I know what you’re thinking: Drip campaigns? They’re about as relevant as Michael Bolton. But here’s the thing about Michael Bolton: He’s always relevant! Truth is, the concepts behind drip campaigns—sending communications to customers and prospects on a regular basis—remain as relevant today as ever. The difference is that marketing automation has made this process […]

The post Don’t Call It a Comeback: Drip Campaigns Have Been Here for Years appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Not to point any fingers, but how many marketers are guilty of asking designers something along the lines of “Can you just make it prettier?” For many marketers, working with a designer can be one of the most challenging tasks they face while building a brand. Communicating their wants, needs, and visions can lead marketers […]

The post 3 Ways Marketers Can Avoid a Communication Breakdown With Designers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

The Power of Relationships Your product’s features and benefits matter. Often, however, they are not enough on their own to win new business. That’s because most markets are crowded with competitors that offer similar products, services, or solutions. So how do you compete in saturated markets with the competition nipping at your heels? It’s all […]

The post Your Guide to Relationship Selling appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

In a way, sales reps are like nurses or doctors. They take people’s temperatures to determine how they’re feeling. A “hot” prospect is ready to buy. A “cold” prospect is merely browsing inventory. Before the internet, this heat check was usually performed in person. Sales reps would get a good sense of how interested someone […]

The post The 3 Essentials of a Successful Qualified Leads Program appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

The emergence of AI technology is the result of evolved human thinking. And, in some ways, it’s become one of the biggest technology game changers of this generation. However, without being very cautious and aware of the dangers—and significance—of combining human interaction with artificial intelligence, we could head down the wrong path. Personally, a substantial […]

The post How to Strike a Balance Between Relying on AI and Emphasizing a Human Touch appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Aimclear has been at the forefront of the integrated marketing wave for more than a decade. We’ve set out to define and redefine marketing – as well as where Aimclear fits many times over. As such, we’ve undertaken a series of moves- with more to come. First, as many of you know, we recently added […]

Video ads are one of the most potent tools in a marketing arsenal. So why do so many event marketers ignore it? According to a 2018 Animoto report on social video trends, 93% of business score new customers from video marketing on social media. Eventbrite research shows that 94% of event creators who use video say it’s […]

The post Event Marketers Are Ignoring the Power of Video—Here’s How to Catch Up appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Today’s modern marketing department encompasses a variety of roles that blend expertise in both traditional and digital mediums. Hiring for SEO related roles, in particular, has increased by over 40% in the last year. Companies are injecting more dollars than ever into organic search and content marketing. This strategic shift calls on SEO and marketing […]

The post How SEO Can Drive Your Marketing Initiatives appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Email marketing is like an old friend. It’s been around for years. It doesn’t surprise you much anymore. You may even find it a little boring sometimes. But at the end of the day, you know you can depend on it. Even with the emergence of more exciting engagement tactics, email marketing has remained a […]

The post Why Email Marketing Still Rules (Plus 3 Tips to Increase Engagement) appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Last Christmas, I bought a friend of mine a subscription to a science and culture magazine. She had discovered the magazine during downtime at work, so she was delighted when they started showing up at her door. The gift was a hit, despite the fact that I’d misspelled her name. But then other magazines offers […]

The post Treat Customer Data Like You’d Want Yours to Be Treated appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

In part one of this series, I compared marketing attribution to the Big Bad Wolf, a once-intimidating presence that kept marketers from successfully connecting their marketing to revenue. While the act is no longer such a scary monster, the intricacies of attribution models remains a beast. Fortunately, it’s one you can easily tame with a […]

The post How the Whole Business Wins with Successful Marketing Attribution [Part 2] appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

A keen focus on customer experience is helping enterprises compete and win in today’s highly competitive business landscape. That was the main takeaway of this morning’s keynote session at Adobe Summit—The Digital Experience Conference. “Powerful experiences change the way we think, interact, entertain, work, and relate to the world around us,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen […]

The post 5 Brands that Centered Digital Transformation Around Customers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Every sector has its Big Bad Wolf. For marketing, it’s attribution—or at least it was. These days, attribution isn’t so scary. The wolf has been declawed, and today’s marketers are expected to be able to connect their efforts and spend to revenue. But while we may better understand marketing attribution, the technology, processes, and skill […]

The post How the Whole Business Wins with Successful Marketing Attribution [Part 1] appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is neither a product nor a point solution. Rather, it’s a strategy, a mindset, and ultimately a cultural movement. Done correctly, this culture shift leads to better sales and marketing partnership, and eventually the ability to maximize revenue potential together with sales. On the marketing side, ABM forces them to think like […]

The post 3 Strategies to Kick-Start your ABM Efforts appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

The younger the consumer, the higher their expectations for the companies they engage with. That’s the overall takeaway from Adobe’s 2019 “CXM Index” report, based on a survey of 1,500 U.S. adults regarding preferences and expectations for digital experiences in the retail, travel and hospitality, media and entertainment, and financial services industries. “Younger consumers have higher […]

The post Millennials Have Higher Expectations for CX than Older Generations appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Steve Lucas, SVP of Marketo, an Adobe company, on Thursday challenged the thousands of attendees at Adobe Summit—The Digital Experience Conference to make every experience count. “Experience,” he said, “is the line between epic and epic failure.” With that, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen came on stage to discuss with Lucas Adobe’s 2018 acquisition of Marketo. […]

The post The New Way Forward In B2B: Account-Based Experience appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

For the past 20 years, I have journeyed into the lairs of countless marketers. From small startups to national corporations, what has shocked me the most is the lack of unity and communication between the sales and marketing departments. When I first visit a marketing department, I ask its team members to describe their buyer […]

The post 4 Ways to Reach More Qualified Leads by Uniting Your Sales and Marketing Teams appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

As a marketing professional, your biggest concern is reaching your audience. The dream is for millions of people to like, share, and comment on a post you cooked up for your organization. In theory, the best way to make this fantasy a reality is to tap into some “trending” topics and capture everyone’s attention. Unfortunately, […]

The post It’s Not About ‘What’s Trending,’ Find Out What Your Audience Actually Cares About appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

There’s a really simple hack to become a storied marketing agency: Hire and retain amazing people. Then feed a thought leadership career factory, rich with speakers, writers, major media mentions, and reputation. Sometimes we hire fresh talent, giving an exceptional new professional runway to explore, learn and become great quickly. Recently we’ve been making bold […]

Zenith Conference 2019 is almost here! Many of today’s hottest marketing pros will be keynoting and leading a jam-packed one-day agenda. This year’s blockbuster marketing event happens Thursday, April 25 at Duluth’s historic Greysolon Ballroom and the Zeitgeist Teatro Theatre. In what has become a legendary marketing conference in the upper Midwest, Zenith Conference is […]

Social media never changes. Well, maybe superficially. It’s hard to imagine today’s Insta kids coding HTML hearts into their Myspace pages and fielding messages from Tom. But one constant has plagued social media since its birth: the challenge of tracking marketing impact and ROI. Thankfully, as platforms have evolved, so have the tools we use […]

The post Social Media Analytics: Adding Attribution and ROI to Your Marketing Campaigns appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Women’s history month is always an opportunity to learn and grow—for every gender, not just women. It’s important to take time to reflect on how far we’ve come. When I started my first job nearly 20 years ago, I adhered to a dress code that required I wear a skirt and pantyhose to work every […]

The post 4 Ways Everyone Can Champion Women in Tech appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Landing pages are Marketing 101—or at least they should be. Top-notch marketers must know how to build compelling landing pages specially designed to convince customers to engage and convert. They need to understand the importance of grabbing readers’ attention with catchy headlines, making text easier to consume with short paragraphs and bullet points, and using […]

The post 3 Next-Level Landing Page Best Practices for 2019 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Your landing page is your opportunity to make an impression on your target audience. If it connects on an emotional level and has a clear and transparent purpose, site visitors are more likely to identify with your brand. Building loyalty often takes a bit more time, but your landing page is a start to a […]

The post How to Build Brand Loyalty on Your Landing Page appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Customer experience management (CXM) is the next stage of the customer-centric business transformation. It is a grand orchestration of customer experiences (CX) involving everyone in the C-suite—CIOs, CMOs, chief digital officers, among other customer-facing functions. “CXM is the next category in the brand evolution,” said Augie Ray, vice president analyst at Gartner. “Whereas 20 years […]

The post Digital Transformation 2.0: Customer Experience Management appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

When it comes to video ads, Twitter can stand on its own. With 321 million active users per month, the social platform is perfect for fast, relevant video content. Video tweets are six times more likely to earn retweets than image tweets, which are already several times more popular than text-only tweets. Don’t get anxious about reports of […]

The post 5 Essential Video Advertising Tips for Twitter in 2019 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

The CMO’s position in the C-suite hierarchy has been elevated significantly over the past several years, thanks in large part to the rise of big data. With the right data at their fingertips, modern marketers can now target customers with surgical precision, as well as provide CEOs with evidence that their initiatives are working. And […]

The post Why Big Data Means Big Responsibility for CMOs appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

Adjusting bids in Google Ads based on the weather has long been a fantasized topic among marketers. In theory, the concept sounds impactful. In practice, easy to implement. In reality, it can be simple to scale in the proper framework. This post will walk you through setting up the initial framework to analyze and optimize […]

It’s a new year, and you know what that means: new annual predictions. ‘Tis the season for companies to publish their thoughts and plans for 2019, including us. And we’re betting on big changes, like the growing importance of the customer experience and artificial intelligence (AI). Our forecasting is based on research and deep knowledge […]

The post What the AI-Delivered Buyer’s Journey Will Look Like in 2030 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

You’ve got a loyal following of delighted customers. Now it’s time to grow. But to do that, you need leads. The question is, how do you go about getting them? What techniques and approaches will help you generate a consistent stream of leads this year and beyond? In this blog, I’ll share five simple lead […]

The post 5 Lead Generation Techniques for Small Businesses in 2019 appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.