Business Ideas, Business Plans, Grants & Loans

8 Personalization Trends That Are Reinventing the Buyer’s Journey

Sep 24 2015

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If we think about offline buyer/brand relationships, customer loyalty results (in part) when a brand can form a relationship with the buyer through acts of thoughtful remembrance. For example, knowing their preferences, or making product or service recommendations according to their likes and dislikes.

One of the big challenges businesses face today is creating this same experience for buyers online. In essence, the act of doing so is what we call personalization or personalized marketing. But we’ll get to that …

10 Design Tips to Create Beautiful Excel Charts and Graphs

Sep 24 2015

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It’s really tempting to let terrible Excel graphs creep into your marketing. Your boss doesn’t care about little things like how graphs look, right? And whatever Excel comes up with as the default is probably fine … right?

Not really. You’re using data to spur action. Maybe you pull data to convince your boss to adopt inbound marketing, give you an extra sliver of budget, or adjust your team’s strategy — among other things.

Ad Blocking is Becoming a Real Threat: Here’s What Publisher’s Can Do About It

Sep 24 2015

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Ad blocking is causing a lot of stir in the the news lately, most recently brought into the spotlight by Apple’s release of iOS 9. That which has come to keep the lights on for many publishers is now seriously at risk of being taken away if ad blocking continues to scale and prevent display ads from being served to mobile users.

Your Blog Posts Are Boring: 9 Tips for Making Your Writing More Interesting

Sep 24 2015

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If you’re a boring writer, you’ve got a tough road ahead. I hate to break it to you, but in today’s content-saturated world, people don’t have time to spend on content they don’t enjoy reading.

Thankfully, there are some powerful antidotes to boring content. In this article, I’m dishing up some of my favorite.

Is This Copyright Infringement? What Images You Can & Can’t Share [Infographic]

Sep 23 2015

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Sharing is caring, right?

Well, yes … but when it comes to sharing other people’s images, there are a few restrictions.

When someone creates an original image, they automatically own rights to that image. And when one of the rights to that image is used without the creator’s consent, that’s called copyright infringement — and it’s a big deal.

Is Advertising Inherently Outbound?

Sep 23 2015

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It’s easy to look at complicated things in black and white.

Take Darth Vader, for example. Darth is a major bad guy — no way around it. But he didn’t start off that way.

Anakin Skywalker was a good kid with a lot of potential. In the right situation, he could have gone on to become a hero and represent the light side.

The Psychology of Checking Your Email

Sep 23 2015

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If you’re normal, you checked your email within the past 60 minutes. If you’re even more normal, you don’t even “check your email.” Instead, it’s always there — pinging, dinging, distracting your mind, chewing up your workday, and making you stressed out and unproductive.

Email is a monster. Each of us has our ways of whimpering and giving in to the monster, or rising to slay it with technological indignation.

Motion, Consistency, Repetition & More: 23 Design Principles to Boost Conversions [SlideShare]

Sep 22 2015

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When you break a landing page down to its most basic level, you’re left with a few things: a catchy headline, a form, a few bullet points, and maybe a supporting visual.

These elements are often combined in a similar format, dressed up with the branding of the company, and pushed live with the hope that they’ll be enough to invite engagement.

Essential Marketing Strategies for SaaS Startups

Sep 22 2015

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It is a great time to be a software-as-a-service company. The worldwide software market has an estimated value of more than $400 billion.

However, the cloud software market (SaaS/PaaS/IaaS) makes up only $48–$56 billion, meaning that “cloud-based software accounts for no more than 15 percent of the value of the total software market,” but this distribution is quickly changing, according to Altos Ventures.

13 Essential Features for Taking Payments on Your Website

Sep 22 2015

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There are a lot of things I used to buy in person that I now buy online. I wouldn’t call myself lazy, but it’s just so much easier to carry a box of paper towels from my doorstep into my apartment than it is to carry it down the street from my local grocery store.

And I’m not alone. Whether it’s because of the larger selection, better pricing, convenience, or something else, a lot more people are buying stuff online nowadays instead of in person.