Sharing Customer Information Without Consent? The FTC Wants to Know
Can a company share my personal information? A company can share your personal information if allowed by privacy laws, their privacy policy, or with your consent. Laws like GDPR in the EU and CCPA in California limit data sharing without clear consent or a valid reason, such as fulfilling a service. Always review a company’s […]
Digital Debris: Why Data Needs an Expiration Date
I recently received a letter from a large health insurance company. Not my current provider, mind you. One that covered my health care many years ago. In fact, I almost recycled the envelope without reading it, since I assumed they were just trying to get my business back. However, I decided to open it on […]
Use the SMART Mnemonic to Identify Your Marketing Goals
Regardless of the new tools available to us, essential marketing strategies are still the same whether the tactic is traditional or digital. Our ability to attract, capture, nurture, convert and expand our customer base still relies on our ability to set, implement, and track marketing goals. Goal setting is a powerful process that helps you […]
How to Use Hashtags on Twitter With #Confidence
I tried to explain Twitter to my father over the Christmas holiday. He’s 78. He particularly wanted to know what a hashtag is. So I started talking about how the pound symbol always precedes a hashtag and he interrupted: “They’re like tags, right?” Hashtags are indeed like tags, and they’re used to identify the text […]
How to Know Which Hashtags to Use in Your Social Media Posts
So you’re all ready to launch a bunch of tweets to promote your newest piece of content. You’ve got a great headline, an awesome image, and a shortened URL. And now… the hashtags. But which hashtags? How many hashtags? Do you really even have to use hashtags? Let’s take a look at the basics of […]
What It Takes to Optimize Your Brand’s Organic Search Visibility
When did SEO become so complicated? It seems like only yesterday that a brand new company could launch a site, bake some bolded and italicized keywords into each page, prop up a few cookie-cutter articles on free blog platforms for instant backlinks, and watch the organic search traffic start rolling in. Back when SEO was […]
5 Warning Signs that You’re Working at a Dysfunctional Marketing Agency
The average marketing agency is anything but average. The combination of creativity, ego, and intense pressure can often result in some bizarre situations that are as far from ordinary as you can get. In my experience, the only time you’re likely to get a zanier group of people together is when you’re working on a […]
What’s Your Type? Personality Tests in the Workplace
People are different, and that’s a good thing. However, because we all convey and gather information in different ways, sometimes the lines of communication break down. It’s a big challenge in today’s workplace, where remote workers and virtual teams are becoming the norm. What can managers do to create functional – and harmonious – teams, […]
20 Social Media Terms for Non-Digital Natives
Here are 20 terms you’ll hear in everyday conversation when discussing social media.
Making the Connection: 7 Tips to Grow Your LinkedIn Network
It’s not easy to add connections on LinkedIn anymore. Everyone wants to protect their network – and with good reason. Many of us have been spammed by companies and sales professionals with a hard-sell approach. Decision makers and influencers realize that most of the people trying to connect with them are also looking to get […]
Advocacy Marketing Part 2: Building Your Plan in 5 Steps
Welcome to part deux of our 2-part series on advocacy marketing. In part 1 we answered two burning questions about the practice: What is advocacy marketing? and Why is it awesome? This installment will unpack the How (as in How is it done?) and provide some nuts and bolts that will help you build a […]
Advocacy Marketing Part 1: End-to-End Advantages You Can’t Ignore
If you’re not taking advantage of advocacy marketing (aka influencer marketing, referral marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing), you should give it serious consideration. Here are a few reasons: According to McKinsey & Company, word-of-mouth (WOM) is the primary factor behind 20%-50% of all purchasing decisions. A Zubrance white paper states that for every $1 a company invests […]
Understanding Cookies Part 2: A Guide for Marketers
Digital marketers are also online consumers, and most of us understand how cookies work. (Or at least, we know that they work, without worrying too much about the how.) And yet, we too can sometimes be taken by surprise at the level of behavioral targeting enabled by cookies. There’s nothing inherently wrong with cookies, and […]
What Is an Internet Cookie? A Guide for Consumers
Everywhere we browse, every time we buy online, cookies are there, waiting for us. And while that situation sounds delicious (and somewhat sinister) in theory, most of us know that browser cookies just a fact of everyday life in the digital age. That’s why it’s important to understand cookies and to understand how we can […]
5 Email Metrics that Matter to Marketers
The great thing about email marketing (well, one of the many great things) is the instant insight you get after sending a message. Did your audience love it? Did they hate it? Which links are getting the most hits? You can see the results roll in as time goes by. But it can be easy […]
Ad Retargeting 101
Every business discipline has its own lexicon. (You could make a game out of matching the buzzword to the industry…rightshoring? SOX? Reverse fulfillment?) We certainly have our share in marketing, especially in the digital marketing industry, but some are actually useful. Take “ad retargeting.” It began as a concept, then became a buzzword, and now, […]
How Data Science Is Transforming Sales and Marketing
What in the world is data science? And why should you care? Data science – and predictive analytics, in particular – is moving the goalposts for salespeople and marketers alike. In fact, it’s moving the entire stadium. Predictive analytics is the foundational discipline that can make marketing more effective and targeted, and your salespeople better […]
Cohort Analysis: 2 Simple Steps to Better Understand Your Leads
Cohort analysis is an often-overlooked area of marketing analytics. It involves tracking a group that shares a common characteristic (a “cohort”) over a certain period of time and evaluating outcomes. In this post, we will talk about cohort analysis of leads. This involves following a group of leads which were created in a certain period, […]
5 Tips for Marketing in a Highly Regulated Industry
Marketers working in highly controlled industries face multiple challenges when it comes to reaching their audiences in a personal, relevant way. Industries such as financial services and healthcare have a variety of protocols around how they can market to consumers – especially where personal or financial information is concerned. In the new world of marketing, […]