Building a Podcast Advertising Strategy From Scratch
A step-by-step guide to launching a podcast advertising campaign in 2018: picking shows, choosing ad placement and setting up attribution.
The Archive
2018
Mastering Local SEO: A Marketer's Playbook
How to run local SEO as an ongoing operation in 2018 rather than a one-time setup: the weekly, monthly and quarterly cadence that kept listings competitive.
The State of Conversational Marketing in 2018
The year chat widgets stopped being a novelty and became a real lead-gen channel, even as chatbot fatigue set in right alongside it. A look at what shifted.
Common Stories Marketing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
The recurring mistakes brands made with Instagram and Facebook Stories in 2018, and what to do instead.
The State of Customer Data Platforms in 2018
A snapshot of the customer data platform category in 2018: how it differed from a DMP, which vendors defined it and why GDPR made first-party data valuable.
A Practical Guide to Marketing Automation
Marketing automation lets a small team send timely, relevant messages at a scale no one could manage by hand. Here is what to automate first and traps to avoid.
Why Video-First Strategy Matters for Your Bottom Line
The bottom-line case for video-first strategy in 2018, once IGTV and cheaper vertical video production had shifted where attention and ad dollars were going.
A Practical Guide to Influencer Marketing
How influencer marketing works in practice: what a brand pays for, how creator tiers differ in price and performance and where the FTC's disclosure rules apply.
Case Study: Winning With Machine Learning in Marketing
An illustrative example of how an online retailer could use 2018-era automated bidding and lookalike audiences to cut wasted ad spend with no data science team.
The State of Voice Search in 2018
Where voice search stood in 2018: smart speaker adoption after a record holiday, Apple's HomePod launch and what businesses were realistically getting from it.
GDPR and Privacy: What Every Business Needs to Know
A decision framework for business owners asking a bigger question than compliance in 2018: should privacy become part of how you compete, not just a checkbox.
The Rise of Customer Experience
How customer experience grew from a niche academic concept into a board-level priority by 2018, traced through NPS, the CX Index and Qualtrics' $8B acquisition.
Personalization Trends Shaping 2018
What shifted in personalization during 2018: GDPR forcing a rethink of consent data, more customer data platforms and personalization fatigue among users.
Mastering Brand Trust: A Marketer's Playbook
An operational playbook for earning brand trust in 2018, the year Cambridge Analytica and GDPR made data practices a visible part of the customer relationship.
Common Podcast Advertising Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
The mistakes that undermined podcast ad campaigns in 2018, from skipping attribution setup to judging results after a single episode.
9 Local SEO Strategies That Work
Nine concrete local SEO moves worth a business owner's time in 2018, from Google Posts and Q&A to the mobile speed update that shipped in July.
The Bottom-Line Case for Conversational Marketing
A contact form makes a warm visitor wait for a reply that might come tomorrow. In 2018 that wait started costing money. Here's the case for a live chat instead.
Case Study: Winning With Stories Marketing
An illustrative 2018 case study of a small retailer using Instagram Stories, once polls, question stickers and swipe-up links had matured past pure novelty.
The 2018 Business Case for Customer Data Platforms
The business case for a customer data platform in 2018: what fragmented data costs a business and what changes once it's unified into one profile per customer.
How Marketing Automation Changed Digital Marketing in 2018
How GDPR, Adobe's acquisition of Marketo and the shift toward behavior-triggered messaging reshaped marketing automation in 2018.
Video-First Strategy: What Every Business Needs to Know
A decision framework for going video-first in early 2018, before IGTV existed, when Stories and native feed video made video the default format everywhere.
How Influencer Marketing Changed Digital Marketing in 2018
2018 was the year the FTC started enforcing influencer disclosure rules, and it forced the entire industry to grow up.
Machine Learning in Marketing: Trends Shaping 2018
Google's Smart Bidding rollout, dynamic creative optimization and useful marketing chatbots: what machine learning changed this year, versus what's still hype.
Why Voice Search Matters: Local Search, Not Voice Commerce
The real business case for voice search in 2018: a local visibility and featured-snippet story, not voice commerce, and why that changes where you invest.
A Practical Guide to GDPR and Privacy
How GDPR compliance works for a marketing team: lawful basis for data, consent versus legitimate interest and what changed for email and analytics in 2018.