Interview: Lee Odden, CEO and founder of TopRank Marketing and Author of "Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing"

One thing I have learned working for start-ups and big brands looking to build their presence through digital channels is the need for you to develop “continuous learning”. With the shifting technology landscape and the growth in new emerging channels to engage with audiences, the only way to keep on top of how you operate and to remain relevant is to identify good resources to follow Lee Odden is one of those people who has been a leading voice in the marketing industry – an author and founder of agency, TopRank Marketing you can also follow Lee on Twitter @leeodden I had the chance to catch up with Lee specifically on this very…

Real world examples of a range of platforms that help land & expand

‘Social’ is an absolute phenomenon. Apparently, if Facebook was a nation, it would have more people than China. Serious scale to say the least. In today’s world, it’s not whether your ideal audiences are on social media, but a question of where they are. When we see life through an account-based marketing (ABM) lens, we want to work with as many of our target accounts as possible. That’s what it’s all about. So if organisations you want to onboard are there - you need to be there. If you don’t grab the opportunity, you can bet your bottom dollar your competition will - so get to it!

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Hello account-based social

Account-based social can be defined…

We analyzed more than 791 million emails to see what the best hour and day is to send high-converted email marketing

Every year at Omnisend we analyze our clients’ email marketing and marketing automation data to see the biggest trends, opportunities and best practices that lead to great conversions and sales. Recently, we dug deep into 9,500 brands that sent more than 92,000 email campaigns (that’s more than 791 million emails, by the way) to see what the best hour, the day of the week, and day of the month is to send out email campaigns. By understanding these practical results, you’ll be able to adapt your own email marketing strategy to improve your conversions and skyrocket your sales. But first, it’s important to emphasize the importance here of list-building. If you don’t have a big enough list, you won’t really see significant results that can help inform you about the best email marketing…

Let us look at the rise Google Shopping

New research by Adthena uncovers the extent to which Google Shopping ads, commonly referred to as Product Listing Ads (or PLAs), have become the most popular ad format for retail advertisers, with ad spend now far in excess of text ads in retail categories. Google Shopping ads now drive 76.4% of retail search ad spend, generating 85.3% of all clicks on Adwords or Google Shopping campaign ads. This report benchmarks Google Shopping (PLA) ad spend across 40 million ads in the US/UK. From 267,000 competitors, encompassing over 1 million search terms. The data reveals the true extent of Google Shopping ad format adoption in the US/UK, among advertisers across retail categories such as Fashion and Apparel, Consumer Electronics and Home & Garden. “The bigger picture here is the shift in which audiences are consuming new ad formats,” says…

Chart of the day: A comparison of the effectiveness of paid search marketing contrasting Google's search network with the display network

This chart gives an update to historical data on conversion rates in Google Ads from the Google Ads management platform Wordstream. It's part of new benchmarking paid search marketing mobile statistics by industry. If you're considering paid search it gives you an idea of the conversion rates you can expect when making the business case. Of course, tests will show you rates specific to your market, type of keywords (Brand, generic, product, long tail, etc) and your proposition, but this gives an indication. The full report also covers clickthrough rate and cost to help you build conversion rate funnel spreadsheet revenue models which are provided as resources in Excel for our premium members.

Mobile Google Ads conversion rates by sector

The new 2018 cross-industry Google Ads clickthrough rate and conversion benchmarks shows that: The…

Powerful digital sales strategies to ensure you make the most of your e-commerce site’s traffic

Research by Big Commerce shows 51% of people prefer shopping online and 95% shop online at least once a year. It is a trillion-dollar market. This popularity has catalysed the rise of more than 12 million e-commerce stores. But only around 650,000 of them generate more than $1000 in revenue annually. [si_guide_block id="122131" title="Digital marketing plan example – e-commerce/retail company" description="Struggling to put together a digital marketing strategy for your company? Use our e-commerce example plan and learn how to create a roadmap for retail growth."/] When e-commerce stores struggle with generating revenue, they assume that it is a traffic problem only. Hence, they invest more into ads and SEO. But before they rush in and purchase ads they should implement a digital sales strategy that converts more of the traffic driven. A conversion optimized e-commerce site…

With the increasing amount of data breaches, internal controversies, and shady business dealings that have been uncovered in the past few years, consumers are finding it difficult to trust businesses

According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer report, 42% of customers claim that they have lost trust in many brands. In fact, customer confidence in American companies has continued to decline over the past few years. Trust is earned, and it must be cultivated over time. This is tricky, especially for new brands who have little experience to go off of. So, how can you establish this with your own audience to not only attract customers, but also build brand loyalty for years to come? Let’s discuss.

Define Your Brand Voice and Stick to it

Every business has a personality. There are words you would use to label a brand that could easily be used to describe a person. For example, what is Apple’s brand voice? Perhaps…

Absolut vodka and their marketing campaign have stood the test of time

Sometimes a simple marketing campaign can far outshine a complicated and expensive one. This is the same for more than just marketing campaigns and usually is true across a lot of things in life in general. Simple and effective is more often than not the way to go. Let us see how Absolut vodka did that. [si_guide_block id="29978" title="Download FREE Resource – Essential marketing models" description="15 classic planning tools to inform strategy development."/]

The history

Absolut as a company was founded in 1879 by Lars Olsson Smith and is produced in Åhus, Sweden. He challenged, and beat, the city of Stockholm's liquor marketing monopoly with his vodka. He sold it just outside the city border at a lower price than the monopoly's product. Smith even offered free boat rides to the distillery and "Rent Brännvin"…

Is Google's AI and Machine Learning intelligent enough to deliver Smart Campaigns that gain results?

Did you manage to watch Google's Marketing Live Keynote speech? The Smart Insights office had some mixed opinions about Google's "new products" and whether or not, Google's Marketing Platform does, in fact, live up to marketers' expectations of delivering ads, or whether it's the same features as before, but in one place under a new name. Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President for Ads, introduced the keynote with a striking message: "Advertising that works for everyone" This has never been more important than it is today. Not only do we, as marketers, need to be better with how we create and target our ads, we need to be creating ads that consumers can trust. It should be advertising that works for everyone: Advertising at its best always puts people…

Five killer marketing management team strategies that will improve your output

Today its important for business owners to have an online presence and for entrepreneurs to understand marketing management team strategies that will set you apart from the competition. If you’re planning a business campaign or venture, you need to form a killer marketing management team. It will ensure enhanced visibility of your brand and a higher potential for your business or company. Here are five killer marketing management team strategies that you should implement:

1: Prioritise a content strategy

If you want to promote your company or products, it’s essential to prioritize online content. Having good content sets your website apart from your competitors and delivers the correct message to your customers. Content marketing includes creating and sharing information such as blog posts, news, videos, white papers, infographics, how-to guides, case studies and photos and is one of…