Jami Oetting says, “Website visitors are banner blind. And if they do pay attention to the display ads cluttering their online experience, they can put a stop to irrelevant messaging by installing an ad blocker. Hey, it’s tough for any brand to compete with plug-ins that can replace banner ads with pictures of puppies and kittens. But this isn’t to say banner ads are all bad. In fact, there have been some pretty creative uses of the display format. But overall, people are tired of being bombarded with ads that don’t apply to them or are ill-timed. They lost trust,... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “You know by now that posting on social media is one of the best ways to amplify the awesome content you’re creating. But it isn’t enough to simply post content to social whenever you feel like it. Think about it: Is your audience spreading their time spent on social media equally throughout the day? Of course not. Every social network has higher and lower traffic times throughout an average day and an average week. Posting strategically at higher traffic times will help drive traffic to the content you’re sharing on social. So, when are the... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “Every brand on Facebook is on Facebook for one reason — to (eventually) get more business. But getting more business from Facebook means different things to different types of businesses. Different brands will have different objectives, such as driving in-store sales, increasing online sales, launching a new product, building awareness, or promoting a mobile app. Regardless of the objective, there are a few steps that happen before Facebook fans can turn into real business. You have to first build an audience on Facebook, then drive inbound traffic to your... [...]

Michael Brown says, “Your keywords are included. Your title tags and meta descriptions are set. Your links have been added. Your content is now optimized, right? Wrong! These are all necessary steps in the content creation process, but none of them qualify as content optimization — at least not in my opinion. Content optimization is a popular term these days, and one that’s on the minds of most marketing agencies. But it’s a term that is widely misunderstood and misapplied, with negative consequences for both agencies and their clients. So what is content optimization? Here are... [...]

You probably know that people leave your website without taking action ( filling out your survey, consuming and sharing your content, subscribing to your newsletter or buying your product). In fact, most of your visitors fail to take action. Inertia keeps them moving, without stopping to think deeply about what you are offering. Three experienced marketers (Sean Donahoe, Bobby Walker and Sam Finlay) got tired of seeing most of their prospective followers and customers leave so they decided to do something about it. They created Stakk. This tool, being released today, may change the way you go about... [...]

Lisa Toner says, “”We need more leads.” Pretty much every B2B marketer has heard this phrase from their sales team at some point in their career. And after hearing it, most marketers are left in a sticky situation: They suddenly have to do more with the same budget and the same number of hours in a week. The good news is that there are lots of things you can do to generate leads without breaking the bank or working every single weekend. In the SlideShare presentation and post below, we’ll go over five quick and easy methods that can boost your lead flow with very little... [...]

Jami Oetting says, “For many years now a debate has been raging on about whether it’s better to hire a marketing generalist or a specialist. Each one has its camp of rabid supporters and detractors touting various benefits to hiring managers of one and warning of the problems should they dare go in the other direction. From our point of view, both have their place in your organization — it all depends on your specific situation. Your resources, your company’s goals, what’s expected of marketing, and the competitive brand landscape you’re operating in should be the first factors... [...]

Ginny Soskey says, “It’s only natural for people to want to compare themselves to others. Benchmarks give you a reference for how well you’re doing — and some indication of how to improve. In marketing, some benchmarks are easier to find than others. If you want to see how many social media followers another company has, you can just visit their profiles. If you want to see how their overall marketing is performing, you can plug in their URL into Marketing Grader and compare their score to yours. If you want to see their most popular blog posts, you can quickly and easily... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “By now, you know how important it is to incorporate visual content into your social media strategy. Not only do images get more social shares, but they also compel fans, viewers, and website visitors to stick around longer. I mean, hey, we’re only human … and humans are naturally drawn to visual content. While we only remember about 20% of what we read, we retain as much as 80% of what we see. But visual content for the sake of visual content isn’t good enough. If you want your images to engage your fans, followers, and prospects, they have to... [...]

Ryan Lynch says, “Inbound marketing is here, people. What this means for your business is that your audience no longer wants their attention bought––they want it earned. This means lead generation strategies need to be revamped across the industry to better meet the needs of target markets. The first step in this evolution is to create compelling content, and the second is to use that content to convert visitors into leads. Of course, this is easier said than done. To highlight the importance of a powerful lead generation strategy, we are going to backtrack a little bit first. Are you... [...]