Archive for ‘Marketing’

How does a company that sells blenders attract over 220 million views on YouTube? How does Zappos drive over 250,000 visits a year to its website from YouTube? With over 72 hours of footage being uploaded to YouTube every minute, how do…

Authentic businesses inspire and prosper. A bold statement – but one that is very hard to argue with. You might think that by its very nature marketing isn’t authentic, but in the digital age where people are increasingly savvy that preconception is…

The internet is a great force for democracy, industry, the spread of information, and free speech. It’s also a breeding ground for plagiarism, copyright infringement, and libel. Add into the mix a very slow-moving government that not so long ago was calling…

Marketing is one of those things that is tough to define when it’s good. Some forms of marketing resonate with people, but others do not. In my opinion, the “Get a Mac” ads were some of the best advertisements I’ve…

Mobile has changed the landscape of consumerism in a few short years by becoming our favorite tool for reading the news, watching television, communicating, socializing, shopping, making decisions, navigating…for just about everything! As a marketer, mobile is a very powerful place for…

Email is a proven method for reaching prospects and cultivating long-term relationships with customers. You probably know it has one of the highest ROIs across online marketing channels, especially when used in tandem with social and search. Plus, email provides greater…

Steve Jobs steered Apple to success with his obsession with perfection, such as limiting how many screws should be in a laptop and taking six months to finally sign off on the scrollbars for Mac OS X. Yes, Apple certainly committed…

Pop quiz: Can you spot the native advertising on BuzzFeed’s homepage? Which piece of BuzzFeed’s homepage contains native advertising? If you answered “all of it,” you’d be exactly right. The entire front page, seemingly devoted to Instagrammers you should be following, actually…

Nurturing relationships with your customers is a crucial part of growing a successful business. In this age of automation and innovation, caring for your customers has never been more important. At any moment, an unhappy customer can share their opinion with…

We all need to acquire new customers to make our products and businesses work. Whether there are a few users paying big bucks or thousands visiting your platform for free, how you get and retain customers is what is important. But…

After doing some research in your industry, you discover that you need more than just a mobile website for your business. You are going to have to really grab the attention of the smartphone generation and get them to use your…

When fellow newsletter creators hear that the open rates of Quibb’s daily digest email hover between 50% and 70%, I get a lot of questions. People are curious to hear what has worked to keep the open rate so high and…

Although mobile marketing is in its infancy, that doesn’t mean you have to wait until the medium takes its first steps to be successful. Already, enterprising retailers and small businesses alike are testing the waters of advertising on smart phones, and…

It’s pretty well documented that Google has a unique culture. It’s not the typical corporate culture. In fact, just by looking at pictures inside the Googleplex, you can see that it looks more like an adult playground, not a place for…

You’d be pretty hard pressed to argue that PSY’s Gangnam Style hasn’t been a runaway marketing success. With over 1 BILLION views on YouTube, Gangnam Style has firmly planted itself in our collective psyche. Love it or hate it, I think we…

Are you considering investing in an explainer video this year? You know; the videos that explain your product or service in 60-90 seconds? Explainer videos are a great way to engage potential customers and familiarize them with your business. The hard…

In 2012, US companies spent about $64 billion on TV advertisements, $34 billion on print ads, and $39 billion on internet ads. How much did they spend on email marketing? Forrester estimates about $1.5 billion. Yet, it could be argued that…

We marketers would like to believe we dominate the web, but we secretly admit to ourselves that cats and memes are the true rulers. It can be frustrating to pour hours of work and hundreds or thousands of dollars into content,…

Smart marketers know that social proof is the marketing tactic for easing the minds of worried customers. In 2013 and beyond, social proof will gain in importance because customers are becoming more informed all the time. With the power of…

You’ve heard it said that people love to buy, but hate to be sold. Nowhere is this more epitomized than in the cultural archetype of the used car salesman—and its online equivalent, the yellow highlighter sales letter. Working in sales isn’t…

Are you getting what you want from email marketing? Many people who run an online business don’t have a great understanding of how email marketing works, nor do they know what they really can achieve with email marketing. And that’s not to mention…

It’s a new year! And I would wager that it’s probably stacked with new and exciting goals, filled to the brim with marketing ideas to try out. Before you jump into this year’s awesome marketing plan, we want to take a…

There are plenty of obstacles for people in the SaaS business to contend with. You have to worry about a customer’s privacy, security and ethics concerns, along with the fact that they might not trust you initially—and that you need to…

I’ll try to keep this clean—although Tarantino wouldn’t. This is, after all, a corporate blog, and there might be children reading. Although Tarantino has only directed 17 titles (one of them — Love Birds in Bondage — unfinished, and another — Kill…

Think about this: Why do customers pay for your product or service? What makes it unique and better than that of your competitors? If a prospective customer approached you and asked: Why should I choose you over your competitor(s)? Would you be able to…

I want to show you a big opportunity that leads to other big opportunities. This “opportunity” gets 60 millions visitors per month and has an Alexa Rank of 174. You don’t want to miss out on it, do you? The good news…

There’s a lot of focus in the business world on making sales. But a less talked about (and arguably more important) goal is ensuring your customers remain customers. Churn rate, also known as cancellation rate, is the percentage of customers who have…

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is one of the most important metrics when it comes to analyzing your online business. Sadly, it’s often overlooked! As this great infographic from KISSmetrics shows, analytics software can help you calculate and monitor your average customer…

A website tells a lot about a business. It shows how much thought the business puts into its brand and whether it values having a website. Unfortunately, far too many companies don’t really value their websites and don’t get the full…

Recently, we reached out to over 30 SaaS (Software as a Service) companies and asked their marketers one simple question: What have you read, heard or seen that has profoundly impacted the way you think about modern marketing? What we got back…

Customer service is about expectations. And the expectations that customers have today were shaped by their previous experiences. Businesses need to meet or exceed these customer expectations. Service is praised or criticized because of expectations. After all, when do you hear people bring…

Politics is a subject that often gets a lot of people riled up… Fortunately, we’re here to talk about email marketing! President Barack Obama has been noted as one of the most “connected” politicians of his age, embracing social media and email…

Selling online or off can be tricky. In either environment, you’re trying to figure out what it is that people need or want and what it is that they will buy. And often, people aren’t interested in buying a product or service. They’re…

We live in a very busy and noisy world. There is an endless amount of information to consume, millions of products offered (each promising their own benefit), and advertisements constantly thrown in front of us. Needless to say, it can be…

Okay, right up front I need to call your attention to the fact that you’ll never convince anyone to opt in to anything if they aren’t right for your offer—or if your offer just sucks. In other words, these tricks aren’t magic…

On this blog we talk a lot about websites that have effective calls to action, non-cluttered home pages, and trustworthy designs with the intention of showing what techniques help improve conversions. After years of showing our readers examples of what works and…

Public Relations: The art and science of establishing and promoting a favorable relationship with the public. Human Relations: The social and interpersonal relationships between human beings. Startup PR 101 For many startups, public relations begins and ends with receiving a nod from TechCrunch. While…

Do you ever wish you could build something so great that people and the media would get just as excited as they do when Apple launches a new product? Or, do you ever wish that (because of your innovation), your company would…

Wouldn’t it be great if you could live in a world where you didn’t have any competition? Where you ran your business and made money hand over fist, slept great at night, and enjoyed long holidays and weekends? But life’s just not…

Are you building a new product and growing a sales team at your startup business? If you’re using the traditional sales model, you may be losing a ton of customers. Yup, you’re not growing nearly as fast as possible. It’s because your…

So how did you pick your pricing? Did you pull it out of a hat? Or turn around three times, click your heels, and throw a dart at a wall of post-its? Maybe you didn’t throw a dart at a wall to…

Businesses spend millions of dollars to bring people into their stores. Wouldn’t it be nice if those businesses could incentivize their customers to bring people in for them? That’s what we’ll be exploring here today. Let’s start with an example: On a…

Do you like leaving money on the table? Most of you probably answered “No,” but based on what I’ve seen from most websites, the answer actually is a big “YES.” The problem (and the solution) lies in your Thank You page… You know,…

Everywhere you turn, there’s an endless list of marketing tactics for expanding your business: 7 best practices for this, 14 ways to get more of that, how to accomplish something while sleeping. We have 50-bajillion ways to get our stuff shared…

How well do you know your customers? It’s certainly a tough thing to evaluate. Luckily, one fantastic tool we have in our arsenal for creating happy customers is research in social psychology. We also have data on company-customer interaction. With these insights into the…

All of us have witnessed the phenomenon of the viral video first hand. From the days of the Numa Numa guy on YouTube to the latest Volkswagen ad, we now know that there is value to be had if our content…

Are you up against competition that has deep pockets and can outspend you using traditional advertising methods? Does it seem like a losing battle to go head-to-head with them to get new prospects? Particularly for startup companies, using traditional advertising and marketing methods…

Sometimes when your business is doing well, it can be tough to push it to the next level. And you’ll hear comments from team members like: “Why stir up the status quo? We’re doing so great!” and “If it ain’t broke,…

Did you know that marketing your company doesn’t have to be hard or expensive? In fact, with a little creativity you can generate some serious interest in your company that can lead to more traffic, more customers and more money. While a…

I know—how dare I have the audacity to hate on social media? It’s the way of the future! It will solve world hunger. It will have your babies. And very soon, it will even make your decaf soy latte in the morning. Don’t…