The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent effects on the economy brought financial safety and security to the forefront for many of us. Whether you’re struggling personally or not, you may have seen your favorite mom-and-pop restaurant down the street close or heard the drone of falling stock market statistics from your local news anchor. More so than usual, people are worried about money.

There are few things as disappointing as sitting down to your computer, downing your third cup of coffee as you sit there late into the night cranking up content piece after content piece, only to have it hit the internet to a chorus of crickets. What happened? You put everything you had into that content, poured out your heart, as well as all the information you know about a particular topic. What more could people want? The truth is, a lot more.

There's a secret that well-seasoned marketers know. No matter how many warm fuzzies an ad campaign gives you, or how clever, or funny, or relevant it is, none of it matters if the campaign can't drive engagement that leads to revenue. No matter how well the intention should have played out, a campaign that falls flat often loses all the stakeholder support and is replaced with new efforts. That can be stressful whether you are in in-house marketer, a freelancer, or an agency under contract.

For small to medium-sized businesses, having the right tools can mean everything when it comes to their success. When you're running an SMB (small to medium-sized business), there are always more tasks than can be done, more hours required in a day than are realistically available. With business owners facing such an enormous amount of responsibility, the tools they employ become indispensable. Business is a battle, and going in with the wrong tool can be like jumping out of the trenches with no more than a water gun in your hand.

So, you're sitting in a meeting, and someone starts dropping acronyms like there's no tomorrow... You're reading the P&L, making sure you've got enough ROI on your SEO, and your COO starts talking about Q2 returns YOY, and how your MQLs have been outperforming your SQLs while your COS is climbing.

The term Agile Marketing is by no means a new one within the business world. The odds are that even if you aren't actively using an Agile approach to your business, you've heard of it in some way, shape, or form over the last few years. It was born in the world of software development, coming to life in IT departments as they worked quickly to address issues, test their methods, and weigh the results.

While it’s still unsure how Instagram’s latest like policy will change the face of influencer marketing, we think it’s safe the say that the marketing niche certainly won’t be going anywhere. So much so, that by 2020, influencer marketing is projected to be a $10 billion industry. That’s billion. With a “B.” With so much focus (and budget) on influencer marketing, you’d assume that most marketers can track what the ROI of their influencers are. But you know what they say about assumptions.

Across the country, there is a unique class of folks that stand out as anomalies from the digitized masses. They aren't hard to recognize. Often, they're using aging tech or a non-smartphone, they would rather get dirt under their fingernails than be on social media and have little to no idea what a meme is. Often referred to in the marketing world by the kind euphemism of late adopters, this group of hard-working, rarely online folks typically has some of the sparsest resources when it comes to their marketing, design, and demand generation. 

They tend to occupy more trade, agricultural, and specialized skill forms of business, be it guiding, farming, construction, charter services, commercial supply, or more industrial-focused work. For many of these people, they have the "been doing it this way for 30 years, and it's worked well for me" byline, and business typically comes from a real word of mouth route. But, like all good things, the days may be numbered for continuing this way in a world going ever faster and faster toward the interconnection of things. Today we're looking at why every single individual, even these late adopters, can benefit from a strong marketing game.

If you’ve got a website up and running, congratulations, you’ve entered into the 21^st century. If you’re collecting data on that website, double kudos. You’re doing more than the average small business, as only 45% of them actually track their data. If you’re actually assessing that data to improve your overall marketing, well then hot dang, we think you deserve all the gold stars. But if you’re sitting in your office, heaped in data that’s drowning you, we’re here to help! Today’s blog is the lifeboat that will steer you to five strategies to analyze your traffic, asses your data, and untangle your results for a better overall strategy. So pick up that icy whistle and blow, because we’re coming for ya!

Fact: writing a white paper is no joke. It’s certainly one of the bigger sorts of projects a marketing team will work on and will require some serious leg work. White paper’s require hours of research, a healthy dose of timely and reliable sources, a research position and tone of voice, a dang good subject. It typically will be anywhere from 3000-5,000 well thought out words and an all-hands on deck approach from more than one of your marketing team members