Every year, Gartner makes predictions on what factors will become critical in the face of ever-changing technological advances — including how organizations must be prepared to adapt to the new trends. Several of its predictions are directly related to digital marketing.

Of special note is the fact that, more than any other recent year, 2021 will require organizations to find nontraditional ways to move forward due to the COVID-19 crisis. To rebound will require organizations to embrace innovation and efficiency in digital marketing.

The advent of the coronavirus pandemic has changed nearly everything, including how organizations are marketing. In particular, as marketing leaders create their digital content marketing strategies for 2021, their planning sessions will be very different than in past years. To prepare for 2021, they will be in uncharted territory — considering the impact of COVID-19 on their target audiences.

Several organizations have already successfully adapted their strategies to meet the new content marketing demands. Their lessons learned provide valuable insight for others, including in these areas:

1. Social media: Adopt a social media strategy that is customer-focused.
2. Events: Pivot from in-person to virtual content-sharing opportunities.
3. Search: Leverage new search patterns to plan content development.
4. Tone: Create content that is compassionate, authentic and empathetic.
5. Access: Find ways to share special content more freely with prospects.

These five marketing success stories during COVID-19 provide inspiring insight for planning your organization’s 2021 digital content marketing strategy.

Every year, new terminology enters the vernacular of digital marketing. As we move into 2021, there are several new terms that will impact the marketing plans of organizations in the New Year. We’ve rounded up the following 19 trending digital marketing terms for 2021. If you haven’t heard of “always-on lifecycle marketing,” “no-click searches” or “the internet of everything,” then scan our list to stay current before welcoming another new year.

Pandemic or no, medical device companies can have a lot of challenges when it comes to marketing their products. Your device or product can be a great innovation for patients and healthcare, but if it’s not marketed well and its benefits aren’t communicated, its potential impact will be lost.

Medical device companies face some unique challenges, namely getting in front of busy clinicians and hospital executives, overlooking the value of your device, and much more.

With any luck (and a vaccinated population), the pandemic may be mostly behind us by Q4 of next year. But there’s no denying this experience has reshaped us all indefinitely. And even after life returns to any semblance of our old normal, we'll likely hold fast to a few of our new habits — like remote work flexibility, an increased focus on employee wellness, and (hopefully) frequent hand-washing.

But how has B2B buyer behavior changed in the wake of COVID-19? And what do these evolving habits mean for B2B organizations looking to boost revenue in the year ahead?

To help you prepare for 2021 (and beyond), we’re delving into a few ways B2B buyer behavior is shifting and what it takes to meet buyers' needs both today and in a post-pandemic world.

Once a prospect becomes a customer, how are you continuing to delight them? In a world where everyone is a consumer, building trust and standing out is crucial — especially when more consumers are shopping online.

One way to stay top of mind with your customers is by identifying your customer touchpoints and making sure you’re leaving them satisfied during every step of their buyer journey. In this blog, we’ll discuss four customer touchpoints you may be missing and how you can add them to your marketing campaigns.

When watching award shows, we’re accustomed to the rhythm of recipients making a speech when they receive an honor. As we’ve seen, these speeches can veer in any which direction. There are the ones that last only a few seconds and fail to tell enough of a story to the audience, the ones that drag on for too long (cue the music) and cause the audience to lose interest, and the ones that hit the sweet spot of a compelling, to-the-point narrative.

While scenes like these may play out on the actual stage, businesses can undergo a similar experience when it comes to the digital marketing stage — specifically, writing website content. Saying too little on your business website can leave visitors with more questions than answers while saying too much can leave visitors feeling overwhelmed by what they see. In the middle of all this is effective website content writing, where a meaningful yet concise story is told.

Whether you already have plans for a website redesign or are considering one in the future, we encourage you to keep this roadmap for effective website content writing in your back pocket.

If you write a great blog post but no one can find it, does it really exist?

Blogging for SEO is both an art and a science. There’s a formula to ensure you have the best chance of ranking in Google’s search results.

Using highly searched keywords is still essential, but SEO has evolved far beyond that—and it continues to evolve with every Google algorithm update.

To rank at the top of search engines, your content also has to provide value, be authoritative and stand out from the current top search results.

This checklist offers helpful guidelines you and your team should follow every time you write a blog post.

The world’s most powerful search engine began rolling out its 2020 Core Algorithm update earlier this month. A core algorithm update means that Google has changed or recalculated its algorithm in some meaningful way. It had been seven months since Google had released the new core update that was announced on Twitter on Dec. 3. While we are still waiting to understand the full breadth of this update, we are starting to identify some industries and domains that have so far been affected.

The SEO strategies that will be most effective going forward will be those that best help you meet Google’s simple mandate of comprehensively answering a search query as effectively as possible with your website content. According to Google, the world’s most powerful search engine will continue to follow three basic steps to generate results from web pages: crawling, indexing, and ranking.

The search engine optimization strategies that you need to continue to employ in the future should be designed in a way that will help Google crawl your site more efficiently, index your content properly, and rank your website pages as high as possible for all relevant search queries.

Who doesn't love watching a great looking drone shot? Unless you want to rent a helicopter or go up on the roof of a skyscraper, there is no other way to get wide, sweeping views from high in the sky. From capturing a sunny lakefront or a city skyline, a drone is the easiest way to get hundreds of feet in the air with the press of a few buttons. And as long as they are used properly and effectively, drones instantly increase your video’s production value.

With all that said, it’s discouraged to edit in drone footage just for the sake of it looking cool. You should think about WHY you want a drone shot to be included and be able to articulate why it can impact the outcome of your video. Can it be used to improve the overall story and emotion that you are trying to convey? Can it emphasize a certain line of dialog that is written in the script? Here are some reasons why using a drone can be so effective.

Think about all of the logos you encounter on a daily basis. What do they all have in common? If you saw golden arches, you would immediately recognize it as McDonald’s. If you saw a red circle with a dot in the middle, you would know it’s Target. A blue, fluttering bird? Twitter.

All of these logos are memorable and they convey a message to consumers. Your B2B logo should do the same. As you embark on a business rebrand, there are six design elements your B2B logo should include. It’s easy to fall into the rut of doing what everyone else is doing, but to stand out, you need to leave a lasting impression on your potential customers.

In this blog, we’ll share the six design elements and examples of B2B brands whose logos adhere to these standards.

The power of video marketing continues to grow. But we expect shoppable videos to take on a life of their own in 2021. It may just become the biggest marketing trend of the year.

Why? Video continues to drive sales on multiple platforms. In fact, Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey found that more than 80% of video marketers say that video not only increases traffic to their website, but it directly increases sales. And more and more companies are buying in.

That same Wyzowl survey discovered that 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. And a recent HubSpot survey determined that online videos are supposed to gain more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022 which would be 15 times higher than it was in 2017.

But in the short-term, it’s shoppable videos that are expected to get a stronghold in the video marketing world. So, let’s take a look at this trend, find out what it is, and where it’s going.

The question of what to focus on first — website design or website content — can feel like the debate between the chicken and the egg. But perhaps another analogy more accurate for how you should approach your website is how to organize your bedroom closet.

Your closet will have the basic categories, such as coats, shirts and suits. You likely have additional categories and subcategories, such as dress shoes and tennis shoes. But most importantly, you need a place for everything. If like me, you have already binged The Home Edit’s organization show on Netflix, you’ll know hosts Clea and Joanna advise building a system for the life you already live. You need to create zones to organize and contain everything, working backward from what you have to get to what you need.

The same concept applies to your business website. That means taking stock of what content you have, how people are coming to your site and what needs work. Focus on how to align your website with your business objectives. That, in turn, will give you a sense of how your website can evolve and continue to support your growing business.

It’s a tall order for a website; in many instances, it’s best to...

Does your B2B website reflect how you feel about your company and the widespread usage of your product or service? And does it do so in a way that makes people want to visit your site again and again? B2B marketing and websites don’t have to include boring, conservative design elements — industry professionals are people, too, and wouldn’t you rather navigate through a website that was visually appealing and catered to your user experience?

Websites are often a potential buyer’s first impression of you, and according to HubSpot, traditional B2B websites tell potential customers three things: “who we are, what we do, and how we help.”

Customers in search of a solution don’t want to scroll through websites that don’t get to the point quickly. After helping several B2B clients create websites that have achieved their desired results, we believe successful B2B sites should do the following:

• Provide a pleasing visual/user experience
• Answer questions
• Function across multiple platforms (mobile, desktop, tablet)
• Have quick load times
• Captivate attention/combat short attention spans

A social media manager position seems like it’s only about posting on branded social media platforms, but it’s much more than that. With social media being bigger than ever and constantly evolving, the job entails engaging users, driving quality leads and boosting your brand’s online reputation with the right social media strategies.

While social marketing and advertising are a large part of the overall marketing strategy for many companies, social media is about people, conversations and developing leads while building relationships. Many businesses are hiring social media managers as it has expanded into its own role for online marketing, and is a large task for business owners to handle on their own. Strong management and strategic thinking skills are critical for social media managers. Companies want a social media manager who possesses elevated skill sets.

Here are some of the skills needed from social media managers.

Your company blog can help you achieve a lot of your most pressing marketing goals like establishing your team as industry thought leaders, fostering trust in your brand, and building and nurturing a steady stream of highly qualified leads.

But that’s only if you’re getting eyeballs on your content.

If you’re not getting enough views, or if your visitors are bouncing within seconds of landing on a post, then your once-promising traffic-driver will quickly become an expensive and time-consuming hassle (and that’s when most marketers pack up and invest elsewhere).

But before you pull the plug on your blog, keep in mind that blogging leads to 55% more site visitors, according to HubSpot. And, in 2019, marketers who prioritized blogging saw 13X more ROI than those who didn’t.

If you don’t see an uptick in blog traffic or leads from your blog, there’s a good reason.

Sales and marketing teams have their hands in many pots — all of which tie back to the larger goal of connecting with target audiences and fueling business growth. On any given day, these activities could include tracking leads and customers, publishing new website content to boost traffic and drive engagement, and sending emails to segmented contact lists to promote said content. All the while, salespeople and marketers are likely to pull regular data and activity reports they can share with management and other departments.

Traditionally, each of these activities has required employees to toggle between different marketing tools: one for customer relationship management, one for website content management and one for email management. Aside from the time lost in navigation — businesses report spending an average of one hour every day moving from platform to platform — the use of multiple marketing platforms also makes it difficult to not only locate data but make relevant, useful connections between the data in alternate systems.

While this scratches the surface of the appeal of all-in-one marketing platforms like HubSpot, it’s only the start of the conversation....

It takes a lot of time and creative energy to develop and launch a successful inbound marketing program. But even after you’ve unveiled your snazzy new website, robust social media presence and captivating email workflows, there’s no time to rest on your laurels.

Like a smoldering bonfire on a crisp fall evening, your marketing needs a steady supply of kindling to stay ablaze. And blog content makes the perfect tinder.

Unfortunately, that’s where many companies fall short. The idea of publishing even a few blog posts per month can be overwhelming for an already over-stretched marketing team. How can you possibly keep up the cadence without compromising on quality?

As someone who has been blogging for businesses for more than a decade, I’ve learned a thing or two about regularly cranking out large quantities of good content. And I’ve discovered it’s not only possible but something you can achieve without pushing your team to the brink of burnout. Here are seven tips for simplifying content creation.

The value of content marketing has more than proven itself over the years as a workhorse that helps organizations achieve a wide range of benefits — from attracting quality leads to supporting a higher rate of conversion. Consistent, high-quality and engaging content marketing impacts audience decision-making more than any other marketing strategy.

Today, the value of content marketing has taken on new urgency. More organizations than ever are digging deeper into this discipline to improve their marketing programs. Many are finding that they have to make specific modifications to their traditional strategies in order to gain the maximum results in a new environment.

A wide range of research is showing marketers the way to marketing in a world changed by a pandemic. Among the findings are insights on the new way organizations should create content for their blogs, emails, social media platforms, thought leadership initiatives and webinars.

Here are findings in these five critical areas of content marketing that can help guide organizations in the future.

Our population currently faces four large-scale crises — all happening at the same time:

1. A global pandemic on the brink of its third spike in cases
2. An unstable economy costing more than 50 million Americans their jobs
3. The declaration of a global climate emergency
4. The largest racial justice movement since the 1960s

Without question, these crises have permanently altered the expectations people set for leaders, influencers and each other. Brands at a loss for how to design an experience that meets these new expectations need only understand one thing: people are desperate for something to feel good about. With that in mind, here are four changes impacting the brand experience.

In the ever-changing world of social media, there are many ways to advertise your business. At the top of the advertising list is Facebook. You can advertise to Facebook’s audience network, Instagram, and Facebook feeds and videos, but the newest and possibly most effective way to advertise on Facebook is with Facebook Messenger.

Overall, messaging apps now have more users than social networks. Facebook Messenger alone has 1.3 billion monthly users. It makes sense to start running your ad campaigns on these apps.

In this blog, we will show you how to get started with Facebook Messenger ads, along with a few do’s and don’ts when advertising.

By now, it’s tough to deny the power of YouTube marketing. The site that was most known for (at least initially) funny cat videos is now an essential tool for digital marketers. In fact, according to HubSpot’s “State of Inbound (Marketing)” report, nearly half of all marketers plan to add YouTube to their marketing strategy over the next 12 months.

One of the reasons is YouTube’s reach. According to Statista’s most recent study, YouTube has 2 billion users worldwide. It remains the internet’s second-largest search engine. The only social network that has more monthly active users than YouTube is Facebook.

YouTube can also help improve your SEO and overall brand presence. It allows you to present unique content that's easy for viewers to consume and share.

I recently helped optimize the YouTube channel of one of our clients. The channel was left untouched for years. Videos posted years ago didn’t have descriptions, tags, end screens, cards, or SEO optimization. So, I wanted to see what could be done to breathe some new life into this old channel and if it could become a part of our client’s YouTube marketing strategy going...

If you’re a company that wants to put together a video marketing strategy but you’re not sure where to begin, you might want to consider hiring a marketing agency. Working with a marketing agency can make your life easier and get you the results you desire. But a “set it and forget it” mentality is the wrong way to go.

You have to consider yourself a partner in the relationship. A video marketing agency or a digital marketing agency that produces videos can get a lot of the heavy lifting done for you, but you’ll be counted on for guidance, especially during the early stages of the project. The agency will most likely lean on you a bit, before you can lean on them.

Let’s look at a few of the ways you can make your relationship with a marketing agency prosper when it comes to video marketing.

B2B marketing has changed considerably in the past two decades due to a wide range of new “must-have” marketing platforms — from Facebook to TikTok and beyond. You’ve likely deployed many of them. But have you considered branded podcasts?

Branded podcasts give companies several advantages, including a new way to bond with consumers through interesting audio episodes on niche topics. This shared-interest content delivered on a regular schedule helps strengthen the bond.

Podcasts emerged in 2003 in the form of audio stories delivered directly to iPods, hence, the name “podcast” — a mashup of iPod and broadcast. Today, podcasts are a series of audio files that people can listen to anywhere on any device. Another thing that’s different is the sheer number of podcasts available.

Video marketing may have once played a small role on the digital marketing stage, but the ROI it delivers to marketers has moved it closer to the spotlight. Research shows that 88% of video marketers report that video gives them a positive ROI — a 5% increase from 2019, and a 33% increase from the poll in 2015.

While these results can be attributed in part to the growing consumption of video content, it’s also a matter of how businesses are using video to drive demand around their products/services. Gone are the days where videos were simply uploaded to a company’s website or YouTube channel. Now, businesses are embracing the value of leveraging video content across multiple platforms while optimizing their presence on traditional mediums to boost demand generation.

Consider these three ways to give video a leading role in your demand generation strategy.

As more and more content becomes made for mobile, native advertising is predicted to become a multi-billion dollar industry. Based on its effectiveness, native advertising is quickly becoming as popular — if not more popular — than traditional display advertising.

Native advertising is branded content that matches the platform on which it appears. That means that though your ad appears on a website, it’s made to blend in with that website by matching its design and consistency.

Banner blindness, or when a site visitor ignores site banners, is a big issue for marketers these days. According to HubSpot, this is usually done to avoid interacting with an ad that disrupts the user experience. Another reason site visitors ignore ads is because, well, they look like ads.

Native advertising helps address this issue — 64% of digital display ads are now native.

StackAdapt, a native advertising platform, can help you with your native advertising efforts. Here, we’ll take a look at StackAdapt, how it works, and more.

Marketing your company and its products and services takes so much more than great imagery and messaging. There is a whole framework involved, comprised of many moving parts — solid branding, an adept team and a strategy.

Nothing is done without purpose, which is what makes having a strategy the key to success. Without a strategy in place, many companies pursue goals without a vision and fail.

One part of a digital marketing strategy that is often questioned for its effectiveness is blogging. In a world inundated with information, a blog may not seem to be the first choice when building an effective digital marketing strategy.

Let’s take a look at why your digital marketing efforts will benefit from blogging, even in a content-saturated world.

It’s a classic conundrum: You have some video content that you’d like to share with your target audience, but you’re not exactly sure where to post it. It’s a question a lot of video marketers ask because a great video in the wrong spot won’t do you much good, but the answer is typically right in front of you.

The first to think about is the response that you’re trying to achieve. There are a number of different reasons for which you may be creating videos, including:

• To position your brand or build brand awareness
• To demonstrate a new product or service
• To educate a market

You’ll also want to decide what metrics you’ll use to judge if you have achieved your goal. In other words, what will tell you that the video is a success? This way, if it isn’t performing the way you want it to, you can move it somewhere else to see if it gets traction.

It’s already hard to churn out videos, but it’s a lot harder to make sure your content resonates for the right reasons. Hopefully, you can avoid all of that by understanding where to post your videos based on their purpose. So, let’s take a look at some of the common videos marketers produce and where to put them, to help...

When it comes to marketing platforms, social media is about as fluid as it gets.

New trends surface and fizzle in a matter of days, and catching on too late can make your brand seem desperate and out-of-touch. But relying too much on trending topics and failing to adequately strategize your social media can make you appear rudderless and unreliable.

And even if you have a million followers and the most powerful analytics tools in the world, it won’t do a lick of good if you’re not posting the right content.

So what should your brand post on social media?

E-mail. Social media. Paid ads. Chatbots. With more avenues than ever before to reach prospective customers, companies are in a great position to nurture relationships with leads and grow their business — if they are able to create a cohesive experience for their audience...

Consider this stat: Brands with consistent branding expect to earn 23% more annual revenue than brands that are inconsistent.

While brand inconsistencies can surface in a variety of ways, such as disparate logos and undefined color schemes, they are often attributed to the messaging used across different channels. If your voice constantly wavers between fun and buttoned-up, or there’s a lack of clarity on your values between touchpoints, it’s natural for prospects to be confused by your brand identity — and with this confusion comes a hesitancy to trust and invest in your product or service.

So what does it take to build a consistent brand identity? One of the first (and most important) steps is establishing buyer personas.

You’re shopping online for a green sweater. You find one you like, add it to your cart, but get distracted and abandon your purchase. Later, when you’re on a different site, you see it. That same green sweater you put in your cart. The retailer that sells the sweater is retargeting you, trying to get you to come back and complete your purchase.

Only 2% of shoppers make a purchase during the first visit with a brand. Retargeting can bring those 98% back.

Retargeting can be a useful tool in your toolkit as a marketer, but do it incorrectly and you could lose your chance to make that first impression…again.

Digital marketing is opening windows of opportunities for B2B marketers to promote their companies on a wide range of digital marketing channels — including websites, email, social media, organic search, paid search, mobile and display ads, for example. With so many options, a common question B2B marketers ask is: Which digital marketing channels should I use? Before planning an effective digital marketing strategy, marketers need to understand the different channels, including the pros and cons. With this insight, they can identify which channels are most likely to work best for their businesses.

Here are 10 channels B2B marketers find most effective for generating leads.

Over the past few years, I’ve been growing my personal media social accounts as well as major enterprise brands. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about social media growth.

Research from Datareportal revealed that 3.96 billion people across the planet use social media today, equating to almost 51% of the total global population. Fifty-four percent of these social users were influenced by social media to make purchases. If your company is not implementing a social media strategy, these purchasing decisions will benefit your competitors.

It is extremely important to have a social media plan. Whether you hire someone as your social media manager or contract with an agency to do it for you, you should have a social media strategy for your company. Social media takes time and should be managed fully.

Ask yourself, what are your social media goals? Are you looking to grow your following? Do you want to increase ROI? When you start with your goals, it's easier to determine your strategy. Once you know what you want to accomplish with social media, here are a few tips.

If you’re thinking about doing some video marketing for your business, that’s a smart move. According to the latest data from HubSpot, 92% of marketers say that video is an important part of their marketing strategy. But producing high-quality videos isn’t always easy. It starts with having the right tools for the job.

There are some apps that are great for producing short snippets of video and sharing them with your followers on social media. But what if you want to make a longer, more in-depth piece and can't afford a professional video production? Well, there's an app for that too — actually many apps for that.

We took the time to search the newest video editing apps for both Android and Apple products. Fortunately, there are good ones for both. To help solve the problem of where to start, here are the apps you should consider for video marketing.

Social media advertising is constantly moving. If you aren’t staying on top of the most recent trends and advertising updates, you may just miss them. The most helpful place to stay up-to-date is the Facebook Business News section on the Facebook for Business website. This is where you will receive any ad platform updates, business news and much more.

Let’s dive into some key Facebook advertising updates.

You’re driving plenty of people to your product pages — so why aren’t you making more sales?

An abandoned cart happens for several reasons you’ve probably experienced yourself: You’re scrolling through your Instagram feed and see a product you love, but you don’t have your credit card handy. Or you see a box to enter a promo code, so you hold off, hoping the retailer will send you one.

Whatever the case, there are a few simple tactics you can use to improve cart recovery.

In Part 1 of 9 ABM Tactics That Don’t Involve Software, we discussed how to research and track your accounts using software you likely already have.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss how to use all of that research to cater to your accounts and create lasting relationships with your clients.

To review the first five steps were:

1. Analyze your current customer list
2. Create a spreadsheet to track accounts
3. Use Google for company research
4. Find company and contact information with LinkedIn
5. Supplement your research with other social media sites

Let’s learn about the last four strategies.

Reaching a broad audience with your marketing is difficult and expensive. For companies with niche products that only appeal to a small, specific audience, it’s wasteful. Account-based marketing (ABM) is the practice of narrowing your marketing efforts to emphasize a short list of key accounts. For many business-to-business (B2B) brands, particularly those selling high-value products, it’s a compelling approach.

But the software products many companies employ to support ABM campaigns can cost thousands of dollars a year. For teams on a budget, that could make ABM feel out of reach.

For businesses that can afford it, ABM software provides useful features for making ABM campaigns more effective and efficient. But it’s more a nice-to-have option than something required to launch an ABM initiative.

Your marketing team can get started with ABM without making a big investment in anything new. In fact, you can craft an ABM strategy around tools you already have access to and may even use every day.

While geared toward different audiences and set in different locations, traditional trade shows have tended to follow similar rhythms. Exhibitors set up booths to display their products and services for attendees. Thought leaders present and hold educational sessions. Networking opportunities are available to establish further connections.

This year, companies have been forced to abandon the original playbook for trade shows and pivoted to a new way of thinking: virtual trade shows. Even for businesses well-versed in hosting online events like webinars, the transition from in-person trade shows to virtual trade shows is naturally complex as it invites in new dynamics that need to be translated into the virtual world.

The best way to think about virtual trade shows is reimagined versus restrictive. With the right approach, you can successfully replicate the value of an in-person trade show in a virtual event — and we’ve got some helpful tips on how to make it happen.

The number of podcasts broadcasting today has exploded in the past few years. Even just this year, the number of podcasts increased from 850,000 in January to 1 million by August 2020, according to Podcast Insights. Among the sea of voices and topics being broadcast over the airwaves are many on marketing.

Today’s marketing podcasts offer listeners direct access to a wide range of experts on every possible topic — from inbound strategies to social media to podcasting itself. But with so many marketing podcasts, it can be challenging to know which ones are worthy of your time. We found 10 of the best marketing podcasts to help you hone in and start gaining new insights.

Ten years ago, content marketing was still a hot, new and often misunderstood buzzword. While attracting and engaging audiences by sharing useful, relevant information instead of leveraging disruptive, pushy methods is a concept that’s existed for generations — many brands were still uncertain.

Back in those early days, clients asked questions like, “Does content marketing really work?” and, “Should my company be creating content?”

Today, most brands have developed and published content for years with significant success. And at this point, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t recognize its power. But as content marketing evolves, new questions have developed — particularly when it comes to strategies, tactics and platforms.

To help boost your ROI and ensure you’re well-prepared for the next era of content, here are answers to the most common content marketing questions plaguing brands in 2020.

Everybody wants to rank on the first page of Google. That is always the goal and there is no exception. But if you find yourself ranking on the second or third page for an extremely high-volume search query, there are SEO strategies you can still employ to leverage that keyword authority and increase organic traffic dramatically.

An example of how we found value for a university client with this strategy was related to the construction of its degree overview pages. We consolidated online and campus pages and included everything a prospective student needed to know on one “business degree” or “criminal justice degree” page. This strategy has helped our client consistently rank within striking distance for keywords like criminal justice degrees (No. 14), business degree (No. 22) and education degree (No. 23).

“Business degree” and “criminal justice degree,” for example, are searched 20K times per month in the United States. So being in the top-25 search results is impressive when you consider how many colleges and universities offer those types of degrees — but we still wanted to drive more relevant search traffic.

There’s power in numbers. The more content you create, the higher your chances are of reaching a larger audience. But being a content creation powerhouse takes a lot of time, money and effort. That’s a large task for even the most adept in-house team.

The most important focus for any in-house marketing team is driving the strategy behind the content that’s created. From there, they can choose who they want to write the content itself.

Which begs the question: Is outsourcing right for you?

Freelance writers are, most of the time, gifted writers in specific industries, oftentimes with extensive professional experience in those areas.

And while they can be an excellent resource, using freelancers is a bit different than hiring an agency. Let’s take a look at both of these options to help you understand the differences between these resources so you can decide the best path for content marketing for your company.

As more organizations embrace online learning, there’s never been a better time to be selling learning management systems.

The global LMS sector is accelerating at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21%, according to market research, expected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2025.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in the learning management systems industry, your sales team probably has no shortage of opportunities. More likely, their challenge is following up with them all in a timely manner.

A strategic marketing automation program can help you offer personalized attention to each prospect in the most efficient way. It’s like having a sales team that never sleeps. It’s always working for you, sorting out unqualified leads and nurturing the best ones through the sales cycle so your team can close deals faster.

Here are five automated workflows every learning management system should have.

What is brand experience?

It’s the reason you pay for the premium version of Spotify but can't remember the last time you logged into Pandora.

It’s the reason you feel comfortable staying in a stranger’s home you rented on Airbnb.

It’s what compels you to open an email from your favorite retailer while deleting so many others.

Brand experience is the sum of every interaction your customers have with your company—from the first time you caught their attention to the last time they contacted your support team.

An exceptional brand experience can earn you global recognition, while a poor one can cause your company to fade into oblivion.

Without a memorable brand experience, you’re just a commodity.

B2B marketers have been thinking about, planning or taking steps on their digital transformations for the past several years. Some are already in the middle of a revolution while others are merely testing the waters.

However, the coronavirus crisis is impacting the need for a digital transformation, according to a May 2020 McKinsey customer-behavior study. Digital interaction with B2B customers is now two times more important than traditional channels — a more than a 30% jump since before COVID-19.

A digital marketing transformation is the transition and evolution from a traditional, often obsolete, marketing mix to innovative new digital marketing assets — from websites to email to social and more. The goals of digital transformations include improving customer experiences, leveraging data to better manage business performance and developing new digital revenue streams.

Those who aren’t fully invested yet are missing out on significant business opportunities, for example, the ability to make more immediate, impactful and long-lasting connections with customers. Recent studies point to the need for marketing organizations to begin or advance their digital...

At Kuno Creative, our mission is to help companies we believe in get results. This is the 10th in a series featuring our clients, their mission and how they’re pivoting their marketing strategy in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Kendal at Home’s mission is simple: Transform the experience of aging. No longer does someone have to move into a retirement community or nursing home once they reach a certain age. With Kendal at Home, older adults can continue doing the things they love while living in their homes, removing the burden of care from their loved ones.

The coronavirus poses a more severe threat to older adults because of immune system changes that come with age and the fact that many seniors have underlying conditions, so Kendal at Home’s events and the way they informed and provided services to members had to change quickly and drastically.

Here’s a look at how Kendal at Home is keeping older adults informed and safe during COVID-19.

We’re no Marie Kondo, but at Kuno, we like to stay organized. With so much content to produce throughout the year, it’s important to keep our ideas in one centralized place.

We love editorial calendars.

We know it’s old fashioned, but managing content can be overwhelming at times. Whether you’re managing content during a pandemic crisis or planning your latest product launch, having an editorial calendar can help you stay on track with your company’s overall strategic vision. We’re firm believers in strategy, and — believe it or not — an editorial calendar is a perfect place to strategize.

We’ll show you how to build an editorial calendar and maintain it so you and your team can ultimately generate better results and create awesome content — strategically.