John Donnelly III says, “It’s almost hard to remember at this point, but it wasn’t long ago that Black Friday took place on a single, in-store day. Today, driven by online shopping’s steady growth and inherent flexibility, Black Friday can feel like an entire season; brands are launching sale days in advance and wrapping Cyber Monday into the same campaigns. However, although many brands have pivoted from the Black Friday strategies of the past, the day is still a mainstay and requires consideration for every retail marketer. How do consumers really feel about Black Friday, and how... [...]

Sophia Bernazzani says, “Imagine you own a business that films and produces yoga routines for at-home practice. As search engine results pages become more crowded, your chances of ranking for a popular industry keyword — such as “yoga” — begin to diminish. But as it turns out, that’s not the end of the world. These days people are actually conducting more specific, conversational queries — think: “how do I teach myself yoga?” — to get the information they’re looking for, faster. Unsurprisingly, Google responded to this change in... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Accenture Interactive has announced it has reached a deal to purchase the London-based independent agency Karmarama. It’s the latest acquisition from the consultancy, which has also bought independents in Brazil, APAC, the US and Sweden. What does this mean for marketing? Consultancies are swiftly targeting a demand Just look at the top five agencies based on UK billings, taken from Econsultancy’s Top 100 Digital Agencies report published in June 2016. Three big IT and management consultancies, IBM, Accenture and Deloitte have successfully targeted the demand... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google has just removed another feature from the Google Search Console: the content keywords report, one of the earliest features found in the Google Search Console when it was first built. Google said when the tool first launched, this report was the “only way to see what Googlebot found when it crawled a website.” Now, you have features like Search Analytics and Fetch, and others. Google also said “users were often confused about the keywords listed in content keywords.” So Google decided to remove the feature for those reasons. This is not a surprising move;... [...]

Michael Brenner says, “Digital, social, and mobile technologies have dramatically changed the world we live in. And no function has been more disrupted than marketing. Executives won’t fund marketing if it doesn’t demonstrate results. That’s why marketing ROI – including content marketing ROI — is one of the top challenges for CMOs and marketers. But before we dig in to walk you through the formula to do this, here’s a secret: You need to build a content marketing destination, such as a blog or a content hub. It is easier to measure the value of an owned platform relative to... [...]

Aja Frost says, “hink about the last thing you bought for pleasure. Maybe it was ice cream, tickets to a show, or a new shirt. You didn’t make this purchase to solve a problem in your life — it simply made you feel good. Because human beings are more emotional than logical, we buy things for pleasure rather than pain fairly often. But many salespeople solely sell using the second emotion. They look for their prospects’ problems, figure out if their solution can solve those problems, and show their prospects the impacts of changing versus doing nothing. This approach can work well.... [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “Prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, Bing announced it was helping business owners display the correct hours of operation via their local search listing on Bing. From the Bing Search Blog: “Bing local is collaborating with business owners and trusted partners to get accurate holiday hours in real time. When you search for local businesses, you’ll receive up-to-date changes for holiday hours.” Bing included the following image to highlight how holiday hours will be displayed for local listings”. Bing local search update highlights business holiday hours in local... [...]

Henneke says, “The demand for online education is exploding. The global market for online courses is estimated around $107 billion. A mind-boggling figure, right? Imagine stuffing one-dollar bills into a 53-foot truck. Depending on how crumpled your bills are, you’d need around 1,000 trucks stuffed up to the roof to transport those 107-billion dollar bills. Would you like one of those trucks to deliver a heap of money to you? Then you must create a lesson plan so valuable that students get excited about buying your online course. A high-value lesson plan motivates people to both study and... [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “Thanks to the power of its striking visuals, Instagram has emerged in the past year or so as the image-marketer’s favorite social network. Emotionally evocative when they’re at their best, Instagram visuals make a quick and lasting impression on audience members. No wonder nearly 71 percent of U.S. companies are projected to be active on the platform within the next year. Engagement is also huge on Instagram. Posts on the platform see some 4.2 billion “likes” in any given 24-hour period, and the average account’s follower growth rate is a staggering... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “From YouTube to Snapchat, the biggest social influencers usually have a presence across all social media channels. But what are the most effective? As the below tweet from high-profile influencer, Tanya Burr, shows – it’s no longer a case of the more the better. Here are a few key takeaways from Econsultancy’s Voice of the Influencer report, in association with Fashion and Beauty Monitor, highlighting where influencers are choosing to focus and why. Instagram is key for fashion and beauty influencers Now reaching the 500m user milestone, Instagram has... [...]