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.

Have you delighted your customers lately? As the final stage of the inbound methodology, there’s a risk that the delight phase gets short-shrift compared to the first three stages — attract, covert and close. But that would be a mistake, because delighting customers is a powerful way to ensure they stay satisfied, long-term advocates of an organization’s products and services.

Delight is more than merely satisfying customers with a great product or service. While that’s important, delighting them, according to HubSpot, is about creating remarkable experiences that focus on “ensuring customers are happy, satisfied and supported long after they make a purchase.”

When they are delighted, customers become an organization’s unofficial ambassadors, not only staying loyal but also recommending the company and its solutions to their peers. This type of word-of-mouth endorsement is the Holy Grail of marketing — widely sought, but challenging to receive.

By March 2020, the coronavirus began having a monumental impact on B2B marketing, including social media. Almost all social media metrics experienced a seismic shift, including dramatic spikes in usage.

The changes were so significant that on the heels of publishing its annual CMO Survey released in February, Deloitte decided to publish an additional document in June 2020. The special report was aimed at understanding COVID-19’s impact on marketing, including budgets, performance, operations and talent.

One of the report’s key findings was that while overall marketing budgets have shrunk, spending for social media increased by 74% during the early months of the pandemic. Also, organizations are expected to increase their social spending through the rest of the year. Marketers said their increased spending on social media is having a positive impact on brand awareness, customer retention and new customer acquisition.

Deloitte is not alone in reporting on this trend. For example, according to GlobalWebIndex, 45% of global consumers are spending more time on social community platforms.

With social media taking an even more significant role going forward, it’s a good...

Marketing pros that consistently pump out a high volume of informative, entertaining content might make it look easy — but, the truth is, good writing is hard work.

And behind every attention-hooking social media post, witty line of web copy, engaging video script, and reader-friendly blog post is a writer who exerted a lot of mental energy. So, it’s not unusual for content teams to occasionally run out of fresh ideas, fall into a rut where everything begins to sound the same or feel creatively stumped (after all, even great masters of prose like Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway grappled with writer’s block).

But, as an organization that depends on high-performing content to generate demand and nurture leads, you can’t stop the presses while your team waits for their mojo to return. To keep things moving, here are five ways you and your dedicated wordsmiths can jog creativity and stave off future slumps.

If you’re in the business of creating videos, you should have a properly optimized YouTube channel to make sure your videos aren’t all for naught. But what exactly does an optimized YouTube channel look like and how do you apply optimizations to your channel?

There are so many channels that rely on things like a creative YouTube channel name or a random funny cat video to get views, but it takes more than that. And the good thing is once you do all of the upfront work on your channel, you can sit back and watch it grow.

With over a billion unique YouTube visitors per month, there is a large potential audience for every video you upload. So, let’s take a look at some of the strategies you can apply to your channel and the best ways to optimize your YouTube channel for SEO.

Among the most common specialists on today’s marketing teams is the writer/content creator. According to a study by SEMrush, 52% of marketing teams have one. That is 16% higher than the next more common position, social media manager. This speaks to the importance of content creators in today’s marketing organizations.

Yet, most companies still don’t produce enough content to satisfy their voracious content marketing machines. According to the study, the top three challenges in marketing are all related to content creation:

1. Creating content that generates quality leads (75%)
2. Creating content that attracts more traffic (71%)
3. Developing content that resonates with the target audience (58%)

There is one way organizations can generate more content to help overcome these challenges: repurpose existing content.

You’ve just faced the ultimate digital brand test. Whether your organization used the shutdown to maintain sales, stay relevant or retain customers, it became indisputably clear which businesses had prioritized digital customer experience prior to the pandemic and which were in the throes of an existential crisis. Regardless, every organization has equal opportunity to re-emerge stronger, smarter and more agile. For some, that means rebranding to better align the essence of the company with audience perceptions. But before you do, it’s important for you to consider the three B’s of rebranding.

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

Horizon Education Centers was founded in 1978 by Mary Smith. A mother herself, Mary wanted a safe place for children to be while their parents were at work, including her own son, David.

Today, David Smith is now the executive director of the nonprofit organization, which includes 12 locations across Cuyahoga and Lorain counties. Horizon has evolved over the years to include before- and after-school care to children starting at age 18 months up to 12 years old. The organization provides various programs throughout the year, including summer camp, kindergarten boot camp and preschool.

Horizon faced challenges as the coronavirus forced shutdowns across the state, the country and the world. The nonprofit was forced to close, leaving employees without work and families without childcare.

During their time of closure, Horizon worked tirelessly to prepare for the day it could once again open its doors to families and reunite with the...

You know investing in search engine optimization (SEO) is important. But for all the work and costs involved, you really wish you could just get a straight answer on when it will start to pay off. When will those optimized website pages and blog posts you’ve put so much work into actually start to show up on Page 1 of Google?

You’re far from the first business to wonder how long it takes for content to rank. The reason the question is so hard to answer is that there are so many different factors that influence which pages rank and the time it takes for them to get there. But while we can’t offer you a simple answer, we can provide you with information to help you gain a clearer picture of what to expect.

Every year in the marketing world different trends rise to the surface, creating with them terms and strategies that dominate the conversations. Sometimes they are new ideas and sometimes they are existing ones that are getting renewed attention. Here are 10 trends marketers are talking about right now — including insights on adopting each trending topic.

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

Cornelis “Cor” Drost came to the United States in the ’70s with an electrical engineering degree and a dream to make a difference in scientific research and clinical research. At the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, he was challenged to adapt ultrasound, then in its infancy as a flow velocity measurement approach, to measure absolute volume flow for biomedical applications. Technology was not available at the time to do this reliably, but he developed the mathematical framework and electronic approach to make this measurement with transit-time ultrasound technology for biomedical research. His new transit-time theory and technology solved the problems encountered with previous technologies and allowed researchers to understand true volume flow conditions that drive the physical condition.

Cor wanted to make sure that everyone in the biomedical community was able to access this new measurement...

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

Imagine you visit a loved one, only to discover them lying on the floor, unable to move. They have aphasia and weakness on their right side. You suspect a stroke and call 911. You arrive at the hospital, and they ask when your loved one had last been seen well. You are not sure.

The hospital informs you there is no treatment that can be applied since the “golden window”— the roughly six-hour period following a stroke where treatment is effective without risking bleeding in the brain — has passed.

Dr. Greg Albers, co-founder of RapidAI, was never satisfied with this thinking. He believed stroke evolution was highly variable and realized technology was the limiting factor. He and co-founder Roland Bammer worked to develop what is the most advanced cerebrovascular imaging platform available to hospitals today.

Here’s a look at how RapidAI is working to help patients during COVID-19 and every day.

It’s too soon to see what the full economic impact of COVID-19 will be, which effects will be temporary and which will be permanent. Businesses could bounce back almost immediately, take advantage of new opportunities or struggle for years to come

One thing is certain: Life will not be going back to normal, so it’s up to all of us to create a new normal. Businesses that embrace new ways of working, invest in the right tools and find untapped markets are more likely to be part of that future.

Starting today, businesses need to temporarily or permanently alter their offerings and the way they do business in response to changing consumer habits. Some business models may no longer be viable. Others could also launch new products or services in response to the pandemic.

There is no one-size-fits-all guide for navigating the unknowns introduced by the novel coronavirus. Instead of waiting for others to draw the map, it’s time for leaders to chart their own new course.

Despite automation and artificial intelligence, marketing isn’t an activity that can be placed on auto-pilot. A successful, sustainable strategy takes serious collaboration between your internal team and the healthcare marketing agency you decide to hire. On average, these partnerships last over three years. In Kuno Creative’s case, even longer. The point is, you’re about to see, talk to and work with these people a lot.

In Part 1 of Hiring a Healthcare Marketing Agency: How to Find “The One,” we talked about the different ways to dig up tangible proof that an agency is as skilled and experienced as it claims to be. Let’s say you have your list of candidates narrowed down to at least two options. Their stories check out. Their portfolios are comparable. Now what? Before you rock-paper-scissors for the winner, think about compatibility between people, not just needs and services.

A patient’s healthcare experience doesn’t begin the moment they enter a provider’s facility; it starts online. A whopping 94% of patients use online reviews to evaluate providers, and the patients who book appointments tend to conduct 3x more online searches compared to those who do not. Other trends suggest that patients want more interaction with providers between appointments. They prefer automated communication and self-serve options, such as online bill pay, patient portals, and downloadable form repositories. This explains why an increasing number of organizations outsource marketing to a specialized healthcare marketing agency. But how do you know if you’re hiring the real deal or a wolf in sheep's clothing? Don't just settle for anyone. Use these three authenticators to make sure you find "the one".

If you’ve ever experienced a significant “slate-clearing” life transition — like a big move or a job change — you know one big shakeup can kickstart a domino effect of positive change. Suddenly, you’re empowered to change your hairstyle, refresh your wardrobe, and ditch a few unhealthy habits. You feel different, and before long, everyone around you starts to notice, too.

Although your brand isn’t a living, breathing being like you, it also undergoes natural transitions that necessitate positive change. A successful rebranding can transform not only your brand’s look but also the impression it leaves on your audience.

But how do you know when you need one?

Let’s take a look at what a rebrand entails, plus a few signs that it’s time for a revamp.

If we had to sum up sales and marketing strategies for 2020 in one word, it would be pivot.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies — including our own clients — have found new ways to serve their customers, adjust sales and marketing tactics and even develop innovative new offerings.

Cases By Source, a custom packaging provider, shifted gears in its manufacturing processes to begin producing masks and personal protective equipment.

Green Circle Growers, one of the largest greenhouses in North America, spread goodwill by donating $1 million in plants to healthcare workers and first responders on the front lines.

iOFFICE, a workplace technology company, introduced a new feature to help business leaders reconfigure their floor plans for safe distancing.

Although businesses are slowly beginning to reopen, we’re far from “back to normal” — if a return to normal is even possible. Millions are still out of work. Our interactions and buying habits have changed. We’ve had to re-evaluate what’s important and what isn’t.

So what happens next? While no one can say for sure, here are five sales and marketing predictions we can expect to see in a...

Keyword research is the most foundational aspect of any SEO campaign. This helps identify the search queries you want to target and eventually have your website pages ranking for on search engines. So, when you’re building out your keyword list, it’s important to be strategic and disciplined in your approach while focusing on a few core elements of each phrase.

While conducting your SEO keyword research, there are three factors you must consider: the individual keyword’s relevancy, search volume and user intent. This will help you answer the simple yet imperative question of whether you want someone who is entering a particular phrase into Google to engage with your brand.

It’s fair to say 2020 has been a year of turbulence, as life as we knew it continues to be disrupted by the novel coronavirus. The unprecedented changes our world has adapted to have significantly impacted our economy, from business closures to job loss and the long road ahead to restore what has been lost.

As the world works to overcome the virus that shut it down, nothing will come back unchanged, including SEO. While you work to bring your business into the new normal, here are some strategies you can use to make SEO a part of your company’s overall response to COVID-19, both short term and long term.

There’s no question that video content marketing is an increasingly important part of any marketing strategy. When done right, video allows brands to tell their story and create meaningful, emotional connections with their audience. But we still get a lot of questions from people about video marketing.

Typically, when we meet with clients who want to do video (especially for the first time), they do have a lot of questions about the process, the production, and the price. But even for clients who have done video in the past, each project brings on new challenges.

If your content marketing efforts do not include video because you have so many questions and don’t know where to start, here’s a list of the top five questions that we typically get about video content marketing.

A Yale University course for CMOs used to focus on marketing issues like engagement, analytics and transformation. This year one topic was on students’ minds: How do we plan marketing programs in the COVID-19 era?

“In today’s climate, hearing from leaders on how they are rapidly adjusting to the COVID-19 crisis is immensely valuable for the students,” said Professor Ravi Dhar. “It’s likely that the marketing landscape will look very different when we emerge from this crisis, and it’s more important than ever for our students to understand how leading marketers contend with new realities while planning for an uncertain future.”

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

Green Circle Growers has come a long way from its roots as a vegetable farm. When Art VanWingerden came to the United States from Holland, he had a clear vision: To see his 16 children start greenhouses all across the country. Over 50 years ago, his son John VanWingerden founded the farm here in Oberlin that now ships high-quality plants from coast to coast.

Now, Green Circle Growers is the largest orchid grower in the nation and ranked among the top 10 greenhouses in the country, growing over 250 million plants a year. Like its founder, the company’s “extended family” of hundreds of employees has a big vision: to have one of its plants within everyone’s line of sight in North America.

The company also wants to promote a “green thumb lifestyle” with sustainably grown plants that are easy for anyone to care for, as its signature brand, Just Add Ice, suggests.

The coronavirus brought immediate challenges of ensuring employee safety...

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced companies to transition to a remote work model, and for many companies, they’ve seen that work can be done just as productively from home as from the office. In fact, a recent survey from Gartner found that remote work may become a permanent possibility for many employees — 74% of CFOs surveyed said that at least 5% of their employees will become permanent remote workers once the pandemic ends, and 10% said at least 25% of their workforce will transition to remote work after the pandemic.

If your company is fully remote these days, you might be wondering what the future holds for your office once the COVID-19 outbreak subsides. A remote work model has several benefits beyond infection control. Let’s look at why continuing a remote work model might be beneficial for your company.