral? Have an A-list celebrity with a massive following retweet you. Even then, it's got to be the right message and the right time. Such was the case with me. Twice. Here's my story, along with advice for going viral that doesn't rely on celebrities' taking notice.
Whether you're decluttering your closet or updating your marketing plan, the key is to be thoughtful and critical. To hold in your hands, or in your mind, the initiatives and activities that spark joy—and results.
Marketers are often the default creators of presentations for conferences and webinars—even board meetings and sales decks. These simple design tips can make your presentations more convincing and engaging.
Social media has been a key part of digital marketing—but usage is declining, especially among Gen Z and Millennials. Most marketers never believed they'd see the day. But that day seems to be here. So now what do we do?
ROAS is a flawed metric. Here's how to figure out the true success of your marketing campaigns with ROMI.
B2B lead generation and sales is a complex world. As technology, trends, and preferences evolve, so do B2B marketing and sales. Identifying and overcoming common challenges is the best way to accelerate B2B growth.
To step up your digital marketing game, you have to combine your SEO techniques with email marketing to achieve genuine, organic reach for your content. It's how you make sure your content reaches your target audience.
There are various types of influencers, and they deliver varying degrees of success to what your business wants from its investment in influencer marketing. Knowing the differences among the different types can help you define the goals, activities, and measures of success for your influencer marketing.
Too many brands today have developed an obsession with performance marketing while relegating branding to the proverbial back burner. But prioritizing one strategy over the other has significant ramifications. Here's what to do instead.
By developing processes and adopting ideas that mirror Agile methods, marketing teams can produce higher-quality content. Here's how Agile approaches can help you find the balance between quality and quantity.
Social media offers marketers an excellent opportunity to reach customers. But how can you stand out from the massive amounts of content exchanged on social platforms each day? You need to inject a little personality into your brand content. Here's what you need to know.
What makes the difference between a piece of content that gets no traction, and another that encourages a potential client to buy? This article will help you pinpoint the why and how of creating excellent buyer-focused content.
A healthy marketing budget can be powerful fuel for brand expansion and sales growth. But when sales improve, most marketers need to prove that their activity was the driver. Marketers must tie their tactics directly to sales outcomes in a way that's as simple and believable as possible.
Some events capture the public imagination before, during, and afterward. The lure of such events is nearly impossible for brands to ignore. Marketers can make massive inroads tens of thousands of attendees at once—if they understand how to craft, deliver, and spread the right message.
Programmatic media buying combines creativity and powerful technology to deliver a tailored ad experience across multiple screens in real-time. It's the future of digital advertising, and it's already here.
Often, marketers stop short of asking the really important questions about SEO. We focus on things like keyword rankings and backlinks—not how those impact overall marketing or business goals. Obviously, measurement is important; but there is no one-size-fits-all approach to determining what metrics matter. So... what's to be done?
An accurate customer journey map can help optimize your marketing strategy, create smarter campaign objectives, and better attribute conversions. See how to create and refine a customer journey map.
Creating content that engages readers isn't easy, especially today. In our haste to create fresh, useful content, we make mistakes. But our audiences don't want to waste time on substandard writing. Avoid these nine common writing and content mistakes.
Especially in the age of GDPR, email preference centers make perfect sense: Customers get control over what communications they receive, and marketers get to send better, more targeted communications. Here's how to build and use a modern email preference center.
Delivering personalized content at scale requires a strategic effort that applies to various marketing strategies: inbound, demand generation, account-based marketing, and sales enablement. Here are some best-practices for delivering personalized content for each of those four strategies.
Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook are the most popular social media platforms, but brands need to be aware of emerging platforms if they don't want to risk missing lucrative opportunities. Here are key market trends in social media engagement and ways emerging platforms are addressing those trends.
More and more marketing departments are moving from just being curious about Agile to actually implementing Agile practices. But many have the wrong idea about what Agile is and what it can or cannot do, so let's debunk some of the most common myths about Agile.
In far too many businesses, marketing and sales teams maintain radio silence between each other, even though each has plenty to offer the other—especially regarding content. If only they could team-up, their collaboration would mean less wheel-spinning and more success for both.
How can marketers and advertisers gain the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine-learning while avoiding the pitfalls? By finding the right balance between the explore vs. exploit dynamic. Find out what that means.
Marketers struggle mightily to take advantage of the huge opportunity that is mobile advertising. That's because we must first understand how receptive consumers are to certain types of messaging at various moments during the day. These insights will help.
The emails you spend so much time strategizing, crafting, and scheduling aren't worth much if they don't actually reach your target audience. Email deliverability is essential, yet many marketers don't pay much attention to it. Here's why you should remedy that.
B2B companies tend not to believe social strategies will work for them. Instead, they often use social platforms as real-time broadcast channels for announcements or updates. But, done correctly, social can drive B2B lead generation—and conversions.
Content marketing helps shape your company's place in the marketplace. The key to creating content that drives website visits, improves conversion, and creates brand lift is understanding what your audience needs and how you can best provide it. Make sure your content marketing can compete.
Some niche businesses think a small social presence and a semi-decent website are enough to engage customers in the age of digital marketing. Not even close, of course... So, what do successful customer engagements look like in the age of digital transformation?
These days, finding data about consumer behavior is so easy, our instinct is to pile up a mountain of it so we get a better view of customer preferences, behaviors, and experiences. That sky-high view empowers us to see a vast landscape, but it leaves us blind to what actually shapes behavior: consumer feelings.
This list of marketing thought leaders is designed to be a place where you can find some of the best and brightest minds on most marketing topics. Who's on this list? 100+ genuine marketing thought leaders spanning a wide range of marketing disciplines.
Social media marketing is more than just posting stuff and waiting for miracles to happen. Organic social media reach is all but dead. That's the reality we have to deal with. Here's how you can conquer that reality in seven steps.
Companies aren't living, breathing things, so they must communicate their personality and identity—their brand—through design elements. Which is why design and branding are inseparable. See how that process works, along with a couple of good examples.
Hiring and scaling your team can be daunting. Making a hire and then discovering it was the wrong one can be extremely costly: in terms of time, money, resources, and—less obviously—team morale. When hiring, here's what you need to consider to do it right.
You've likely sat through dozens of terrible presentations—and you're right to feel you were robbed of your time. Avoid subjecting your own audiences to the same fate with your own presentations: Apply these content marketing principles to create and deliver stellar presentations.
Are the 4Ps still important? Has the emergence of customer-centricity supplanted them? How has digital changed the marketing and sales funnel? What's the new relationship between Marketing and Sales? This article explores those questions—and more.
Brands that understand the value of partnerships with influencers are prioritizing the repurposing of influencer-created content. But extending the life of that content comes at a price, which is something marketers should be mindful of when beginning a partnership. Here are the important things you need to know.
Considering the $350 billion combined spending power of Millennials and Gen Z, brands have made it a priority to reach them, motivate them, and inspire loyalty among them. But how? Here's what a panel of experts from Facebook, Airbnb, Lyft, Ellevest, and InterQ Research suggested marketers do.
Experiential marketing has hit its stride. Once considered experimental or risky, it has now proven its legitimacy among major brands. So whether you're organizing an immersive pop-up, on-site virtual reality installation, or a live performance, follow these seven tips to achieve the ROI you're looking for.
Marketing controversial products or services—such as cannabis and cosmetic surgery—involves more than following rules and regulations. The legal and ethical landscape in those markets is dynamic, continually creating hurdles and challenges for marketers. Here are five marketing strategies to help educate consumers and build trust in controversial markets.
A thought-leadership program drives value and builds trust. But many marketers struggle to identify their unique industry perspective, and then to integrate it into their messaging, positioning, and content. These five steps will help you kick off (or elevate) your thought-leadership program.
Marketers have long sought to encourage brand loyalty, but their tactics are falling short. Marketers still make two big errors when using traditional loyalty tactics: trying to develop a relationship built on transactions; and not listening to consumers. Here's what to do instead, in three steps.
Millennials are expected to outnumber members of any other generation in the USA this year. How can savvy marketers make the most of this opportunity? What's the best way to reach out to the Millennial market? What kind of message is most likely to resonate?
Fortnite's live performances and Netflix's new ventures are evidence that younger audiences' expectations of content are changing: They don't want to just watch it, they want to experience it. What will be the next way to grab mass audiences' precious time and attention?
Today's consumers have endless options, so they expect you to compete for their brand love. That's why forging a genuine connection with them is so important: It will secure their loyalty.
Tradeshows, conferences, live events in general have become essential components of exceptional marketing strategies. No other medium works better to create an emotional bond between your brand and its customers and prospects. Of course, there are right and wrong ways to approach live events.
For successful growth marketing, PR, and promotions, today's marketers need digital tools, including browser extensions, to bring their marketing communications strategy to life. Check out these top digital tools and Chrome extensions.
Google will begin to add podcasts to search results. Soon, podcasts won't have to rely on Top 100 lists and word-of-mouth to be discoverable. This development will fundamentally change the medium. Here's what you need to know.
Segmentation—the process of identifying specific customer groups—is imperative for personalized marketing and communications. Yet, despite all the effort they put in, companies repeatedly make easily avoidable segmentation mistakes. Here are five common ones, along with tips to avoid them.
What can you really achieve with a solid email marketing strategy? What is a realistic email goal for your business? This article walks you through four real-world examples of businesses that set goals and used email to achieve them.
Digital brand communities have grown in popularity, so it makes sense to explore some high-profile examples. A community's landing page is an important building block of an engaged, growing community. It's what draws people in. Draw inspiration from these 10 examples.
Even when you create a great piece of content, it might never be seen if it's not promoted and shared. Promotion is critical to the success of your content strategy, in general. To ensure your content gets seen and generates leads, use these 10 unpaid, organic content-promotion tactics.
In a digitally driven world, the human element can get lost. Nothing can replace face-to-face rapport, which is why events can do wonders for your sales—certain types of events more than others, depending on your brand and positioning. These three types of events can boost your sales.
If you want a website designed to convert visitors into customers or potential customers, and you're banking on SEO to bring you targeted visitors, a low-cost solution or vendor can often cost you more in the long run. So how do you choose?
Nearly 30% of Americans, that's some 70 million people, regularly listen to at least one podcast. For any business, that's a huge opportunity to tap into a market hungry for content, especially in niche areas of interest. Your podcast audience is waiting for you...
Digital experiential technologies are redefining everyday processes and influencing a variety of industries, from retail to real estate. See how retailers can harness AR and VR to propel their marketing initiatives, enhance the shopper experience, and drive sales.
Modern B2B buyers are acting more like consumers and demanding frictionless, convenient buying experiences. But delivering those experiences is easier said than done. Here are five key considerations for enabling your marketing and sales teams to exceed buyer expectations.
Brand safety is being redefined by consumers. Marketers today need to look beyond just making sure their ads don't appear in controversial contexts. Brands' usage policies, partnerships, and even political campaign contributions are now in play. Here's advice on how to keep your brand safe.
Marketers are drowning in martech alphabet soup. They must sort through that haphazard collection of acronyms that vendors have created to market their products. Then, marketers have to select the right acronym and the right vendor. Avoid the unhealthy hassle.
Whether you're a big or small brand, today's consumers assume you know them and understand them—and can personalize their interactions with you online, offline, across devices, and so on. But where do you even start? Every CMO needs to consider these three key priorities.
Paid search, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is a part of search engine marketing (SEM). It's an effective way to drive search traffic your way quickly and consistently. But how does it work? And why should small and midsize businesses be using it?
Are you still using the sales funnel as your model for marketing? Stop. There's a better, far more accurate way that also aligns with lead nurturing and trust-building via content marketing. It's lifecycle marketing, and here is how it works.
Sellers—and marketers—are crazy if they don't take advantage of the vast amounts of information about their buyers that's available on social media. And yet, they don't. Those who do... have a great advantage. Here are ways to research buyers on social platforms.
It is an interesting, complicated, and marvelous time to be a woman. Likewise, it is an interesting, complicated, and marvelous time to be naming brands catering exclusively to women. It's also a task fraught with missteps. So... what is the best approach to take?
How often have you clicked on a search result and then clicked away because the site didn't load quickly? A lot? Yes, that's common. In 2019, site speed is the name of the SEO game. You can either keep up with speed expectations, or you can lose out.
Because of the many benefits they provide, specialized online communities that cater to specific interests, including specific brands, have begun to emerge. That's because they can be what traditional social platforms can't: true communities for the like-minded.
To get the maximum return on investment from their content marketing and sales teams, company executives need to create a culture that enables those teams to work together. Here's a three-step guide to creating that kind of company atmosphere.
"Artificial intelligence": you've heard the term, you know it's a trend, you know you're "supposed" to be using it... But if you were asked to explain in a few short sentences what it means for marketers, could you do it? If not, then you've found the right article.
Everyone in your company is working hard to understand how customers think. But what if all that effort and all the investments in customer platforms, your understanding of your customer is only marginally better. Detailed customer insight can be hard to come by. Here's the likeliest cause of that problem.
Social media long ago became the place where people voice their opinions on everything, including your brand and products. Also about company leaders, like your CEO or CMO. Which is why social media monitoring exists. But Google Alerts isn't nearly enough. Instead, here are 10 tools that work well.
Relationships are hard work—full of ups and downs, twists and turns. The relationship between client and marketing agency, too, requires TLC. Finding and keeping the right one is vital. Here's how you can cultivate a lasting, meaningful relationship with your marketing agency of choice.
Revisit the emails you sent to your B2B audience recently. How many ideas, emotions, and benefits did each message contain or refer to? How many possible responses could it have elicited? Chances are... too many! For high-converting emails, follow this rule instead.
Media strategies need to remain agile and democratized in a world saturated with digitized media formats and emerging tech trends. What are the business models that can ensure success with digital media now and in the future?
Although the concept of delivering quality content to educate and build trust with customers is a sound one, actually executing on that idea—in a way that serves both the customer and the marketer—has never been more difficult. But content marketing can—and will—be saved. Here's how.
We marketers have been trying for years to decode the most enigmatic generation of our time, Millennials. But many of them are now marketers themselves, and they have set their sights on the next generation: Gen Z. Here are three ways we can break through to this rising generation.
How do you spot room for growth when the local SEO playing field looks too even? When you take a close look you'll find the opportunities for growth are there—and can have direct, measurable impact on both search engine visibility and the bottom line. A future-proof strategy exists.
Cold email is still an effective way of generating appointments and making new connections. B2B companies, in particular, can still send personalized, cold emails at scale. Here are cold-email principles you can use to create response-boosting outreach campaigns.
A lot of weekend warriors tend to show up in emergency rooms on Sunday nights. Marketing teams, too, can fall into cycles of intense effort followed by exasperation and, often, failure. But you can avoid common "marketing weekend warrior" scenarios—and market like a fit athlete instead.
When writing for marketing, you need to connect with your audience. But first you have to understand who they are and what they care about. To understand what will motivate your potential customers, use empathy mapping. Here's how.
All the digital channels and bells and whistles aside, your success as a marketer today still stems from using emotional marketing that understands consumers' needs and preferences. Now, with the emergence of influencer marketing, we can combine these two approaches in our content marketing to reach deep into our desired audiences.
If your website or blog has an abundance of posts and pages that aren't search-engine optimized, you should be thinking about doing a content audit to improve SEO. Here's a six-step content audit and optimization process that will markedly improve organic traffic to your site.
These days, to successfully complete an RFP response, it takes on average 3-10 people (and sometimes up to 20). It's no easy feat. So how can your organization ensure a truly collaborative effort on its RFP projects? Use these six best-practices.
Businesses that rely on organic search for sales and conversions know the importance of SEO, but ranking for keywords is becoming harder and more time-consuming. But there's plenty you can do about that. Complete these three SEO tasks to improve your site's organic search visibility across the Web.
So far this year, six naming trends have become prominent, or are becoming so. This article explains how each trend can be used and what benefits it can bring you. If you're ever tasked with naming a business or product—and you want it to truly stand out—check out these valuable insights.
Webinars are a great tool for any stage of the buyer's journey, but you're probably not going to get the level of attention and engagement you're after if your webinar is a sales presentation in disguise. Take these four basic actions to ensure better ROI for your webinar efforts.
Companies that use lead scoring benefit from a 77% increase, on average, in lead generation ROI vs. those that don't. But you have to do it right. Go through this checklist to ensure your lead-scoring is sophisticated enough to work well.
Page titles are an important, but often overlooked, part of achieving success with your SEO efforts. When used correctly, they can help you achieve greater organic search visibility and higher click-through-rates for your website. Here are a few tips on how to optimize your page titles and improve your SEO.
Buyers are becoming increasingly fussier. Without a delightful and error-free experience with your brand or website, it's likely you're losing out on conversions, leads, and clients. These five conversion rate optimization (CRO) principles will increase lead volume and help you surpass your targets.
Compliance protocols and processes need to meet C-suite expectations, but they also need to be flexible and responsive enough for front-line employees to be quick, creative, and, of course, compliant.
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. It takes a lot of work to achieve those elusive Page One rankings—and to retain them. Part of the onsite work is a systematic review of sources that might indicate there's trouble brewing or in full storm mode. Here are 10 checks for such indicators of trouble.
To reach consumers and provide superior customer experiences, we need to deliver content that engages. Understanding what’s important to buyers is the key—and a growing number of buyers cite shared purpose as one reason to buy from a company. Social purpose is a powerful tool; here's how you can wield it.
The unprecedented growth of e-commerce has fundamentally changed the way consumers, and therefore marketers, think about retail—and marketing. Traditional experience models are no longer enough to serve and delight consumers. Let's see how lessons from e-commerce can help us reach today's customers.
The next consumer powerhouse generation can be summed up in one letter: Z. Communicating with and marketing to this young audience of digital natives isn't easy. But it is possible—if you focus on their diverse subcultures. Here's how.
What if you could take simple steps to update your blog content and get more ROI from existing efforts without having to publish anything new? In fact, you can. Do these three things.
Automated push notification is an optimal channel in the post-GDPR era, allowing e-commerce brands to push communications to target users efficiently, effectively, and easily. Now's the time to act—because late adopters will fall behind.
One of the most frustrating moments of the sales process is the "no-show"—when a prospective customer fails to show up for a meeting or isn't available to take a scheduled sales call. But that doesn't mean your prospect is not interested in buying from you! In fact, no-shows are a hidden source of future business opportunity.
If you're a B2B marketer, you're obsessed with customers' data about their buyer journeys. You want to know how often people visit your webpages, how long they stay, when they leave, what content is getting the most conversions... So if you don't use Google Tag Manager yet, it's time to get up to speed.
Instead of flooding the Internet with content that's merely meh, avoid these three content marketing mistakes to ensure that you are strategically producing content that breaks through and wows your audience.
What's the overall aim of any business? More often than not, it's to increase sales. So, if your employees are engaged, that engagement almost always converts into better employee performance. As a result, you can expect to see an increase in sales.
Is social media helping us reach potential customers? After all, we're sweating blood to create social media content and investing in ad campaigns to help our content gain more visibility. Is all of that delivering business results? We should find out.
Some days, Sales and Marketing can seem closely aligned. Other days, it seems Marketing is from Venus and Sales is from Mars. But sales and marketing teams need to better understand each other, pursue shared goals, and work together more effectively—for the greater good of the company. Here's how to make that happen.
At a time when we're reaching customers through more channels than ever before, it can be easy to assume your average Millennial is more likely to engage with an Instagram post or a Facebook ad than your humble email. But if that's what you think, you're missing out on reaching Millennial customers.
Marketing has been around for as long as humans have had something to sell. But in recent years just about every marketing tactic and delivery channel imaginable has quickly and drastically evolved. It's hard for us marketers to be sure of anything these days. Let's see what we can do about that.
B2B companies know how to talk-up their products or services, emphasizing how efficient and cost-effective they are. But customers don't want marketing spiel: They want balanced and unbiased information and insight from people they can relate to. You can make sure that's what they get.
If you want your B2B marketing content to gain readers, the first thing you must do is think like a journalist so you can quickly grab your readers' attention with the key points you want them to take away. Read on for more, including four other surefire ways to engage your readership.
Before you can even start to measure the success of your ABM efforts, you've got to make sure four critical foundational components are in place. Here they are, along with how to set them up.
The path to brand attachment—one level up from brand loyalty—is long, winding, and challenging. And you can't skip ahead or take shortcuts. Here's how to get there in five strategic steps.
In this video, a neuroscientist explains how the brain responds to the various elements of storytelling: At various points in a story, the brain actually releases powerful hormones. The upshot: as a marketer, you can effectively engage your audiences through storytelling.
When you work on a team managing social media—whether a team of 2 or 20—issues and mix-ups are bound to arise: Who decides what gets published? Who is allowed to access a particular social account? How do you quickly get approval from busy managers or clients? These four tools can help.
When planning a digital marketing campaign, you have to make sure it will be successful and you'll be using your budget optimally. Take these five important steps before launching your campaign so you don't waste money or time.
Could you create effective marketing copy by imposing limits on how you write? How about using some tricks and tactics that poets—and Dr. Seuss—use! To craft unforgettable, memorable marketing copy, take a page or two from Dr. Seuss.
Loyalty rewards have been around since the 1700s, but programs have changed dramatically due to innovations in technology and e-commerce. But have those changes advanced customer loyalty? Not necessarily. But these 10 best-practices, based on research, data, and experience, actually do produce results.
Want to create a lip-smacking lead magnet that prospects will come from far and wide to sample? You'll need the right mix to do it, including these 3 essential ingredients.
It happens at the start of every year:Local businesses are eager to activate their marketing plans; but, after a busy holiday season, even the most experienced marketers can be overwhelmed. Here are some simple steps to get going and stay on track in 2019.
Marketing technology is continually evolving to solve day-to-day problems for companies across industries in efficient, effective and innovative ways. Here are some predictions for 2019 from six martech leaders. They cover a variety of topics—from ABM to Facebook marketing to meeting automation and more. See what these leaders think awaits for you this year.
The Internet has become a competitive place: Every day, it becomes harder to stand out and attract the website visitors you need for your business. Here are some ideas to hack your way to some extra website traffic. Give them a try.
How can we marketers map our messages and voice to ensure our audiences are comfortable with both, and create a neat fit between message, product, and medium? Watch the video to find out.
A hashtag is making the rounds on Twitter, and it's one marketers should be sure to take note of: #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob. The hashtag refers to stock images that fail to accurately represent what professionals actually do. Here's how to avoid having your next campaign's images being branded with the hashtag of fails.
Customer lifecycle assessment is all about steady improvement—identifying weaknesses so you can eradicate them. The potential rewards of optimizing your customer retention process is so significant in the B2B world, you wouldn't want to give short shrift. Here's your action plan.
If you gather information to gain a strong understanding of your competitive landscape and market environment, you can improve your strategy across every area of marketing. Let's take a look at how to gather intel in three areas to help you stand out against your competition and win.
Marketers must stand out: not as the people who make things look pretty, but as the people who drive tangible value for their organization. These metrics can help prove that marketers are indispensable for growing any business.
As technology becomes central to marketing success, one theme stands out: In a tech-centric world, what role does creativity play? The infusion of technology into marketing can pose a fundamental, even existential question for marketers: Is there a role for creativity in a modern marketing program?
B2B customers are demanding education and advice as part of the sales experience. They see through the bright and shiny marketing speak. They want proof. Real thought leadership is that proof. Take these four steps to identify your company's most powerful thought leaders and their perspectives.
A single image can have a significant impact on the performance of an email campaign by ensuring that customers receive a compelling and personal experience. Selecting images with maximum appeal requires considering a range of factors. See how to select those impactful images.
Sabine Benoit, professor of marketing at the University of Surrey, briefly explains how consumer behavior is affected by contextual factors and what marketers can do to capitalize on it.
A lot of marketing directors are constantly tweaking their messaging—because it just isn't doing what they want it to do. And it's not easy to fix... with so many moving parts. But here are five of the most common issues that show up in marketing messaging of all kinds. Let's straighten them out, shall we?
You probably have a social media presence and a blog, but if you really want to make a lasting impression on your online audience, you need to be creating videos. Here's a look at why video marketing is one of the most effective methods of brand promotion there is—and how you can use it to your advantage.
Two heads are better than one, right? So let's explore the immense possibilities of content created through collaboration. We start with 5 reasons to produce collaborative content, and then move on to 15 ways to bring collaborative content to life. See how to make content creation easier, more fruitful, and highly effective.
If you're struggling to drive traffic through search engines because your high-quality content is ending up on the third or fourth page of Google SERPs, this guide will show you how to identify the keywords you could be ranking for. Let's find the keywords you can be realistically competing for right now.
Are there things small-company marketers are doing, in some cases out of necessity, that we should all consider incorporating into our routines? Is their hustle something we could all learn from?
How can busy marketers make time for learning when we're already having trouble keeping our head above water with our day-to-day responsibilities? Podcasts are one of the most efficient ways to learn (and teach). They're easy to access, portable, economical. But where to start? Check out this list of 18 podcasts.
"Customer participation" is sometimes used interchangeably with "customer engagement," but the former is so much more than the latter. In today's competitive business landscape, customer participation trumps customer engagement. Here's why the time to invest in customer participation is now.
The rise of smart speakers, smartphones, AI, and voice search is changing the SEO landscape before our eyes. Meanwhile, many marketers and businesses are just now catching up to text-based, traditional SEO. This is your opening—your opportunity to gain an edge over the competition.
Content on different channels and on different devices is consumed in different ways; as a result, there are more challenges for the storyteller, but more opportunities, too—including transmedia storytelling. Find out about the persuasive capabilities of storytelling across platforms.
There are thousands of time-management and productivity tips and systems out there, but it's hard to know what really works. What can you do today that will boost your productivity throughout the year ahead? These 28 proven productivity hacks can help you boost your work efficiency and productivity tremendously.
A change in calendar year is an ideal time to think about where things have been and where things are going. For email marketers, the future is bright—as long as we take advantage of important trends and apply best-practices.
Marketers who understand the value of engagement in influencer marketing also understand the power of micro-influencers. These are regular people with regular social media accounts who are truly driven to share their passions. As a result, they have passionate followings—and incredible endorsement power. Here's what you need to know to harness that power.
Being data-driven is a top priority for most marketers—because they understand its vital importance to achieving marketing success. And every great data-driven marketing program rests on a foundation of data integrity and data ownership. Consider these nine tips to help you lay that foundation in your organization.
Content marketing has proven itself time and time again, but merely producing content doesn't guarantee business or even marketing success. There's already too much content being produced. So what's the solution to making content marketing work for you? The answer is content distribution, and here's what you can do about it.
Your company probably has some social media presence. But if you're not incorporating it into your strategy for marketing to customers, you're missing out. to expand your customer base, keep current customers engaged, and increase profits, take steps to build a social media marketing plan.
If you aspire to lean and confident writing in your marketing content, you'll avoid populating your prose with superfluous words. Simply put, the most effective writing and communication makes every word... communicate. Here's how to write less but say more.
Testimonial videos are ideal for the decision stage of the buyer's journey, when prospects are aware of and want to solve a problem, and they are looking for information to help them make up their minds. Help them choose you.
Disruption can be annoying, but it can also help to grab attention. In this, the first in a series of brief but insight-packed videos, marketing professor Isabelle Szmigin discusses how consumers navigate through messages they do and do not want to receive. Useful, right? Check it out!
You have a business that specializes in providing a B2B service or product. But all your keyword search terms return results that are B2C. The unpleasant outcome? High bounce rates, irrelevant traffic, and low conversion percentages. So, how can you attract the right kind of audience via search?
Baffled. Enthralled. Amused. Maybe insulted. Those are just a few reactions you might experience when encountering a nail polish name. Whatever the emotion, top marketing executives agree the name is nearly as important as the color. That can be true for other products as well. Here's a high-level look at a naming project—along with naming tips and techniques that might prove useful for brand managers and marketing execs.
Each of these handful of tactics you can use in conjunction with your social media efforts can boost your lead counts. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, however; you'll need to experiment to find which work best for you. Check out these potentially winning lead-gen tactics.
The beloved American children's classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was published in 1939 by the Montgomery Ward department store. So it's tempting to think of it as yet another lasting piece of seasonal content marketing. Except Rudolph is so much more than that. It's also a handy framework for telling our own brand stories.
Effective data collection and analysis are essential for better customer relationships. From achieving true personalization to predicting behavioral patterns and creating ongoing conversations, improving customer engagement all starts with deriving insights from data. Take these three steps to get there.
Dear SEO professionals: Clients don't simply want our SEO recommendations... they want guaranteed results. Why should you offer SEO guarantees? When should you offer SEO guarantees? And what kind of SEO guarantees should you offer? Read on to find out.
Here's the hard truth: Most CMOs will never be able to get all their work done. Yet, Marketing is critical to the success or failure of organizations. The solution? A rigorous focus on the things that matter most. So here are three areas for CMOs to prioritize, and three to let go of.
Many of us make the mistake of treating LinkedIn as simply an online Rolodex or a glorified CV, rather than an inbound marketing channel that can be optimized for sales inquiries. That is a huge misstep. Find out how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a powerful inbound sales asset.
Whether you're a budget-challenged startup or a corporate marketer headed to a tradeshow for the first time, it can be daunting to prepare your company's branding for an appearance at a major industry event. These do's and don'ts will help you achieve great results.
You knew this article was coming: the hottest SEO trends for the year ahead. Some of these trends you've already seen this year, and some are new, but we can definitely expect to see more of all of them in 2019. Check them out to prepare your SEO efforts for next year.
A common fallacy regarding email programs is that once you set them up, they are self-sustaining. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Make sure your email campaigns actually work as you'd like them to. Take these four steps.
When you're smarter about your audience's needs and behaviors, you can meet those needs more effectively. That's where a data-driven approach to personas can make all the difference. Go beyond the limits of traditional marketing personas.
With retailers and marketers ramping up their email volume at the same time during the holidays, you're competing for your customers' attention and the resources of the ISPs delivering your mail. To get your emails opened and to maximize conversions, use these five tactics.
Much is made of email content or design—and rightfully so—but sender reputation holds plenty of power over whether or not your email reaches its expected destination. To improve email deliverability, explore a few steps you can take to enhance your sender reputation.
Marketers and brands can benefit from a deeper understanding into how the brain drives human behavior and how emotions influence the body. Use these six neuroscience principles to supercharge your marketing and advertising campaigns.
Some brands are already using artificial intelligence to engage their audiences on social media and gain an edge on their competition. See how you can start using AI and stay ahead of the curve.
Getting a blog post to rank in Google has become difficult. But for certain types of searches, quality videos are rising above quality blog posts in search results. And therein lies your opportunity. Here is how you can start optimizing your YouTube videos to rank on Google.
Close alignment and cooperation between Sales and Marketing is key to a successful account-based marketing program. Here's how you can set up your ABM program for success and avoid common mistakes.
Consumers are in a spending mood, and retailers should be paying attention. By planning ahead, brands can encourage purchases now and also set themselves up for more business in the long run.
Knowing how to collect, read, and use your analytics can mean better customers and higher retention rates. Here are four key steps to put your analytics to work for you.
Third-party customer-intent data is helpful, but the best way to ensure you have the most accurate, useful intent data is to collect website-visitor data yourself. Here's how to do that.
Email marketing is an indispensable channel for any successful content strategy. But how can you make sure email marketing campaigns are effective? Avoid making these 13 common mistakes.
Few of us would argue against the benefits of exhibiting at a tradeshow, where we can possibly reach hundreds, maybe thousands, of leads. But many of us focus so much on lead capture that we forget about a follow-up plan for nurturing leads into customers. These six tip should help.
When making the transition to marketing automation, many B2B organizations find scale to be the biggest issue they face. Here are 10 obstacles that pop up when planning and executing campaigns with marketing automation.
Account-based marketing isn't new, but many marketers still run into issues with implementation and performance. Here are six common ABM problems--and their solutions.
Artificial intelligence can seem like a magical marketing solution. But beware: Investing in AI too quickly can backfire. Here's how to know if your brand is ready for AI.
The 2018 holiday season retail outlook is optimistic. Consumers want to spend on personal items and gifts, and advertisers want to make the most of the red-hot market. Use these tips and tricks to attract consumers and totally ace the holiday season.
Having a content strategy in place is important, but it's not the only step to content success. Here are six considerations to ensure that your content marketing efforts are not being wasted.
Marketers struggle to attribute their campaigns to conversions. But the need to prove ROI is going to get only greater as marketing teams look for additional budget to spread across the many channels they wish to market on.
Instagram's IGTV could be exactly what your marketing needs to take your social media video strategy to the next level. Here are 7 tips to help marketers use IGTV.
Increasing email engagement is marketers' top priority and challenge, but email deliverability issues can undermine engagement. Unsubscribe from these 5 email myths to increase email deliverability.
Put your mobile shopping site or app to the test by re-examining these seven elements, and make it easy for customers to buy from you.
Cognitive biases--thought traps--are the enemy of rational decisions. But rational decisions based on data are vital for marketing and business success. Avoid these common cognitive biases.
This article shares three less-popular content marketing tactics that still work really well to generate traffic, links, and social shares.
Your new ABM program will need a new lead management process: The parts may be similar to your current process, but they work differently for ABM.
These are commonly asked questions (and their answers) about voice search, which is top of mind with marketers and businesses because so many searches are being conducted across Siri, Alexa, Google Home, and Cortana.
Sales emails are often easily overlooked, but adding video to your emails can give your company the competitive edge. Here's a guide on how to do that and which tools can help.
The assumption is that negative comments of rival fans hurt the involved brands--at least on the social media channels on which those comments and interactions take place. But is that really the case?
Increase your email program's ROI by knowing your who customers are and what content they want to see. Use these six methods to personalize your emails beyond the basics.
Before investing time and money into video marketing, make sure you have a strategy that aligns with your business goals.
WeWork started as a local coworking space, but it quickly grew to become a global force in other industries. What makes WeWork's growth so impressive compared with competitors', and what can its story teach you about how to grow your brand?
Want to future-proof your business for search—and more? Make sure you provide relevant, contextual answers to consumers' voice searches. Here's how.
Video is useful for more than just your marketing. Imagine using videos to make your hiring and onboarding processes more efficient. Here's how a video content management system can help you do that.
Great deal! Buy now!! But why should people buy from your brand over the competition? That's where your value proposition comes in. Here are five steps to test whether your value prop is helping you succeed—or fail.
As a marketer, you've likely asked yourself or your team how you can best deliver value to your customers. Adopting an Agile marketing strategy might well be the best answer to that question.
Companies rarely seek direct input at high volumes about purchasing behavior and experiences from the people who know it best: current, happy customers and former, not-so-happy customers. But why oh why?! Nobody knows more about the value or broken promises of products or services than the people who buy them. Here's your very own Voice of the Customer starter kit. Open it up!
What makes one brand succeed over other brands that sell the same or similar products? Gutsy brands make themselves stand out in ways their audiences relate to. Here's how to find and capitalize on your brand's gutsy qualities.
Design concepts can enhance your market research, and your marketing itself, helping you to communicate in your audience's language. That's especially the case when marketing to young women, but these four approaches can apply to any campaign.
The term "product-market fit" may not be familiar to some marketers, but it's fundamental to business growth. Here are five areas marketers should focus on to make sure their brand has the right product-market fit.
ABM is not a new strategy by any means, but more and more B2B marketers are embracing it, in part because they're dissatisfied with their current lead generation programs. But don't get tangled up in the hype; success relies on a careful approach.
If you've heard Reddit is a tough place to market, you've heard right—but changes to the platform have made it more marketing-friendly, and it can be one of the most effective social platforms for reaching new, relevant audiences.
Working with B2B influencers can help you reach new audiences, and it doesn't have to cost a fortune if you know how to engage with them organically.
Many marketing organizations lack the organizational structure to energize and optimize an ABM strategy and program. In some ways, Marketing's traditional org chart may actually hinder ABM success.
Despite its massive fan base, loyal users, and billions of impressions, our beloved SlideShare has succumbed. A once-powerful channel is all but dead, and here's why.
Editors are the guest-article gatekeepers at your audience's favorite online publications. If guest posting is part of your content marketing strategy, take a look at what they have to say about guest-article mistakes.
Creating personalized content that communicates value is the key to reaching customers in today's complex marketing landscape. Here are three things you need to know.
Paid search ad campaigns can be the fastest way to generate leads. The challenge, however, is to ensure healthy cost per acquisition (CPA). Here are eight techniques you can use to boost conversions while reducing CPA.
We have more data than ever before. And more data means better decisions, right? Not always, because numerical mirages can lead us astray. Here are six ways stats can let us down.
AI is a powerful technology that can help you create relevant marketing campaigns that bring results—or irrelevant campaigns that waste your money and your customers' patience. Let's go over what AI is and isn't, and what it can and can't do.
Your data is more valuable than you may know. These three strategies will help you maximize the value of your data and use it to achieve marketing and business objectives.
Your customer service team is either helping you retain customers... or it's helping you lose them. By overcoming these three challenges of customer service, you can give your customers better experiences and outshine competitors.
Content marketing and native advertising each have their own benefits. But when used together, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Read on for tips to help you drive even more leads.
Today, branding is not about slapping logos on various media. To grow, your brand needs to be providing consumers with disruptive—that is, memorable and sharable—experiences.
Meal kit companies can teach you more than just how to cook. This analysis of the names of the brands in that industry provides insight into creating memorable and evocative brand and product names.
These nine actionable tips will help you assess your networking and interviewing skills so you can land the marketing job you want.
Marketers need go beyond learning skills if they want to get a job. They should increase creativity, resiliency, and other characteristics—and employers should assess those types of traits when hiring.
This guide includes costs to consider, metrics to monitor, and formulas to use so you can determine whether your content marketing campaigns are producing the ROI you want.
Creating content is a waste of time if your target audience isn't consuming it. Here are three steps to creating content that prospects will care about.
You have data, but that doesn't mean you have actionable intelligence. Knowing how to report on that data is what helps you tell the stories you want to share. And the process might be simpler—and more enjoyable—than you think.
B2B influencer marketing can be tricky because B2B influencers may not have a big online presence. Here's how you can find offline influencers so you can combine online and offline efforts to improve results throughout the sales process.
Pull out your magnifying glass and read on to learn how to dig up clues about accounts and create a winning ABM program.
Can you spot a real from a fake? Here are some tips to determine whether the Instagram influencers you work with are as influential as they claim.
Want to increase your social presence while also boosting employee engagement? Here are 10 steps to launching a successful employee advocacy program.
To reach more customers at the right time in the right channels, marketers need to adapt messages for the different niche mediums and channels customers use during key parts of the customer journey.
Whether you create SEO reports internally or for clients, creating the right template and reporting on the most vital data will make your job easier and help you prove ROI.
Phew, you survived GDPR! Time to relax and... wait, what? The California Consumer Privacy Act was recently passed? Here's how marketers can get ahead of the competition by preparing for the new legislation that goes into effect in 2020.
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