If you’ve ever been responsible for preparing a big holiday meal, you know the work often begins days in advance and includes countless hours of cooking, cleaning and shuffling around hot pans. You also know that after investing so much time, money and energy into creating your feast, there’s no way you’d let a single morsel go to waste. Luckily, sometimes dishes are even better as leftovers than they were the first go-around (Thanksgiving sandwiches, anyone?).

But, where do you start?

A value proposition is a statement that answers the ‘why’ someone should do business with you. It should convince a potential customer why your service or product will be of more value to them than similar offerings from your competition. You know why your company is great, but do your potential customers know what sets your brand apart?

A good value proposition can give you an advantage over your competitors and is often what your prospects use to evaluate you. And for many consumers, your value proposition is the first thing they encounter when exploring your brand. So, having a clear, concise value proposition is more important than ever. (Consider this: You’ve got less than a minute to capture a site visitor’s attention.)

When creating a value proposition, it’s important to identify all the benefits your product or services offer. Describing what makes these benefits valuable in a quickly digestible way for the reader will help your value proposition make an impression. It’s also critical to identify your customer’s main problem your value proposition helps solve. By connecting this value to your buyer’s challenges your value proposition will become more...

Your brand strategy is what makes you memorable, setting you apart from the competition. Ultimately, it’s why your most loyal customers will decide to invest in you. 

Companies with clear, consistent branding can expect to earn 23% more annual revenue than those without a well-communicated brand. 

Defining your brand strategy is a lot like answering life’s toughest questions. Who are you? What were you put on this earth to do? It can be a daunting discussion, but until you have a clear mission and vision for your company, you won’t have a clear path forward. 

If your company has introduced a new product line or you’ve made a major strategic shift, this conversation is crucial. 

At Kuno, we’ve had the privilege of leading brand development discussions for companies in a variety of industries, from highly technical software to one of the largest greenhouses in the country. 

Here are our recommendations for making the process successful.

What are the first things that come to mind when your customers think about your company?

Why do they trust you?

What truly sets you apart — and is it obvious to everyone who interacts with your brand?

These questions reveal a lot about your brand experience. If the answers aren’t obvious to you, you can’t expect your customers to know why they should choose you over your competitors.

At a time when buyers have more options than ever, defining your brand is your most fundamental mission as a company. It’s not something you can outsource, but it shouldn’t rest entirely on your team’s shoulders, either.

A brand experience agency can bring a valuable fresh perspective and the benefit of having gone through this exercise many times before. They know what goes into brand development and how to create a strategy that communicates your brand to the world.

Here’s a closer look at what the best branding agencies should accomplish.

When developing your brand strategy, there are a lot of elements to consider before you finally get it right. You’re eager to share your story with the world, but you have to do it in a way that pings your target audience just right. 

Before you launch, here are 20 questions that can help you identify your brand strategy. Use your answers as a roadmap to where you want to guide your business in the future.

Everyone loves a fresh start and, after a nightmarish 2020, we’re all ready to move full-steam ahead into a [hopefully] brighter, more successful year. But, as any great business leader knows, setting cohesive goals is only half the battle. To move the needle and make meaningful progress toward your goals this year, you’ve got to have the right people, with the right skills, in the right places.

Whether you’re looking to level-up your existing team, make new hires, outsource projects to an agency, or boost your own capabilities, it’s important to know exactly what it’ll take to outpace the competition in the year ahead.

To help you prepare, here are the five most in-demand marketing skills for 2021.

Have you adjusted your SEO since the advent of COVID-19? If not, now is the time. While some businesses have not been impacted from a search standpoint, others have seen a shift in terms of search intent. As a reminder, search intent (also called user intent or audience intent) describes the purpose of a person’s online search — in other words, what they are hoping to find by conducting the search.

In the past, search engines used direct word matching of keywords. But Google found that just because a user types “battery car dead,” for example, doesn’t mean they want everything that matches that search term, such as what it is, where to buy batteries, which batteries are rated higher or how to replace a battery.

Are you falling into today’s technology marketing trap? The way we’ve been marketing software for years may not be working as well as it used to, according to a new report. 

The 2021 Buying Disconnect exposes the gap between the way organizations are marketing technology and the way buyers want to engage now. This gap began to appear before the advent of COVID-19 but accelerated during the pandemic. The reasons for the rise include economic uncertainty and remote workplaces. These changes require buyers to not only search for products virtually, but also to be more confident in their purchase decisions than ever before.

The report’s findings provide insight on creating a new path for tech marketing so that organizations can meet consumers’ changing expectations in the new year and beyond.

Your brand identity is what makes you memorable, setting you apart from the competition. It’s why your most loyal customers will decide to invest in you.

Companies with clear, consistent branding can expect to earn 23% more annual revenue than those without a well-communicated brand.

Defining your brand identity is a lot like answering life’s toughest questions. Who are you? What were you put on this earth to do? It may seem like a lot to tackle, but until you have a clear mission and vision for your company, you won’t have a clear path forward.

There are many social channels out there, and many are rolling out new features on a weekly basis. It can be difficult to keep up with new social trends for businesses. With so many different platforms, it is hard to figure out which ones are worth your companies time and effort. It is also difficult to perfect your strategy on each channel.

The question is, how much time do you want to spend creating content, posting updates, and engaging with users, and on what platforms does this even make sense? You can’t perfect every platform, but you can find the right ones that mesh with your business. In this blog, we will break down which channels make sense for your business, and how to create the right strategy to do so.

Here are a few questions to consider.

You spend a lot of time working on high-quality content for your prospects and customers. It’s a great piece so, when it’s complete, it should be gated, right? Not so fast. There can be a lot to consider about whether to gate your content. Let’s take a look at how you can decide whether to put your content behind a form.

Video marketing campaigns are a must for any business. But your strategy should go beyond filming something on your phone and posting it to social media. And if you’re going to work with an agency to get your video produced, don’t make a move unless they offer video marketing services that will be critical to your success.

Adding video content to your strategy is a great way to get more people engaged with your brand. It means they’re more likely to take actions like joining your email list, or better yet, buying your product. But if your message misses the mark or no one can find your video, it’s going to be a frustrating experience that costs you time and money. 

So, if you’re working with a video marketing agency to help you create a successful campaign, here are some of the services you must ensure they offer. 

A vital aspect of successful marketing programs is staying up to date on the latest news, trends and best practices across the industry. Great resources for staying on the leading edge of what’s working and what’s not are the many blogs that report on the digital marketing industry — including topics ranging from search engine optimization to social media marketing to conversion intelligence.

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.