In life, many people believe that more = better. More traffic, visitors, and customers? Yep, that's better. More time in your day to do the things you love? That's better. More collaboration between Sales and Marketing? That's definitely better.
But in many areas of marketing, more doesn't always mean better.
It will only be a matter of time before you are put in a position where you have to hire someone in an area where you lack expertise, or know absolutely nothing about it. Hiring is always a difficult task, fraught with risk. When you add the fact that it’s in an area where you may lack expertise, the risk is even higher.
In this case when I talk about hiring, I’m not limiting the action to bringing on employees.
Edith Wharton once said, “Ah, good conversation -- there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”
Ms. Wharton had a way with words (written and otherwise), but she would likely be horrified to know that most of our daily conversations nowadays start with shorthand texts or three-line emails.
Edith Wharton once said, “Ah, good conversation -- there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”
Ms. Wharton had a way with words (written and otherwise), but she would likely be horrified to know that most of our daily conversations nowadays start with shorthand texts or three-line emails.
If you've ever been part of a company or worked on a product that's undergone a rebrand, you know how absolutely crazy it can be.
From establishing goals, to iterating on designs, to actually implementing your branding changes on your website and across all of your marketing channels, it’s a lot of work.
This post originally appeared on the Sales section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
Whether you're looking for a job, attempting to establish your thought leadership, or widening your circle of connections to include influencers or potential clients, your LinkedIn profile is a key component of your personal brand.
This post originally appeared on the Sales section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
As organizations flatten out, employees don't have to corner senior management in an elevator to get their thoughts heard. They could just schedule a meeting, or even walk up to a leader's office or desk. So is there even a need to have an elevator pitch at the ready?
Email has become the primary way most of us communicate in the business world -- so much so that it often replaces face-to-face interactions. Just think about how many people you've emailed, but never actually met.
This is especially common for marketers today. For example, as a blogger who manages contributors, sets up interviews, and coordinates across teams, I send a lot of emails to people who've never met me.
Giving presentations can be slightly nerve wracking or incredibly fun, depending on who you are.
If you’re part of the group that dreads a presentation or giving a speech, you’re not alone. According to the Washington Post, America’s biggest phobia is the fear of public speaking – 25.3% of people in the US are afraid of speaking in front of large groups of people. This may not sound like too big of a group, but to put it in perspective, the fear of public speaking beat out fear of heights, bugs, snakes, drowning, and blood/needles.
Vegan. Gluten-free. Paleo. Juicing. Mediterranean. Whether you abide by them or not, there's no arguing that many diets have grown immensely popular in ways that aren't so different from widely worn shoe brands or your favorite wearables.
We have a long history of food faddism in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1920s and 1930s, an all-grape diet was popular among wealthy women in the U.S. and France.
Vegan. Gluten-free. Paleo. Juicing. Mediterranean. Whether you "believe" in them or not, there's no arguing that many diets have grown immensely popular in ways that aren't so different from widely worn shoe brands or your favorite wearables.
We have a long history of food faddism in the U.S. and Europe. In the 1920s and 1930s, an all-grape diet was popular among wealthy women in the U.S. and France.
Podcasts: You know they're becoming more and more popular by the day, and you want to join in on the fun. Maybe you're finally catching up on NPR's smash hit, Serial. Maybe you want to find something to help make your commute a little more enjoyable. Maybe you need to do some podcast research to help your company get their own up and running.
Regardless of why you want to jump on this new trend, the truth is that it can be tricky to figure out how to keep up with all of your favorite shows on all of your favorite devices.
This post originally appeared on Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.
Advertising is the business of creativity. And an agency’s existence depends on its ability to produce and cultivate creative ideas.
The written word’s been getting written off lately. SnapChat, Instagram, Pinterest, infographics, emojis and video have been stealing the limelight as words, copy, content, whatever you want to call it take a backseat. We’ve become enamored with the idea that showing, rather than telling, provides a better brand experience.
But the backbone of successfully using these newfangled channels starts with a brand vision well-articulated through strong copy. The continuity of a brand, despite the advent of new media, hangs on the tenor of a singular voice.
You may have heard of this little thing called Google. You know, where 1.17 billion people go to find stuff on the web?
But Google is more than just a search engine. So much more.
In fact, Google offers a ton of tools in addition to its search engine that can be hugely valuable if you're a marketer.
A study in the Harvard Business Review showed that increasing customer retention by 5% can lead to a 25% - 95% increase in profit. But what is customer retention, and how do you increase it by 5%?
Customer retention is the act of getting more of your customers to stay loyal to your brand or business. A successful customer retention strategy turns one time shoppers into loyal, repeat purchasers that buy more, more often.
A captivating title is your first (and maybe only) chance to grab your target audience’s attention and draw them toward your content. But titles shouldn’t be created based on what feels right or what sounds cool -- it's much more effective to let data guide your title creation decisions.
That’s why HubSpot and Outbrain teamed up to bring you a data-driven guide to writing effective titles and headlines.
Each passing year tests the longevity of design trends. Which ones will stick it out another year, and which ones are already passé? Perhaps most importantly, what are the emerging trends marketers and designers alike need to stay on top of?
There are a few trends from last year that are continuing to go strong in 2015, like semi-flat design and more sophisticated typography.
Remember when the Meta keyword tag was popular? Or when a good SEO strategy was to put keywords in everything (url, title, description, headings, images ALT text, side nav, main nav, footer nav, in the keywords and 231 times in the body content)?
Welcome to 2015, where the world of search is a completely different game. In fact, in 2015 you need to check site pages to be certain keywords aren’t overused in key elements. So why are so many SEOs still recommending that webpages include the "targeted keyword" in the URL, title, headings, and corpus? Can you say penalty risk?
Whenever people ask for a primer on inbound marketing, I always start by talking about buyer personas. Why? Because without knowing who your ideal customers are -- their backgrounds, goals, challenges, and so on -- it's very difficult to create an effective marketing strategy to attract more of those types of people. Without understanding your ideal customers inside and out -- and integrating that research across your entire marketing funnel -- you risk stifling the growth of your business.
In June of last year, Facebook announced a new ad format called "multi-product ads" that caught the attention of many Facebook advertisers. This new format was designed to do three things: generate more website visitors, drive better conversion rates, and improve remarketing results.
Quick movers were able to make the most of the new ad format using the Facebook Ads API, but others had to wait for Facebook to fully incorporate the format into its advertising product.
"Looks great on paper. Bad interviewer."
Of all the feedback a recruiter can get, these words can be the most disheartening. Even if you've found someone with ideal experience and tremendous potential, a candidate who struggles in the interview can leave too many open questions to accept.
You’ve heard the expression “don’t reinvent the wheel.” The same is true for content – don’t reinvent it, repurpose it.
Start with a white paper, guide or ebook that you’ve written to support a product or service that you sell. With this one piece of content, you can easily repurpose content five times through different channels. Here's how!
Most people have one approach when it comes to management and leadership. To motivate their team, managers will resort to punishments or rewards. They offer up fun prizes for the top performers and performance plans to those at the bottom -- and hope that those incentives will make their team produce top-notch results.
But that approach doesn't always work. People need to feel meaning in their actions and jobs, not just consequences.
One of our main jobs as marketers is to acquire new customers. To start acquiring them, we need to get our company name out there. Or as marketers would say, "build brand awareness."
The tough thing about brand awareness is that it historically has been a lofty, fluffy goal that many executives don't value ... but it's actually a crucial component of the buyer's journey.
“When you call it a marketing team, no one knows for sure what you're supposed to do. But when you call it a growth team, everyone knows exactly what the goal is and what you need to do everyday.
- Craig Miller
On this episode of The Growth Show, HubSpot’s Mike Volpe and Meghan Keaney Anderson sit down with Craig Miller, Chief Marketing Officer at Shopify.
The content marketing struggle is real; every marketer knows the difficulty of serving up the right content to the right audience at the right time. Unfortunately, it won’t be getting easier any time soon. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 Reports show that 69% of B2C and 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content this year than last year.
Consumers are already inundated with content everywhere they go, and in an age of increasing adoption and production, brands are reeling in the wake of wasted content investments.
Video chatting, video conferencing, and even video interviewing have become increasingly popular ways to communicate "face-to-face" from a distance. But looking good on camera isn't as simple as combing your hair and putting on a decent shirt. Things like lighting, background, and background noise can make or break the impression you make on video. Plus, things like having other programs running simultaneously can really slow down your connection.
These days, you can’t throw a rock without hitting an industry blog talking about how content marketing is 2015’s “must-do” strategy. In fact, the practice is so widespread that as many as 93% of marketing professionals already include it in their promotional campaigns.
But the trick with content marketing is that it's a long game. Successful content marketing teams don't just write a couple of blog posts and expect their traffic to skyrocket -- it can take months to build a backlog of great, search-friendly content.
We all know the age-old expression, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” Though I’ve never tried, I’m going to guess they're right about that.
Likewise, there are many different ways to build a high-performing, growth-focused marketing team. However, in my experience, I have found that there are five absolute must-have positions that the majority of best-in-class B2B companies employ.
This post originally appeared on the Sales section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
When your writing countless emails every day, its hard to run through each with a fine-toothed comb and insure you haven't made any grammatical errors before hitting "send."
This post originally appeared on Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.
Facebook and Instagram are are reportedly discussing discussing a new advertising format that they hope will lure brands: the cinemagraph.
TED talks are not-for-profit conferences where leading thinkers discuss big ideas, trends, and innovations in their respective fields. The project was originally conceived as a forum for technology, entertainment, and design (hence the TED), but now has expanded to include topics ranging all across the human experience.
The talks have been lauded for their ability to take complex concepts and deliver them in ways that are digestible for everyday audiences. As marketers, TED talks are great examples of injecting compelling narratives into abstract sets of concepts. As someone with a product to market, this skill is definitely worth cultivating.
What is one of the most valuable aspects of a member-based, nonprofit organization? Do you have a guess?
It’s the member database.
I’ve been part of the nonprofit world for many years, and even now in my position at a digital agency, I help nonprofits build website and marketing campaigns. So, I know that the member and donor database is immensely important to an organization.
I'd venture a guess you get tons of emails in your inbox every day. Coupons, daily deal sites, newsletters, password resets, lead nurturing emails, social media notifications, invitations to friends' parties, and maybe even a few emails from your mom. That's a lot to sift through, never mind actually open.
So what makes you want to take that extra step to actually open an email? Often, it's the subject line. After all, it's your very first impression of the email -- and from it, you'll do your best to judge the content on the inside.
There is a universal truth we must acknowledge. It’s easier to spend money if we never hold it in our hands. This is why people end up in serious trouble with credit cards even when they have wads of cash in their wallets. The “cashless effect” is a very real thing, and it benefits ecommerce sales in ways retail sales don’t experience. The question, of course, is why? Why do digital wallets, debit cards, and credit cards encourage spending?
Success in business comes down to building strong relationships with our associates. As our jobs become more and more globalized, many of us find ourselves traveling and building relationships with people across international borders, where manners and expectations might be different than we're used to.
The ins and outs of international business etiquette can get confusing.
There are lots of things you need to do to have a successful blog. Not only do your posts need to be well-written, helpful, and relevant to your target audience, but you've also got to make sure you're promoting them correctly so they get in front of people who could become your fans -- and maybe even your customers.
Luckily, you have many creative options when it comes to promoting your blog content.
