Sat.Dec 08, 2018 - Fri.Dec 14, 2018

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How to Create An Incredibly Well-Written Executive Summary [+ Example]

Hubspot Marketing

Whether you're an entrepreneur looking for investors for your small business, or the CEO of a large corporation, a business plan can help you succeed and is a critical component for long-term growth. In fact, one study found companies that use business plans grow 30% faster than those that don't. A business plan includes a company overview, your company's short-term and long-term goals, information on your product or service, sales targets, expense budgets, your marketing plan, and a list includ

Finance 145
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The Practical Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Marketers

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

Today’s marketers are in the early stages of transforming how they identify, execute, and evaluate campaigns leveraging new and innovative technology: artificial intelligence (AI). As digital-savvy customers expect more sophisticated and personalized experiences, marketers can lean on AI advancements to seamlessly deliver what they crave. From AI-enabled chatbots that offer specific recommendations based on past behavior to intelligent solutions that improve decision making by analyzing reams of

Transform 134
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Social media checklist: Action items for social marketers in 2019

Sprout Social

Between running influencer programs and checking out the newest Instagram features, social media marketers in 2018 had a lot to handle. Take a moment to reflect on this past year’s successes and losses. Which campaigns and content types fell flat? What could you do better at in 2019? As 2018 comes to a close, let’s take a look at what you should prioritize in 2019 and what you should let go of. 1.

Marketers 111
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How to Dominate Google in 2019

Neil Patel

You’ve already experienced it… SEO is becoming harder and harder. As time goes on, it takes longer to rank and you have to spend more money to get the results you want. But the reality is, you can’t wait forever to get results. And you have no choice but to leverage SEO as a tactic because everyone else is doing it. So, what should you do? Well, the first thing you need to do is adjust how you think about SEO.

Shipping 112
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How to Create a Community Your Members Can't Get Enough Of

Here’s Your Blueprint for Year-Round Member Engagement. Are you ready to transform your association into a thriving, 365-day community? Download GrowthZone’s ebook, How to Create a Community Your Members Can’t Get Enough Of , and learn strategies for leveling out the peaks and valleys of member engagement. This guide provides actionable strategies to create consistent networking opportunities, deliver value-packed content, and foster connections that your members won’t want to miss.

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The 15 Best Free WordPress Themes for Bloggers in 2019

Hubspot Marketing

If you’re a blogger, it’s probably safe to assume you want a website that's equally as stylish, unique, and high quality as the content you share. You also want visitors to have a positive experience navigating your site — reading posts with ease, searching for topics of interest, and discovering other content that makes them excited to return. A WordPress blogging theme can help you achieve the exact look, feel, design, and layout you envision … without the need for coding.

Food 138
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How to Improve Your Social Media Channels

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

Having a social media presence is vital in today’s online marketing atmosphere. You’ll attract new customers, learn from your competitors, and engage with current customers. Social media usage has grown to historical levels: 2.34 billion people use some form of social media, and 77% of Americans have a social media profile. Spending at least some of your marketing time improving your social media channels is a smart investment.

More Trending

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4 Trending B2B Marketing Strategies (Not Tactics) for 2019

Marketing Insider Group

“Strategy without tactics is a daydream; tactics without strategy is a nightmare.” Influenced by Sun Tzu and coined by Sagefrog CEO and Co-founder Mark Schmukler, this quote implies that there’s a clear difference between marketing strategy and marketing tactics. It suggests that one can’t be done without the other, and to do both correctly, strategy […].

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17 Recruiter-Approved Skills for Your Resume That'll Help You Get the Job

Hubspot Marketing

When I graduated college, I didn't have much prior work experience, besides a high school gig at a chocolate shop and a college internship at a publishing firm. However, I had something I believed made up for it -- hard and soft skills. Admittedly, some of these skills likely didn't stand out to recruiters as particularly impressive. "Facebook", for instance, is probably a skill I didn't need to include, seeing as I wasn't even applying for a social media position.

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7 Secrets for a Successful Sales Career

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

Sales can be the perfect place to develop a skillset in a constantly evolving industry where you can earn a great living. However, it’s hardly a cakewalk. A Harvard Business Review article on salesperson attrition notes that businesses can expect turnover rates of up to 27%. That’s mainly because sales is hard (though not impossible). In other words, plan to give up easy street for an enormous opportunity.

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2 Things to Know About Visual Content Strategy in 2019

Content Marketing Institute

It’s time for content marketers and content strategists to take back control of their visual content strategy. That’s the message Buddy Scalera delivered in a Content Marketing World talk earlier this year. It’s a topic close to his heart. By day, Buddy works as a mild-mannered content strategist in the pharmaceutical industry. By night, he’s an avowed comics geek who consults for Marvel Comics and teaches and writes about visual content strategy.

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AI Strategies for Sales Managers: How to Cut Down on Tedious Admin Work

What if you could help your sellers stop wasting 72% of their day on non-selling activities and focus on bringing in revenue? Incorporating AI in your enablement workflows can help you cut down on busy work, get projects done faster, and let your team (and you!) focus on making a bigger impact. We put together this guide to show you how to use AI to cut time and costs for projects, including collateral creation, development of training videos, and automating tedious processes.

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10 Proven Ways to Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Marketing Insider Group

Your bounce rate is a measure of how many people are clicking through to your website but then don’t stick around to explore it further – i.e., they visit only a single page of your site. In some cases, a high bounce rate can be a good thing, such as a sales page where you’re […]. The post 10 Proven Ways to Reduce Your Bounce Rate appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

Marketing 110
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The Meeting Agenda Sample That’ll Help You Run Productive and Efficient Meetings

Hubspot Marketing

A week without at least one pointless meeting is like getting accepted into Hogwarts. It’d be a dream come true, but sadly, it’ll probably never happen (don’t ever stop waiting for that owl to drop you your letter, folks!). Pointless meetings infest the workplace. In fact, Atlassian estimates that you’ll waste 31 hours in unproductive meetings each month.

Product 108
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Distracted by New Technology? You Probably Aren’t Giving Your Website the Attention It Deserves

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

Let’s face it: The marketing world moves quickly. So quickly that as you chase down the latest and greatest channels and tools available , it’s possible to lose sight of the very foundation that enabled you to get this far. It’s important to position your brand where people spend their time, and having your marketing team experiment with creative new channels, such as new social media platforms, is vitally important.

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85+ Expert Predictions for Content Marketing in 2019

Content Marketing Institute

? ? Have you ever wished you could see a year into the future? I can’t think of any superpower that would be more useful for content marketers than to have a sneak preview of all the important developments, trends, technologies, and key disruptors that will impact our strategic and creative decisions over the next 12 months. (Although the ability to fly might be nice as well – it would sure cut down on all my business travel time and stress!).

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Evolving Beyond Intent: Create Customer Value with Signals

Speaker: Jam Khan, SVP, Product Marketing at ZoomInfo & guest speaker Amy Hawthorne, Principal Analyst from Forrester

Buying signals extend well beyond intent. They give go-to-market teams the chance to know everything about their customers. With buying signals, they can reach more customers and win more deals. Join Jam Khan, SVP, Product Marketing of ZoomInfo and guest speaker Amy Hawthorne, Principal Analyst from Forrester for this new webinar where you'll find out how marketing teams operate more efficiently and sales teams close more business when they act on buying signals, not just intent!

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5 Tips for Digital Marketing Over the Holiday Season

Marketing Insider Group

Thousands of companies are vying for the attention of consumers over the holiday season. In order to stand out, you’ll need to upgrade your digital marketing efforts. As e-commerce sales are expected to grow 15.5% to a staggering $119 billion this holiday season, a strong digital marketing strategy is essential for all businesses. To prepare […].

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How to set SMART goals for social

Sprout Social

What are SMART goals? SMART goals are S pecific, M easurable, A ttainable, R ealistic, and T ime-bound. Building SMART goals, and measuring progress towards them quarter over quarter, helps marketers of all kinds support professional growth and development, while improving brand performance. The process helps you laser focus, prioritize, boil it down to the one strategy, if you had to choose only one, to place your bet on.

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How to Spot When Advertising Is Led by a Quadropoly

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

When you think of companies that dominate advertising, Google and Facebook are undoubtedly the first two names that come to mind. But this pair no longer reigns supreme: Amazon has established itself as the third member of this triopoly of advertisers. Though the triopoly has been going strong, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a quadropoly.

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How to Use LinkedIn as a Brand Publishing Platform

Content Marketing Institute

Let’s play word association: I’ll say a word, then you answer with the first word that comes to mind. The word is “LinkedIn.”. Did you answer “career”? If you did, you’re in the same camp as many LinkedIn users who think of their LinkedIn profile as their online resume. You list your recent jobs and what you accomplished at them. You send connection requests to current and past colleagues, along with peers in your professional circles.

Branding 109
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Marketing Operations in 2025: A New Framework for Success

Speaker: Mike Rizzo, Founder & CEO, MarketingOps.com and Darrell Alfonso, Director of Marketing Strategy and Operations, Indeed.com

Though rarely in the spotlight, marketing operations are the backbone of the efficiency, scalability, and alignment that define top-performing marketing teams. In this exclusive webinar led by industry visionaries Mike Rizzo and Darrell Alfonso, we’re giving marketing operations the recognition they deserve! We will dive into the 7 P Model —a powerful framework designed to assess and optimize your marketing operations function.

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6 Variables Making Buyer Insights Driven Sales Transformation Critical By 2020

Marketing Insider Group

For the past few decades, solution-based selling was the dominant theme in building sales organizations. Solution-selling methodologies and training proved to be a big business. B2B organizations reworked their sales organization and invested heavily to be more consultative with buyers. B2B entities are finding it hard to let go and prepare for sales transformation in […].

Transform 103
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8 ways to effectively extend your Instagram reach

Sprout Social

The greater your Instagram reach, the more eyes you can get on your brand’s visual content. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But in the face of the platform’s ever-changing algorithm , brands need to explore beyond traditional Instagram tips and best practices. Expanding your reach on Instagram is about much more than a brute force content marketing attack, by the way.

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Why Local Businesses Will Need Websites More than Ever in 2019

Moz

Posted by MiriamEllis. 64% of 1,411 surveyed local business marketers agree that Google is becoming the new “homepage” for local businesses. Via Moz State of Local SEO Industry Report.but please don’t come away with the wrong storyline from this statistic. As local brands and their marketers watch Google play Trojan horse, shifting from top benefactor to top competitor by replacing former “free” publicity with paid packs, Local Service Ads, zero-click SERPs, and related structures, it’s no surpr

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B2C Content Marketing: What a Difference Commitment Makes [2019 Research]

Content Marketing Institute

The outlook for B2C content marketing looks bright if budgets are any indication. Fifty-seven percent of B2C marketers surveyed expect their 2019 content marketing budget to increase over 2018, and 29% of those expect it to increase by more than 9%. We don’t yet know where those increases will be spent, of course. But our latest research reveals that 56% of B2C marketers who increased spending over the last 12 months did so in the area of content creation.

B2C 95
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The Power of Community: Why a Branded Community is a Must-Have for Every Association

Ever wonder why brands like Apple, LEGO, and Sephora are going all-in on branded communities? It’s because online community building is the secret sauce to connecting with audiences in ways that ads and emails simply can’t. But here's the best part—it’s not just for big corporations. Associations can create thriving online communities too. GrowthZone’s eBook, "The Power of Community," breaks down exactly why a branded online community can be a game-changer for your association.

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Say Something New: 10 Ways to Justify Original Research

Marketing Insider Group

By Michele Linn “I am so tired of having nothing new to say. I feel like we are having the same conversation again and again.” That’s what a fellow marketer (and friend) said to me recently. As someone who has been in marketing for almost 20 years (ten of those in content marketing), I have […]. The post Say Something New: 10 Ways to Justify Original Research appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Master the art of social media reporting (with our editable template)

Sprout Social

If you’re responsible for your business’ social presence, you might feel a bit under pressure. Totally understandable. Perhaps your boss wants to know that your efforts are paying off. Or maybe the rest of your marketing team wants to make sure you’re on the same page. And hey, these are fair concerns. As businesses invest more and more in social media, they want to make sure they’re receiving a positive ROI.

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Micro-Format Ads are Pitched as Antidotes to Attention Deficit. Are They?

illumin

We get it. Advertising is hard. Consumers are on pins and needles while binging the lastest season of The Handmaid’s Tale and we are interrupting it to tell them they should really consider switching laundry detergent. As they gleefuly wait for the ‘skip ad’ button to appear, it becomes clear that advertising has to be good and it has to be fast. After the death of Vine and the mad rush to 3-second ads, we are now seeing a flurry of renewed pitches for 6-second ads.

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4 Real-Life Ledes: Why They Work (and What Could Be Better)

Content Marketing Institute

OK, the original plan for this article was to provide great examples of ledes in B2B and B2C content marketing. But a funny thing happened in that search – mediocre ledes dominated. That’s disappointing because, next to the headline, the lede is everything. It’s the determining factor on whether to read the article. The lede has many responsibilities – to hook the reader, to indicate the subject matter, to set the article tone, etc.

B2C 92
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How to Prove Marketing Value: Demonstrate Content ROI and Contribution to Sales

Every marketer knows how important it is to prove their efforts drive sales opportunities, but that’s easier said than done. When problems like sales and marketing misalignment, lack of data, and wasted efforts persist, marketers can’t measure, prove, or increase their impact on revenue at a time when demonstrating marketing value is critical. Using analyst and expert data, this guide to marketing impact and content attribution explains: How B2B buyers use content The most common types of conten

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Why AI is Better Than A/B Testing

Marketing Insider Group

A/B or split testing has been the standard way to optimize marketing campaigns for years. Google first ran an A/B test in 2000 to identify the optimum number of searches to display on its result pages. Today A/B testing is common practice in many different digital marketing channels including display ads, landing pages, email marketing, […]. The post Why AI is Better Than A/B Testing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Social media for franchise businesses

Sprout Social

There are nearly 1 million franchise operations in the United States, employing about 9 million people. It’s a huge part of the US economy, raking in over $800 billion per year. Add in the rise of tech and digital marketing, and with that much bank up for grabs, franchise social media is a revenue channel that can’t be overlooked. What is a franchise?

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4 Tips for Driving the Customer Journey with CRM

Duct Tape Marketing

4 Tips for Driving the Customer Journey with CRM written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. As I’ve written about in the past , in today’s digital world, the customer journey is no longer a straight line. While you can’t exert complete control over the way in which customers and prospects interact with your business, it is possible to get strategic about guiding people differently depending on where they are in their individual journey.

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7 common pains that prevent great travel display advertising

Bannerflow

Creating travel advertising that converts isn’t simple. Yet, with the right strategy and the right advertising technologies it is now easier to produce than it has ever been. In this blog we identify seven barriers as to why travel advertisers struggle to produce exceptional travel advertising. We also suggest solutions to how travel brands can produce outstanding display campaigns that convert. 1.

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Accelerate Your Marketing with Automation: A Quickstart Guide

Ready to streamline your marketing efforts and achieve more with less? Our guide provides a step-by-step roadmap to: Build a Strong Foundation: Set up your automation infrastructure for success. Execute Proven Tactics: Implement effective strategies to nurture leads and drive conversions. Measure and Optimize: Track your results and make data-driven adjustments.