Leslie Ye says, “As a salesperson, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about why prospects would decide to buy your product. And you should. Understanding what motivates a buyer’s purchasing decision is crucial to positioning your product correctly. But the opposite exercise is just as important. Putting yourself in your buyer’s shoes and running through all the reasons they would say “no” is invaluable for anticipating and mitigating objections. Where do you start? Every product and sales process is different, and so specific objections will vary from industry to industry.... [...]

Tony Messer says, “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that marketing involves a lot of moving parts these days. SEO, blogging, link building, mobile, social media and paid search are just the basic price of entry. But there’s one point where all of these disciplines converge: Content marketing. As an entrepreneur, it would be difficult to be a master of all of these areas, but you need to have a handle on how all of this stuff fits together. So below are nine important points you really need to understand about content marketing. 1. It’s about them, not you. Content marketing is... [...]

Danielle Geoffroy says, “On their constant quest to enable users to quickly find the best answers to their questions, Google announced last week that starting in January 2017,  they will bury mobile websites where the content is blocked by intrusive interstitials. In other words, mobile websites that have pop-up ads won’t rank as high in Google’s search results. We’ve all felt the pain of having to hover our finger over the  closeout sign of a large ad, before we can get to the content we set out to find. This frustrates us, and takes away from the immediacy we desire in mobile moments“. Google... [...]

Jeff Rajeck says, “Dark social refers to any digital channel where content is shared, yet clicks from the channel to a website are not traceable. Hence, ‘dark’. Though we have mentioned dark social before, new research shows that the problem is worse than previously thought, especially in Asia-Pacific and Australia. Here’s why. Dark social exists because the web works by passing information from the source of a click to the destination site. That is, from a marketer’s perspective, every time a user clicks through to your website to download a web page, the user’s... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “When Facebook introduced Offers in February 2012 for brands to distribute coupons on the social network, it was more or less a me-too product. Now Facebook is trying to make it more of a Facebook product. Facebook is updating its four-year-old Offers product to make it easier for people to see, save and use these coupons, especially when on their phones, and give brands more control over who those people are. For years brands have been able to use Offers to distribute online or in-store coupons on Facebook as ads or organic Page posts by linking to a brand’s site and... [...]

Matt McGee says, “Google Analytics Solutions (a new name; see below) continues its push toward the enterprise withtoday’s launch of Workspaces, a new collaborative feature that’s available in both Google Tag Manager and Tag Manager 360. The goal, according to Google’s announcement, is to solve workflow challenges that agencies and multi-user teams often faced when making and editing tags. Workspaces give you more than one space to do your work. Teammates can now easily work on tags at the same time, or make quick changes without publishing everything that’s in the works. Simply create... [...]

Steve Young says, “Did you know that you always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but now that you are, you feel like you are drowning, and it isn’t as much fun as all the entrepreneurs on Instagram and Snapchat are making it out to be? I feel your pain. In his popular book, E-Myth: Why Most Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do about It, Michael Gerber points out that business owners need to work on their business, not in their business. Underneath the success that comes with running my own agency, is the heartache of feeling like I’m just a highly overpaid consultant. I never sought... [...]

Christian Sculthorp says, “With PPC prices increasing and Facebook becoming more competitive, organic search traffic can make or break an e-commerce site. However, in order to get that sweet, sweet traffic, you need to build links. Do all the on-site SEO and write all of the content you want, but there’s little chance of ranking without building links. But where do I start? you ask. Who would possibly want to link to my specialty dog clothes shop? Do not fear! With a little bit of work, you can build links to any e-commerce shop — I promise. After building links to a number of my... [...]

Jose Cebrian says, “In the world of email marketing, deliverability is a core issue. It’s commonly known that when you send an email, it doesn’t always reach the intended recipient. Between the sender and the recipient are intermediaries, namely the internet service providers (ISPs) and email service providers (ESPs), which use a mix of internal algorithms and outside filtering technologies that combine to make a decision on each message that comes into their mail servers. Their job is to protect their customers from unwanted mail, phishing attempts and other scams, which are real worldwide... [...]

Charles Crawford says, “How will your retail customers be preparing for the holidays this winter — and how can you reach out to them to get them into your store during the holiday shopping season? A study by Facebook about holiday shopping intentions has some useful insights. First, Facebook found, holiday preparation is rapidly going mobile. Consumers connecting with friends and family, browsing and buying are increasingly using mobile devices to do so. In addition, social media is also becoming a bigger influence on holiday shopping purchases, the study reports. Here are five ways your... [...]