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Have you noticed that your blog traffic is dropping off? Or that certain posts aren’t bringing in as much traffic as they used to? Perhaps you’ve been blogging since 2005 and you’ve got a lot of blog content that’s no longer relevant. If any of th

As marketers and business people, we’ve all struggled with outreach and figuring out how to start that initial relationship. Should we go email or try for an introduction? We certainly don’t want to come off as too salesy or overstep our bounds. But at the same time, you need to remember that taking a one size fits all approach is a recipe for failure. If you want to be successful in your outreach efforts, follow the advice of Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro, find a way that is novel and unusual, and always put the focus on them and not yourself. Make sure you’re offering value to them, backed up by research. In other words, do your homework and put in the effort, as opposed to just asking for a favor. You’ll find you’ll have much greater success.

Did you know that even some the most well-know national newspapers are using AI to write some of their articles? It’s true. And you probably didn’t even notice. So how can Marketers leverage AI as part of their Marketing strategies? We’ve all undoubtedly encountered a chat bot a few times in the past few years, and that is certainly using AI technology. But RJ Talyor, AI platform founder & CEO at Pattern89, reminds us that the key is to make sure you’re not losing that humanness in the process. Machines are great with data, but it still takes a human to differentiate the nuances of those gray areas that test ethical or inappropriate boundaries. After all, an eggplant emoji is just an eggplant to a machine, but humans know better.

Are you putting together next year’s marketing budget, trying to navigate the coronavirus minefield? Wondering how much to spend, what channels to use, and what your messaging should be? Here are nine things to consider when developing out your own digital marketing plan.

Like many business owners, you’re most likely always searching for new avenues to be seen and heard. Have you thought about podcasts? Getting featured on the right podcasts will increase your visibility, help build your credibility, and attract new qualified leads for your business. But maybe you just don’t have the time to pitch yourself to podcasts, or maybe you just don’t know where to start. Consider working with someone who specializes in just that, like Kristin Molenaar from YesBoss. Kristin has built a career around helping business owners double their new client leads just by being a featured podcast guest.

What’s better than one social media marketing expert?  How about 4 of them teaming up to create a Marketing super team known as “The 360 Marketing Squad”. Covering all aspects of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, this super group has the experience, knowledge and determination to help small businesses not only step up their marketing strategies, but learn how to track their progress so they know what’s working and what needs tweaking.

If you’re a baseball fan, you know that for the pitcher, pitching isn’t just about their arm speed. There are far more processes that must all come together to make a pitcher effective. And so the same can be said for sales and marketing. Most people aren't struggling with their sales departments. What’s happening is they’re spending too much money on sales and underinvesting in marketing, because they are having to rely on sales to do all of this work. Business owners need to know how to market better and what to expect, but also what to ask for from their own internal departments. In this episode, Sean Doyle of Fitz Martin, gives us a scientific approach to sales and marketing, and shows us a more effective way to close the deal.

Business relationships are obviously different than personal relationships, but both are very important. In life, we look to connect with people that share similar interests, live close to us, or have kids the same age as us. But how do we go about initiating relationships with businesses, and more importantly, what criteria do you use to go about this? Annalise Worn takes a creative approach to helping businesses with relationship building as part of their marketing plan. Learning how to foster customer loyalty and long-term engagement by providing information that is directly suited to your customer’s needs, will go a long way in helping you build trust and move the needle and drive sales.

There’s no better time to explore how your small business can use Instagram Reels as a part of your marketing strategy. Reels is the newest way for you to create entertaining 15-second multi-clip videos with lots of new and creative tools to help you drive traffic and sales. Take it from The Instagram Expert herself, Sue B. Zimmerman, if Instagram is where your followers and ideal customer avatar are hanging out, then Instagram Reels is a great opportunity to take advantage of adding music and other effects, while also allowing you to share educational, step-by-step and behind the scenes content. This mobile-only option is also a great way get out a quick video while on the go to let everyone know what your business or brand is up to.

Making connections is an important aspect for all businesses, and we often rely on face to face and in person opportunities to achieve this. But in a time like this with COVID-19, when social distancing has become the norm, how do businesses and brands go about making those meaningful and emotional connections that are so vital to building trust and often lead to sales? Kevin England, CEO of Vonazon marketing agency, reminds you to first get back to basics with the four main senses; touch, vision, hearing, speaking. You want to make sure that you’re always educating, regardless of where your potential client is in your funnel.

If you fancy yourself a bit of an expert in your field and are looking for yet another opportunity to get your name out there and build brand awareness, consider leveraging the power of sites such as HARO to exert your expertise and knowledge on a given topic. Greg Heilers, earned media guru and pitching machine from Jolly, reminds us that media pitching to sites such as HARO offers a multitude of benefits aside form just getting free publicity. Think about the benefits of finding potential collaborators, reaching your target market with you poised as an industry expert, being featured in high profile publications like The New York Times, as well as driving more traffic to your website.

Every business wants to rank high with Google, that’s a no brainer. But what are the top ranking factors that really matter, that will help to get you the top spots? Aside from the obvious things like links, mobile-friendliness and page speed, what are some other factors that rank most for SEO, and pass the ever-changing Google algorithm test? Darren Shaw, Whitespark founder and local search guru, advises you to start with claiming and optimizing your Google My Business profile. Invest your time here and worry less about citations. These days it’s more about conversion optimization than it is about ranking optimization. And never underestimate the power of reviews.

This week we've got a two-fer for you. I've got John Paglio from flyte talking about SCHEMA: what it is, why you need it, and how to implement it on your site.

We’ve all seen business ads pop up in our Facebook feed every day, and you’ve probably scrolled right past a majority of them. But what about leveraging YouTube to advertise your business, products and services? Aleric Heck of AdOutreach has done just that, helping innumerable business reach over 8 figures in sales using the YouTube ads platform.

This week's episode is about moving beyond the pivot. No doubt you pivoted when COVID first upended the world and your business, but did you stop there?   It's easy to fall back into a groove, but thinking things have "normalized" is the wrong approach. In this episode I share five things you can do to make sure you continue to evolve as your customers' needs do.

Do you ever wish you could get free business advice from someone in your industry, or who has been through what you’re going through now? The answer may be in joining or starting a mastermind. We'll delve into what a mastermind is, how to start one, and how to run one successfully.

Influencer marketing could arguably be traced all the way back to the 1800’s when the Conklin pen company wisely and creatively asked Mark Twain to say some nice things about their products. Influencer marketing has come a long way since then, especially if you’re a Kardashian. But just going for the big name is not necessarily the best strategy, says Agorapulse’s Mike Allton.

Successful SEO starts with keyword research. Moz’s Cyrus Shepard reminds us that you need to rank for what people are actually searching for, not what you think they’re searching for. That means truly understanding exactly what a keyword is, and prioritizing keywords by potential. Uncover more ideas by determining what keywords your competitors are ranking for.  Yes, you can actually do that.  Why recreate the wheel when they’ve already done some of the heavy lifting for you?

Like every industry, digital marketing also has their list of “best practices” that you’re told to follow. And while there is certainly some truth to that, Caitlin Halpert from 3Q Digital, can attest that with a little creative “pushing of the boundaries”, and letting the data from your creative testing do the talking, you just may find you’re driving more growth and efficiency through these new ideas.

So there's lots of different things to be looking at when you're doing email marketing, but I would definitely say those replies are the most important part. And when you see a lot of people replying, that's when you know you've definitely hit on something that's important. And that you've got to talk more about that