Best Free Online Marketing Guide For Online Entrepreneur

30-second summary: SEO is key for businesses that are aware and prepared for a search-first world However, securing and structuring budgets for this initiative remains a conundrum Here are some answers to help stakeholders invest in SEO Nearly three-quarters of businesses choose to invest in SEO. If you aren’t one of them, consider this: for most businesses, SEO has a five percent conversion rate – significantly higher than email (3.9 percent), paid search (3.6 percent), or social media (1.9 percent). That’s an ROI you can’t ignore! Of course, SEO isn’t “free”. Optimizing for search requires investment and is the best way to ensure your SEO strategy has what it needs is to allocate SEO resources in your marketing budget from the very beginning of marketing planning. What’s in an SEO budget? How much you ultimately spend on SEO should take into consideration your business and marketing objectives. If you’re working with an SEO agency, you’ll start with a consultation to he...

30-second summary: The National Retail Federation has projected holiday sales to cross 10 percent grossing sales between $843.4bn and $859bn Business leaders must rethink their online presence, consumer experience, operations, and data practices to ensure they can thrive in a digital future Liberty Latin America’s global head of digital marketing – Sr. Director shares advice and recommendations for becoming a consumer-first brand The fading away of third-party cookies is an inevitable reform set to change the face of the advertising landscape for better. First-party data is taking center stage has already tapped into the zones of customer trust, brand integrity, and ethical marketing. All these elements decide a brand’s fate in the market and directly impact brand presence, customer experience, and share of voice. The cookie death will have a crippling effect on programmatic advertising and its revenues. Brands’ ability to target customers, create advanced audience segments, ...

30-second summary: Brands usually take pride in their slogans, but what happens in unusual times? Upholding public safety, KFC decided to suspend its brand tagline in August 2020 Uncover the challenge and strategy of a bold and elaborate campaign that gave KFC a 119 percent uptick in sales KFC’s “finger lickin’ good” slogan is one of the world’s most recognizable taglines. However, the fast-food giant was moved to suspend the slogan last summer because it contravened pandemic hygiene advice. The suspension was potentially catastrophic for KFC, but the company has turned the situation on its head with an award-winning, self-parodying campaign to make light of the situation. The campaign has yielded increased awareness, as well as sales. Here we speak to Kate Wall, strategy and innovation director for KFC UK and Ireland, as well as Joe Brewer, client partner from Mindshare, the key architects of the campaign, about its success. When a brand drops a slogan, it’s usually for one...

30-second summary: Customer needs have changed as a result of the pandemic and so must the ways of marketing to them Digital empathy is key to informing marketing decisions Read on for valuable insight from digital pioneer and best-selling author Brian Solis Every brand has a style guide and every CMO has an entire set of teams that operate against those brand guidelines. While every company is accelerating digital transformation investments to upgrade customer experiences, two questions executives need to ask are “how did people and their core values and aspirations change in 2020-2021” and “how can our brand stand for something aspirational in a new world?” In a special session at the October 2021 ClickZ Experience , world-renowned digital pioneer and 8x best-selling author Brian Solis shared his research on how customers have changed at a human level and how brands must adapt down to their core.   Q: How do you see brands changing in the post-pandemic world? Brian: ...

30-second summary: The brand-agency partnership is a two-way street that involves dynamic factors and diverse participants Any healthy brand-agency partnership is based on mutual and well-articulated dependencies Brand strategy, budgets, leadership styles, agency talent, and several other factors contribute to the eventual outcome Clients need to acknowledge that their agency serves as an extended arm of the central brand and marketing teams International bestselling author and ClickZ advisory board member, Bruno Gralpois spots the five-most crucial pain points and solutions for both, the brand as well as agency side In our culture, it is a commonly stated, daunting question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” This causality dilemma has been around since Aristotle’s fourth century BCE and the paradox of what is referred to as “first cause.” Extrapolating this further, the answer is not always as obvious as it seems. Especially when you consider the correlation betwee...

30-second summary: Consumer attention is fickle, precious, and especially ad resistant With the winter holidays fast approaching, brands need to diversify their digital marketing strategy to reach well-engaged audiences Renowned industry figure Neal Schaffer helps brands activate their holiday season sales with effective tips There’s no denying that influencer marketing is a hot topic. And this is unsurprising, given that it goes largely against the grain of traditional advertising techniques. In addition, for most brands with an established influencer program, the use of content creators to reach customers has proven to have an extremely beneficial ROI. In fact, I also wrote here at ClickZ as to how businesses can and should become influencers themselves . Unfortunately, influencer marketing can be complex due to the myriad personalities and moving parts. With that said, how can your brand be most effective with influencer marketing, especially as the winter holidays are qui...

30-second summary: CMOs often ask, “What is the ideal number of agencies we need?” Strategy, organizational needs, and leadership style can heavily impact a brand’s advertising and agency ecosystem International bestselling author and ClickZ advisory board member, Bruno Gralpois answers the most asked questions by leaders about their agency roster Best practices and advice for marketing leaders and budget holders on Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), agency strategy, and budget optimization Napoleon Bonaparte contributed to reforms that propelled state-of-the-art research in science, education, equality, property rights, and a metric system that is still in use today. Being one of the world’s greatest strategists he often insisted that strategy alone—without strong and well-thought-out execution was grossly insufficient. The largest brand advertisers would agree with that assertion as they struggle to turn their agency strategy into thriving partnerships that enable them ...

30-second summary: Focusing on UX and centralizing experiences leads to significant increases in web traffic. Stakeholder involvement at all levels, as well as honest conversations, are keys to successful and long-lasting change. Improving automation offers valuable insights for business development teams. Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD), a transatlantic law firm formed in 2017, has an annual revenue of 475 million USD, comprises 27 offices around the world, and employs over 940 attorneys. Within such a complex organization, with so many stakeholders, change in any form is a complex matter. Two years ago, WBD was facing an outdated insights portal on their website and the need for a more intelligent marketing automation platform.  We sat down with Drew Hawkins, Director of Marketing at WBD, to hear how he went about spearheading and implementing large-scale changes to their marketing systems including what worked and what didn’t, and what lessons he hopes others can learn from...