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  • Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying, Says Bombora VP

    Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying, Says Bombora VP

    “It’s really about customer experience,” says Nirosha Methananda, VP of Marketing at Bombora. “I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.”

    Nirosha Methananda, Vice President of Marketing at Bombora, discusses the challenges of marketing without annoying your potential customers by bombarding them with marketing messages in an interview with Logan Lyles on the B2B Growth Podcast:

    Marketing Is Really About the Customer Experience

    As a B2B marketer, I get marketed to a lot. It’s something that I have increasingly noticed and I’m probably not the only one. That’s just becoming part of the experience in terms of being inundated with different messaging and different calls and this, that, and the other. Use this, do this, buy this, whatever it is. It’s really not a great experience. It doesn’t necessarily provide value. Marketers are so busy as it is, and I know that is applicable across the board with everyone we are marketing to. Being able to cut through the noise and having an understanding of all these different things is very challenging. 

    Having on top of it being inundated with this constant flow of messaging like meet me, meet me, meet me, is not very helpful. That’s one of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s really about customer experience. I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

    Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying

    It also leads to this annoyance and irritation which leads to distrust of brands and that’s not great for this industry. From a customer perspective those bad experiences, unfortunately, more than good experiences, they stay with you for longer and you remember that. Another thing that we don’t necessarily think of is that it’s wasteful. It’s wasteful of time and it’s wasteful of money especially for marketing and sales where money is a precious resource. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.

    As an example, our Intent Event was our first flagship event that we did last year. It was a closed event so we did have limited numbers and we were limited as to what we could do with promotion. What we did was try to have mindfulness around what we were sending out and ensuring that it was helpful. Making sure that the recipients, the people that we invited, were given all the relevant information, but there was brevity in the communication as well as encouraging them to participate without forcing them to be there. 

    There was certainly some urgency around some of our communication but it wasn’t you need to attend this and this is why you must attend this. It was more about being a bit more subtle in presenting them the idea and the concept of what it was, why it would help them, and exactly the information that they needed. What that meant was not sending out multiple emails, being very controlled around it, really thinking about what the experience was before the event, to during the event, to after the event. We were really focused on the customer and making sure that all of the content and communication was educational and helpful.

    Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying, Says Bombora VP Nirosha Methananda
  • Conversational Marketing Closes the Gap Between B2C and B2B, Says Drift Marketing VP

    Conversational Marketing Closes the Gap Between B2C and B2B, Says Drift Marketing VP

    Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales, says Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift. “We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people,” he says. “That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.”

    Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

    Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

    Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

    I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

    B2P – Marketing to People

    It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

    But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

    What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

    We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

    Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

    The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

    >> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

  • Why Your Content Isn’t Ranking

    Why Your Content Isn’t Ranking

    It happens all the time—you spend hours creating what you think is an amazing piece of content. You post it, and then weeks or months later, it’s still not ranking. If your content doesn’t rank, your audience doesn’t see it, and you can feel like your efforts were wasted. 

    Search engine optimization (SEO) is the main goal of content creation. You want your content to rank organically and ideally as high as possible on the first page. 

    Even well-written content doesn’t always rank, though, so why is that?

    Below we explore some of the potential reasons a piece of content may not perform well organically after you post it. 

    Understanding Content’s Ranking Potential 

    In general, the more content you publish that’s high-quality on your site, the more likely you are to rank for keywords across the entire site. Google likes to see a lot of content because then the algorithms that fuel the search engine have more context, and they’re better able to understand what your site is about. 

    Each time you publish a new piece of content, Google is getting more keywords, and that means more understanding of your brand. 

    That’s why optimizing all of your content with semantically relevant keywords in your headers, descriptions, and titles is essential. 

    That doesn’t mean you go for quantity over quality, however. Google can actually end up not only ignoring your content if it’s not high-quality—you could also be penalized. 

    Along with the words you use in your content creating ranking opportunities, you’re also able to optimize your images. The way you optimize images is going to be a major ranking factor that drives traffic. 

    So what if you’re in a situation where you know you’re creating great content that you feel is properly optimized, and you still aren’t ranking?

    We’ll cover these situations below. 

    Your Keywords Are Too Competitive

    Probably one of the biggest reasons your content isn’t ranking is that you’re targeting keywords that are too competitive. Yes, they have a lot of volumes, and that can make them a shiny target, but to rank for keywords that are extremely competitive is going to be almost impossible for a new piece of content. 

    First of all, stop with the one and two-word targeted keywords. Instead, look for long-tail, less competitive keywords. 

    You should do a keyword search on everything you’re thinking about using for your content. Under a search box, if you type your targeted keyword in, you’ll see gray text that lets you know how many results it brings up. You can also use keyword tools to figure out the competitiveness of any given word or phrase. 

    Irrelevant Content

    You might create content that you think your ideal audience wants to see, but you might be wrong here. 

    You have to think carefully about why you’re creating every piece of content before you spend time and effort on it. You also want to consider if you’re going to be able to truly add value to the lives of your readers with what you’re producing. 

    If you’re not thinking carefully about creating value, you’re going to have weak, shallow content that doesn’t get much engagement.

    The Content Is Outdated

    If you have a lot of content on your site already and you don’t think it’s ranking as well as it should be, you need to consider whether it’s outdated. You need to update your old content on a regular basis, and that can help you boost its ranking. 

    If you’re overwhelmed and have a lot of content, start with an audit. Go over your current content by performance, and then from there, look at your oldest and underperforming pieces of content to figure out if you could make changes that would help them be more relevant or updated. 

    Your Site Has Technical Problems

    If your site as a whole has technical issues, it’s going to prevent individual pieces of content from ranking. 

    Common technical SEO problems include not having an XML sitemap, broken links, coding errors, privacy concerns, or Google not indexing your site. 

    You may need to work with a developer if you think your problem stems from your technical SEO. 

    Similar to some of the technical issues already mentioned, you also need to ensure your site is fast and mobile-friendly. Google has outright said that its priority in indexing content and sites is mobile-first. You can check using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, and if your site isn’t responsive, you need to work on redesigning it. 

    Similarly, site speed is also a critical ranking factor. If your site is too slow, you may need to invest in updates such as getting better hosting service or compressing your media files. 

    Short, Thin Content

    Just like Google wants to see updated and highly relevant content that’s tailored to the needs of your audience, you also want to make sure that your content is long enough. There’s a reason this matters.

    First, when you have longer content, it gives Google more content to crawl. 

    Also, long-form content tends to provide a very in-depth view of a topic, and that’s more likely to be high in value for a reader compared to short or thin content. 

    This doesn’t mean you fill your content with meaningless fluff to try and up the word count, though. Don’t go overboard trying to have a longer article to the point that you’re no longer adding value. 

    When you have in-depth content that’s relevant and valuable, this can help reduce your bounce rate because people are going to spend additional time browsing your site. That can in and of itself be a ranking factor for Google. 

    You Don’t Have Enough Links

    Finally, Google’s algorithm analyzes your site’s relevancy and domain authority when determining how to rank your site for particular keywords and phrases. The term domain authority was initially created by Moz, and it’s a prediction of how well your site will rank on search engines, with a score that ranges from 1-to 100. 

    The number of links pointing to your site is part of this. If you don’t have a lot of backlinks to your site as a whole and also to individual pieces of content, it’s going to be tougher for you to rank. 

    You need to use link-building strategies through relationship building and creating quality content. You should also send guest blog and content pitches to sites and publications or outsource the work to a professional link-building company.

  • Adobe CEO: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    Adobe CEO: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    “What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “The importance of digital in the marketplace is going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.”

    Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, discusses how the pandemic has created another “inflection point” in the move toward digital transformation:

    Digital Transformation Is A $120 Billion Opportunity

    It was a good quarter all around. All of our businesses performed exceedingly well. On the Creative Cloud and the Document Cloud, not only did we have a great acquisition. in other words, new customers adopting the platform, but we really focused on engagement and demonstrating the value of our products to our customers. Even our retention levels came back to pre-COVID levels which we believe is a really good sign.

    What’s happening in the world is the businesses that we’re in, namely creativity and enabling people to tell their story, what’s happening with documents and accelerating document productivity, and what’s happening associated with every single enterprise needing to engage with their customers digitally, when you add all of this up we think it’s over a $120 billion of an addressable market opportunity for Adobe.

    Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

    What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital. What we will have to continue to monitor is what happens in the spending environment. But as it relates to the overall need for the kinds of solutions that Adobe provides as well as the importance of digital in the marketplace I think that’s going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.

    We believe that we’re in this third phase of what is happening in the enterprise. Traditionally, businesses first focused on automating the back office, and then they focused on automating the front office for knowledge workers. It’s absolutely clear that the biggest imperative that exists in the enterprise today is how do you engage with customers? This is a category that we call Customer Experience Management.

    Customer Insight Is Key To Your Digital Transformation

    If you’re an enterprise today and you’re thinking about digital transformation, what’s top of that stack in terms of where you have to invest is to make sure that you have insight into what your customers are doing. How are they engaging with you? What’s the profile? How do you deliver the personalized experience?

    We really believe that what you’re seeing in the enterprise spend environment is that the companies that are focused on this next generation of delivering customer engagement, the customer experiences, and the insight associated with how to take the most advantage of that data, they’re going to be the secular winners moving forward.

    Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
  • Adobe/Microsoft Collaboration Brings Full PDF Support to Teams

    Adobe/Microsoft Collaboration Brings Full PDF Support to Teams

    Adobe and Microsoft are collaborating to bring full PDF viewing and editing support to Microsoft Teams.

    Microsoft Teams is the leading corporate messaging platform. Until now, working with PDFs was a weak point, one that has been solved by close collaboration between Microsoft and Adobe. Collaboration between the two companies allows Adobe Acrobat to be the default PDF handler for Team, providing full viewing and editing support.

    “The Acrobat app in Teams allows for viewing, editing, exporting, organizing, combining, converting, compressing, protecting, accessing PDFs from Teams chats, channels, OneDrive or SharePoint,” writes Tulika Gupta, Adobe Senior Product Marketing Manager, Strategic Partnerships & Integrations. “You can use Acrobat for Microsoft Teams as a Personal Tab, Bot, Tab, Message Action, or Message Extension. We had also added Single Sign-On (SSO) and introduced the personal tab — a home page for curating all your recent documents, tools, and collaboration into one view.”

    The improved integration should go a long way toward streamlining workflows.

    “Given Teams is where you’re already having the conversation with your colleagues, there is no longer the additional burden of providing context (say goodbye to those emails),” Gupta adds. “You can also get notified when comments are added to PDFs directly in Teams. All comments get recorded on a single version of the PDF stored in SharePoint or OneDrive (by default) as the ‘single source of the truth.’”

    The integration of Acrobat and Teams demonstrates what is possible when companies work together to make their products and services interoperable.

  • Consider These Five Things for Your Company’s Marketing Strategy

    Consider These Five Things for Your Company’s Marketing Strategy

    One question remains top of mind for every business owner: How do I reach my target audience? They try to find the answer in the next-best marketing trends and ever-evolving advice for boosting social media engagement and Google search rankings. While staying on top of customer behavior and needs is essential, some marketing strategies consistently expand your brand awareness and generate leads.

    Incorporate User-Generated Content

    All companies have to face it: customers are no longer simply consumers. They are active participants and content creators and are impossible to ignore in your marketing strategy. UGC content serves as social proof for your brand reputation and product quality. New customers are more likely to purchase your product or service when they discover positive reviews.

    You can capitalize on formal or informal UGC. You might (with the creator’s permission) repost pictures or videos demonstrating customers using or raving about your products, or you can solicit active participation through company-sponsored contests and giveaways. You also have the option to access UGC regularly through partnerships with influencers.

    Brand partners and influencers allow you to set the terms for the content that will best serve your brand, and they allow you to reach a large audience through influencers’ trusted advice. Whatever direction you take, incorporating UGC into your marketing strategy is essential.

    Create Quality Content

    The content you release should reflect your specific audience’s needs and preferences, but one thing remains true for every brand. Your content must be of high quality.

    Your long-form content, such as blog posts and research articles, should be grammatically correct, engaging, and contain optimized keywords to boost their SEO performance. Using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, you can edit your work to increase your readership and add value to your customers.

    Video content should also hold an esteemed position within your marketing plan. Videos quickly capture viewer attention and increase accessibility by utilizing audio, visuals, alternate text, and subtitles. While every company battles for customer attention, you can set yourselves apart through quality videos that present them with information quickly.

    When you make or solicit videos, you should ensure they have high-quality visuals and audio, show multiple angles, and keep the product, creator, or customer within the frame. You must engage viewers through authentic and relatable stories.

    Conduct Market Research

    You might have the most impressive, trusted marketing practices in your toolkit, but they are only effective if you know your target audience. While many consumers share similar needs and preferences, you find business success in identifying their unique qualities and niche groups.

    You must center your marketing strategy around your niche audience. Whether you’re launching your business or updating your previous marketing strategy, you must identify and narrow down your target audience to provide more personalized content and outreach. Build consumer personas and perform SWOT analysis tests to determine what calls to action, color schemes, and information your customers respond to.

    When you conduct market research, stay on the lookout for trends that work for your industry and specific audience. Though trends come and go, incorporating some of them into your marketing techniques will help you stay relevant and generate excitement. Additionally, you’ll want to study your competition’s marketing strategies to take stock of their strengths and weaknesses. You can adapt what they do well to meet your business needs and avoid their pitfalls. Comparative market analysis will help you stay on budget and stand out from the crowd.

    Outline Your Objectives

    Developing a marketing strategy requires goal-setting. You need to know what specific results you’re working towards and implement measurable KPIs to reach them. When creating or updating your marketing approach, select a few long-term goals and outline short-term objectives.

    Setting goals will help get your team on the same page and allow you to track your progress and adapt to unforeseen challenges. Actionable market plans increase brand awareness, generate leads, and boost revenue.

    Take SEO Strategies into Account

    You can’t overlook search engine optimization when creating and sharing content with your target audience. Including optimized keywords and generating backlinks to your website in other off-site articles boost your search engine rankings and allows you to share your credentials and expertise with a larger audience.

    SEO also helps you improve the customer experience. By adapting your content to reflect what your customers are looking for, you make it easier for them to find solutions to their problems.

    Conclusion

    You can improve the results generated from your company’s marketing strategy by incorporating user-generated content, conducting market research, and outlining your objectives. While it might seem like the marketing world is an ever-changing landscape, if you base your marketing techniques on your target audience’s needs and preferences, you’ll find success.

  • Dropbox Acquiring Boxcyptor Assets to Enable End-to-End Encryption

    Dropbox Acquiring Boxcyptor Assets to Enable End-to-End Encryption

    Dropbox has announced a deal to acquire assets from Boxcryptor in an effort to bring end-to-end encryption to its service.

    Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services, but it doesn’t have end-to-end encryption like Tresorit and other more security-conscious services. Dropbox is looking to change that by acquiring assets from Boxcryptor. Boxcryptor is an independent service that helps user encrypt their files across a range of cloud services, adding an extra layer of security.

    Dropbox announced the deal in a blog post:

    Today, we’re excited to share that we’ve signed an agreement to acquire several key assets from Boxcryptor, a provider of end-to-end “zero-knowledge” encryption for cloud storage services. The combination of Boxcryptor’s leading encryption capabilities and Dropbox’s easy-to-use product, with our already robust security features, will help us better meet our customers’ evolving needs.

    The only downside to Dropbox’s plans is that it seems Boxcryptor’s features will only be available to business users:

    We plan to embed Boxcryptor’s capabilities natively within Dropbox for our business users on our paid plans, adding an additional layer of security by encrypting files locally on their devices prior to syncing their content to Dropbox.

    Despite the limitation, Dropbox’s announcement is good news for security-minded customers.

  • Users Decry Adobe/Figma Deal; Fear Adobe Will Destroy Figma

    Users Decry Adobe/Figma Deal; Fear Adobe Will Destroy Figma

    Users are up in arms over Adobe’s plans to purchase design startup Figma, fearing the larger company will ruin the startup’s services.

    Figma has taken the design world by storm, providing web-based design tools that rival more traditional options, such as Adobe’s. The company’s offerings have even become popular within Microsoft, a long-time Adobe ally.

    In the wake of Adobe’s announcement that it is purchasing Figma for $20 billion, users are already worried the deal spells the end of what made Figma special.

    “Figma was a tool that gave designers superpowers. And part of the reason they did that is because they listened to what the community was asking them for,” Adam Glynn-Finnegan, a product-design lead at Netflix, told Business Insider. “I don’t think Adobe necessarily has that muscle.”

    Adobe has a long history of raising prices and charging near-exorbitant prices for its design software. This has helped contribute to the rise of open source options, as well as startups like Figma that offer comparable services at prices people can afford. Many are now concerned Adobe will take the startup’s services and raise the prices to be more inline with the rest of the larger company’s offerings.

    Adobe and Figma have tried to reassure users, saying the latter will remain an independent unit within Adobe. What’s more, Figma’s CEO, Dylan Field, will continue to run the unit and has said they “currently have no plan to change Figma’s pricing.”

    The reassurances are not resonating with users, especially freelancers and startups that can’t afford Adobe’s software.

    “Saying that people are freaking out too much comes from a place of privilege,” Mia Eltiste, a design researcher at the IBM spinoff Kyndryl, told Insider. “They can afford the subscription-based model, unlike freelancers or smaller companies, where income comes sporadically.”

    Only time will tell if designers’ fears are warranted, although Adobe’s history would suggest they are. There’s also the possibility that regulators will block the deal, especially given Adobe’s dominant position within the industry.

  • How to Start an Online Business Selling Digital Products

    How to Start an Online Business Selling Digital Products

    A digital product is a type of product that you can create, market, distribute, and sell digitally. This product only exists digitally, and you cannot touch it.

    Our lives are affected today by digital platforms and content taking over today. The demand for digital content keeps rising. For instance, the global digital content creation market size is expected to touch over $16 billion by 2025. This means a business that invests in digital products has a chance to thrive.

    There is a lot involved in making a hustle out of a digital product like eBooks, tickets, podcasts, manuals, or tutorials. It all begins by having the basic knowledge to run a successful online business. Here is a guide on starting an online business selling digital products.

    Register your Business

    The first step to starting an online business is registering it with the relevant authorities. You want to ensure your business is legitimate and recognized. You can register your business as an LLC and get the proper certification and copyright for your digital products.

    The cost of registering an LLC may vary depending on your state. For instance, in Delaware, it costs about $415. This cost includes a state filing fee, name reservation, and adding a registered agent. When you register your business as an LLC, you can reap the benefits of a partnership and a sole proprietorship.

    An LLC allows you to reduce personal liability to your business while gaining flexibility in operation and taxation. The process of registering an LLC is not that long compared to other types of business. You should also learn more about the benefits of an LLC for different types of business before deciding the best type of business to register.

    Define Your Image and Brand

    If you are selling digital products online, you will need a brand image that can sell your products and battle the stiff competition in the online market. Your brand is like an overall vibe of the business. It will need to be iconic enough in case you do expand enough to have more products or even a business delivery fleet.

    You want to ensure everything in your business, right from the business name to the design, conveys a consistent idea and visual image of your business.

    When working on your brand, you should focus on the logo, color scheme, page layout, typography, photos and graphics. These elements should work together in portraying your brand image out there.

    Build a Responsive Website

    A website is a must-have if you want to sell digital products. As soon as you’ve validated your business idea, you should proceed to build your website. A website is like your storefront for selling digital products.

    It is not that difficult to build a website nowadays. You can create your website in just hours without coding skills using any of the best website builders. You can also hire a website designer to design your website who will also help you choose the best host server that will keep you online round the clock.

    When designing a website to sell digital products like courses, written content, and podcasts, you should ensure it has all the required functionalities. Here is what you should do:

    • Incorporate forms so visitors can subscribe and join your list.
    • Build customized landing pages that can educate your audience to learn more about your products and services.
    • Design your website to accept payments so it is easy to sell online.
    • Optimize your website for mobile and make it responsive to most visitors who access your services using their smartphones and tablets.

    Build an Audience to Sell to

    For a physical store, this will sound like building a customer base. If you are selling digital products like a coding course, you want to first build an audience that needs your product. At this point, you want to make use of your greatest asset, the email list.

    Everyone on your email list is interested in your brand, which means they trust you. There is a high probability that they will buy from you if only you market your products and services. Add people to your email list and begin marketing your brand to them. Send emails with information on your products and services. This is called list building.

    You can give people freebies in exchange for their contact information. For instance, if you are selling a course, you can give a short coaching session to everyone that subscribes to your email list. Freebies can act as your lead magnet. It can attract leads to your business and help you grow your business.

    Optimize Your Website for Conversions

    You are already selling your digital products to your customers at this stage of the business. What remains is finding ways to increase your sales. If you want to increase your sales, you should optimize your site leveraging SEO to convert most visitors to customers.

    To optimize your website, you should look at the data on your site. What do the numbers say about your most trafficked pages? You should also identify the pages on your website that most people rarely visit, and once they do, they leave the page fast.

    You want to ensure you can hold your visitors for long so you can get the chance to convince them into buying your products and services. Focus on removing the things that don’t work on your site and improve those that work to optimize your website sales funnel.

    You should focus more on how you can sell your digital products on the website. Therefore, make it clear that your website aims to attract people willing and able to buy your products and services.

    Make sure you can send every visitor to your landing page, and you persuade them to buy. To achieve this, ensure you have a call to action on one very single page of your website. Go straight to the point and tell your visitors what you want them to do.

    You can then reward them accordingly for taking action you asked for.

    Final Thoughts                                     

    Suppose you are out to start a business selling digital products, now is the right time to start. Register your business and get a copyright for your products. Build a website, brand, and audience for your products and services.

    Start your business today by following the five steps listed here and turning your fantastic idea into an income-generating business.

  • Live Video Trends You Should Know

    Live Video Trends You Should Know

    Over the past few years, particularly since the COVID pandemic began in 2020, the use of live video has become something that is commonplace and integral to many facets of daily life. From business, to entertainment, to social interactions, and more, live video is no longer reserved for occasional use in lieu of physical interaction, but rather it has very much become the norm.

    Live Video Has Been on the Rise

    In fact, the growth of live video has become so rapid and widespread that global revenue is projected to reach beyond 180 billion dollars within the next few years. Of course, it’s easy to see how this speedy upward trajectory has evolved.

    Since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, remote interactions have skyrocketed. Where we once worked mainly in offices in a particular geographical location, and we once did most of our socializing in person, and we frequented theaters for new releases, now all of these things can and do happen from the comfort of our own homes or other remote locations.

    All of this new connectivity outside of larger, better equipped networks, such as those in place in a company’s headquarters, have given rise to an increase in connectivity issues and security vulnerabilities. Naturally, we’re seeing these problems with the use of live video as well.

    Live video is certainly not only used for business meetings. We’re using live video for marketing, brand engagement, gaming, B2B, webinars, healthcare, real estate, entertainment, social interactions, and more. Regardless of our intent and purpose, the problems we face are common among all uses.

    Live Video Issues

    The most common problems have to do with a variety of aspects such as bandwidth availability, internet connection, compatibility, encoding, privacy, and user interface. Having all of these things in place for every live video interaction is crucial to maintaining a quality live video experience.

    One of the main reasons why we’re experiencing the common challenges is that there are so many video platforms available, but the majority were developed prior to the pandemic, therefore their development didn’t intrinsically rise to the challenges which were relatively minimal at the time, but which have become quite pervasive three years into the sudden transition to remote.

    Although we’ve returned to the “old normal” in many ways, this trend of remote connection is not going anywhere and we must embrace every available technology to diminish the difficulties.

    Fortunately, there is a solution which needs to become as commonplace as live video itself. Single stream technology resolves all of the most common concerns surrounding every live video experience.

    Single stream technology takes data from any source, every live video stream, along with each participant, and merges them all together into a single interface, displaying a single live video feed. It can be used on any device and requires no infrastructure for clients or live video viewers.

    In Conclusion

    Single stream technology answers the challenges of bandwidth availability, complies with every new privacy law, smooths out any potential problem area for lagging or connectivity interruption, and ultimately produces a high quality live video every single time.

    The power of nimble live video
    Source: eyeson.com



  • DreamWorks Animation Plans to Open Source MoonRay Renderer

    DreamWorks Animation Plans to Open Source MoonRay Renderer

    Dreamworks Animation has announced its intentions to open source its MoonRay renderer.

    The MoonRay renderer has been used in a number of animated hits, including How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Croods: A New Age, The Bad Guys, and the upcoming Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. While MoonRay is currently proprietary software, DreamWorks plans to open source, making it available to everyone.

    “We are thrilled to share with the industry over 10 years of innovation and development on MoonRay’s vectorized, threaded, parallel, and distributed code base,” said Andrew Pearce, Vice President of Global Technology at DreamWorks. “The appetite for rendering at scale grows each year, and MoonRay is set to meet that need. We expect to see the code base grow stronger with community involvement as DreamWorks continues to demonstrate our commitment to open source.”

    The announcement is good news for the creative and open source community and will give animators of all skill levels access to an industrial-strength rendering platform.

  • Lyft Media Launches to Help Brands Engage With Travelers

    Lyft Media Launches to Help Brands Engage With Travelers

    Lyft — the popular ride-sharing service — has launched Lyft Media, a media and advertising platform.

    Lyft is one of the leading ride-sharing services and sees an opportunity to expand its own advertising business and help partner brands reach more consumers. As the pandemic wanes, people are traveling more, opening the door to increased opportunity.

    “Our vision is to build the world’s largest transportation media network, delivering value to advertisers while also elevating the platform experience for riders and drivers,” reads the company’s blog. “Over the past two years, we’ve been growing our media business and are excited to share more details about our products, new partnerships, and future plans.”

    The company’s plan revolve around four advertising channels: Lyft Halo, Lyft Tablet, Lyft Bikes, and Lyft Skins.

    Lyft Halo

    Lyft Halo consists of rooftop-mounted screens that can display digital advertising. The concept is built around Lyft’s 2019 acquisition of Halo Cars.

    Rather than generalized ads, Lyft Halo will display ads specifically tuned to the time of day and vehicle’s location, maximizing possible engagement. Brands will be able to track the performance of their ads, thanks to Lyfts attribution partners.

    Lyft Tablets

    Lyft Tablets are in-vehicle tablets that provide passengers with a way to monitor the progress of their journey, control the vehicle’s music, pay and tip the driver, and engage with partner branding.

    In the company’s pilot program, “1 in 4 engaged with the tablet during their ride, and 98% rated the experience as positive or neutral. And for drivers, tips increased by an average of 28% per ride while using the tablet in Q4 2021.”

    Lyft Bikes

    Lyft Bikes provide an easy way for customers to rent a bike rather than a traditional vehicle. Lyft is installing display panels at the bike stations, providing partners yet another way to engage with consumers.

    The company already has 3,000 stations, 45,000 bikes, and serves 36 million rides annually, providing a significant opportunity to advertisers.

    Lyft Skins

    Lyft Skins provides a way for brands to interact with consumers via the Lyft App itself. DoorDash, Starbucks, HBO Max, Marriott, and Google are just a few of the brands that have already benefited from this channel, and the company is bringing more companies and brands onboard.

    Lyft is clearly looking to capitalize on its position in the ride-sharing market to become a digital platform that provides value to consumers and brands alike.

  • Latest OBS Studio Beta Brings Apple Silicon Support

    Latest OBS Studio Beta Brings Apple Silicon Support

    The latest beta of OBS Studio has been released, and it brings native Apple Silicon support.

    OBS Studio is a popular multi-platform video recording and live streaming app. According to the company’s release notes, the latest beta brings native Apple Silicon support, so users won’t have to run the app via Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer.

    Here’s the release notes:

    • Native Apple Silicon Support (macOS)
      • Note that many third-party plugins will need to release Apple Silicon versions of their plugins in order for them to work on Apple Silicon builds of OBS

    The company includes the usual disclaimer about this version being beta software and not ready for production.

    This is a test build, not a full release. This build may contain bugs or broken functionality. For production usage, we still recommend using the latest stable build of OBS. If you are willing to test this build, please let us know if you run into any issues.

    Even with the warning, the update is good news for Apple users.

  • Three KPIs You Should Be Using To Measure Your Digital Campaigns’ Success

    Three KPIs You Should Be Using To Measure Your Digital Campaigns’ Success

    One of the trickiest aspects of digital marketing is measuring campaign success. You want to understand your return on investment (ROI), and you don’t want to just track vanity metrics. With all that in mind, tracking the right key performance indicators (KPIs) allows you to accurately measure success

    Does your boss want you to “raise brand awareness” with your upcoming digital campaign? That’s not a very specific goal. Instead, you could choose to measure how long visitors spend on your website after clicking on your ad. Are you supposed to “sell more product”? Instead, you could choose that you want to get 500 clicks on your call-to-action button and convert 2% of those clicks into purchases. 

    As you plan your digital campaigns, ask yourself: Am I measuring outcomes in a way that’s meaningful to my company’s bottom line? Are my measurements accurate? For example, you might know that your banner ad got 75 clicks. But if you don’t know how many clicks converted or how much you spent on each click, “75” doesn’t mean much. So, consider using the following key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your success. 

    Conversions

    The most obvious KPI is conversions. How many units did you sell? How many people signed up for your course? You can measure conversions a couple different ways. One is tracking when visitors become leads. An example would be when someone visits your website from an ad and then gives you their email address in exchange for a coupon code. You can also measure conversions from lead to customer. This, for example, is when someone from your email list purchases one of your products.

    These measurements can be tracked based on digital consumer behavior (like signing up for an email list). There are also opportunities to measure conversions from digital marketing campaigns in retail stores. For example, some grocery and drugstores use a product called Cooler Screens, which are smart screens built into the doors of the cooler sections. The screens have identity-blind sensors that track customer presence and interaction with the coolers. The ads on the screens change depending on the context (a hot day? A sale on name-brand sodas?). Using this kind of technology, digital marketers can match location, inventory, sales, and customer interaction to discover how ads impact buyer behavior. Similar technology will likely be used for many different industries in the near future, giving digital marketers even richer data. As you plan your digital campaigns, explore whether your industry offers unique placement opportunities that provide more point-of-sale conversion data.

    Conversion Rate

    It’s not enough to know how many conversions you have — you also need to know your conversion rate. This allows you to plan your digital marketing spend. 

    Here’s an example: You have $3,000 to spend on a Facebook ad, which you guesstimate will get your ad in front of about 2,100 people. Your ads typically have an 8% click rate. This particular ad leads to a landing page with a 6% conversion rate, based on your last campaign. Based on your revenue goals, you want to land 20 new customers and 10 returning customers from the ad. You do the math: 2100 ad views x .08 click rate x .06 conversion rate = 10 total customers. 

    Because this is far short of the 30 customers you need, you have a few options. You could try new creative on your landing page. You could tweak the target audiences for your ad. You could look at other past campaigns and see if you have better luck with YouTube pre-roll ads or Instagram story ads. Or, you could adjust your budget. 

    Because you understand conversion rate, you’re able to design a successful campaign based on what’s important to your bottom line. 

    Cost Per Customer

    Cost per customer is a vital measurement of digital marketing success. In the previous example, you adjusted your campaign based on conversion rates. Now, you want to look at how much each customer cost you. If you went with your original plan of spending $3000 and getting 10 customers, that means you’re spending $100 per customer. That might make sense if you’re selling a car or a college education, but not if you’re selling a $40 pair of sunglasses. 

    It’s important to have solid benchmarks to go with your cost per customer data. This allows you to discern whether you’re targeting people who would have bought your product anyway. Going back to the retail digital screens example, you can run A/B tests between stores. This can tell you if your ad makes a difference in sales. Or, if you’re running a seven-day banner ad, you can compare sales with the same seven days the previous year. That way, you have more context about the specific impact of your digital marketing.

    Other KPIs Can Also Help Reach Your Goals

    The KPIs listed above are generally considered lagging indicators, meaning they show how your campaign did. You can use them to guide your next campaign or make adjustments mid-campaign. Leading indicators (such as followers on social media) are used more for predicting the trajectory of a campaign or business goal. 

    There are many more KPIs and marketing performance metrics you could be tracking, but these three are a good starting point. Once you’ve run a campaign tracking these KPIs, you can make adjustments to design even better digital campaigns, each time around. 

  • Oracle Turns to AI to Automate Digital Marketing With Fusion Marketing

    Oracle Turns to AI to Automate Digital Marketing With Fusion Marketing

    In an industry first, Oracle is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help automate digital marketing.

    AI is revolutionizing a wide range of industries, but Oracle is applying it to digital marketing campaigns, with its newly announced Fusion Marketing platform. Unlike many lead generation systems, that merely raise brand awareness, Fusion Marketing is specifically designed to generate leads.

    Fusion Marketing uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically score leads at the account level, predict when consumers are ready to talk to a salesperson, and generate a qualified sales opportunity in any CRM system.

    Oracle hopes Fusion Marketing will address the disconnect many salespeople feel when using a CRM system, where siloed data often works against making a sale. Oracle’s new system is designed to address that and accelerate marketing campaigns by automating the lead generation process from end-to-end.

    “It is time for our industry to think differently about marketing and sales automation so that we can transform CRM into a system that actually works for both the marketer and the salesperson,” said Rob Tarkoff, executive vice president and general manager, Oracle Advertising and Customer Experience. “This is not about forecasts and rollups or a reporting tool to see how the sales force is performing, but instead about turning CRM into a system that helps sellers sell. A huge part of that change is bringing marketing and sales teams together and eliminating the low-value, time consuming tasks that distract from building customer relationships and closing deals. That’s why we have invested so much time engineering a system that will help marketers fully automate lead generation and qualification and get highly qualified leads to the sales team faster.”

    Oracle’s Fusion Marketing is just the beginning, as experts say AI will continue to transform digital marketing.

    “Machine learning algorithms are integral to digital marketing and that will only increase over time. The best digital marketers have embraced this fact, and have already shifted their focus towards more human-first activities. Machines are better at crunching numbers and making data-driven decisions. But they still need humans to decide what data to feed into those systems. This comes from understanding human behavior, a deep sense of empathy, and expert-level storytelling that are hard to replicate through AI.” – Dennis Consorte, Digital Marketing Expert and Expert at Digital.com, told WebProNews.

  • How You Can Create An Effective Digital PR Plan

    How You Can Create An Effective Digital PR Plan

    Once upon a time, it was enough to get any mention at all of your business in the media. With traditional PR, marketers were looking for mentions in relevant print publications, on television, radio, and anywhere else they could get coverage for their brand.

    While that’s still true today, with the advent of the internet, marketers need to add digital PR to their marketing mix.

    You need to know what’s being said about your brand online, but more than that, you need to be able to shape what’s said.

    Before you can do that, however, you need to have a plan.

    1) What are your objectives?

    Before you start creating any content, you need to decide on your objectives. You can’t meet your goals unless you know what they are.

    With digital PR, you might be aiming to build your brand recognition. You might want to build trust and be seen as an expert in your field. Or your ideal outcome might be lead generation.

    Whatever your objectives are, write them down. This will help to keep your plan on track. Every aspect of your plan should be targeted at achieving your objectives. If it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be in there.

    2) Know your audience

    As well as creating buyer personas and doing customer research, you’ll also need to use social listening. You can use your google calendar or one of your other calendars to set up a schedule to read social posts from your target audience. This must be something that you make yourself do consistently so it’s important to schedule this time. 

    Dig deep into who your customers are, their demographics, what they want, and what their pain points are. Without clear buyer personas, it’s hard to create the right content that will create the impression you want. And it’s nigh on impossible to reach your objectives.

    With social listening, you can not only see who your customers are, but you can listen, practically in real-time, to what they’re saying. You’ll find out about what they like and dislike about your brand, and what they think you should be doing. You’ll hear the negative with the positive, but it’s all good information.

    3) Understand your target media

    Just as you need to understand your audience, you need to understand where you’re posting content and what they want to see. You can’t ignore submission guidelines, the tone of the publication, and what sort of content they want.

    Do a deep dive into every website, podcast, and publication you want to reach, before you approach them.

    4) Create a plan for your PR

    Take what you’ve learned above and set out a plan for your digital PR. Work out when you’re going to target particular publications, how you’re going to approach them, and what you’re going to say.

    Create a content calendar for at least three months ahead so that you’re not starting every day wondering what you’re going to create.

    5) Create great content

    Go to town on your content and create value for the publications you’re targeting. Of course, it’s about you to an extent, but it’s also about what they want and what their audience wants. You can start a webinar series that is followed up with great blog content that journalists can source. This will increase your chances of getting PR pickup when you pitch writers. 

    The idea is to create a long-term relationship where you are known for providing expertise and value.

    6) Measure your results

    Keep returning to your objectives and set KPIs to ensure you’re doing what you set out to do. Don’t get off track and keep measuring and ensuring success.

    Finally, keep building on your success. Digital PR isn’t a one-and-done effort. You’ll spend a lot of time building your reputation and your brand.

    But all that effort will be worth it when your name’s in lights and your online reputation is rock solid.

  • Microsoft Advertising Can Now Import Facebook Ads

    Microsoft Advertising Can Now Import Facebook Ads

    Microsoft has announced its Advertising platform can now import Facebook Ads.

    Many companies live or die by their online advertising. Especially in the wake of the pandemic, many small businesses have increasingly shifted to online sales, making their advertising more important than ever.

    For companies looking to expand their advertising reach, recreating a successful campaign on another platform can be a time-consuming proposition. Microsoft is hoping to make it easier, releasing Facebook Import to help companies import their Facebook ad campaigns into the Microsoft Audience Network.

    Are you new to audience campaigns, or looking to expand your existing presence on the Microsoft Audience Network? Using Facebook Import, it’s now easier than ever to get audience campaigns up and running by importing from Facebook Ads. Now rolling out to all advertisers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France and Germany, this new feature is designed to save you time and maximize ROI by seamlessly bringing over your campaigns from the Facebook Audience Network into the Microsoft Audience Network. Facebook Import can be used as a standalone tool, as well as a powerful complement to any existing Google Import strategy.

    The new feature can be accessed via the Import menu in the Microsoft Advertising dashboard.

  • We Are a Marketplace That Sells Demand Generation, Says Grubhub CEO

    We Are a Marketplace That Sells Demand Generation, Says Grubhub CEO

    “We are a marketplace that sells demand generation,” says Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney. “We sell growth. That’s what our primary product is. We’re not a logistics company. We do logistics because we know that’s an end to get to restaurant growth and make money off our logistics. The gross margins on the logistics are not fabulous. The gross margins on the demand generation are fabulous which is why I differentiate between a logistics company and demand gen company. If you’re selling consumers, you’re selling growth, and you can charge a lot for that.”

    Matt Maloney, CEO of Grubhub, discusses with Jim Cramer on CNBC how Grubhub is in the business of driving growth for restaurants and is not just a logistics company:

    The American Public Has Just Adopted Digital Ordering

    This is our fifth anniversary of our IPO. The market now is ten times what I thought it was five years ago. It’s because the American public has just adopted digital ordering as their preferred way to engage with their local restaurants. We are not just marketing to Millennials. We are marketing on national television across all channels, all time zones, and hitting all segments. We just see that people realize that digitally ordering on their app or on their desktop is just easier.

    Of course, our ad campaign is working. I wouldn’t have it on TV if it wasn’t working. You think about it this way. You know your LTV, your lifetime value of your customer, once they start ordering we know that they’re lifers. They’re on forever. We can make that revenue model and then we know how much it cost to put the ad on there. So yes, over time, as people see the ad, more and more it becomes less and less effective. But we’re nowhere near our LTV.

    https://youtu.be/qpyVP-JhToc
    Grubhub National TV Commercial

    I have always been willing to be extremely aggressive investing in the future. Historically, I was bound by the amount of money I could invest. The reception of these communications just weren’t hitting the public and they weren’t working as well. Then around the third quarter of last year, we saw that we could spend way more than we had historically. I’m just talking about effectiveness. Spending it effectively. We came to the street on our third quarter earnings call and said we see opportunity and we are going long in the fourth quarter.

    Yum Made $200 million Investment – They Believe in Our Story

    People are going to say where’s the beef, the old Wendy’s commercial. They’re like show me the money. (We don’t have Wendy’s) but everyone talks to everyone in this industry. I think over time exclusivity is just not going to happen. (We have Yum) and Yum is the biggest restaurateur in the world. YUM is an incredible brand which includes Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut. They are very forward-thinking. They invest in technology a lot and they wanted to make a fundamental partnership and we wanted to understand what the brands needed from a partner.

    Yum made a $200 million investment because they believe in our story. We didn’t need the investment because we have a very healthy balance sheet. What it did it was really bringing the support of the young brand and the franchisees into Grub. As a tight partnership, we’re able to execute on technology and growth for them in a way that nobody else in the industry is doing right now. I totally disagree (that we aren’t making money from this partnership).

    We Are a Marketplace That Sells Demand Generation

    We are a marketplace that sells demand generation. We sell growth. That’s what our primary product is. We’re not a logistics company. We do logistics because we know that’s an end to get to restaurant growth and make money off our logistics. The gross margins on the logistics are not fabulous. The gross margins on the demand generation are fabulous which is why I differentiate between a logistics company and demand gen company.

    If you’re selling consumers, you’re selling growth and you can charge a lot for that. That’s the profitable side. Everyone else in my industry is a logistics company which has razor thin margins. One of my competitors said they’re the next FedEx. Do you really want to be the next FedEx? There’s the multiple that we can get as marketplaces and there’s the multiple that logistics companies can get.

    Everyone Would Prefer to Order Digitally

    I think that everyone in the country would prefer to order digitally than order on the phone. That’s why we acquired Tapingo. It’s an incredible acquisition because it gives us further scale on campuses. Tapingo is a pickup focused product. So here’s what you need to think about. We sell growth, we sell orders. I don’t care if that’s a pickup order, a delivery order, a self-delivery order, or a catering order.

    Everyone else in my industry only does delivery facilitated by that platform. Because we partner with the restaurants (which means) the restaurants are subsidizing part of our transaction fee, we are always cheaper. That’s what people don’t understand. There’s a lot of bait and switch pricing going on (from competitors).

    We Are a Marketplace That Sells Demand Generation, Says Grubhub CEO


  • It’s “Game On” for Buffalo Wild Wings New Brand Architecture, Says CMO

    It’s “Game On” for Buffalo Wild Wings New Brand Architecture, Says CMO

    “When I think of brand architecture it really gets to the essence of the brand,” says Buffalo Wild Wings CMO Seth Freeman. “The essence of the brand is around this idea of camaraderie and ritual and something that we like to call “game on.” It’s our ability to make sure that when folks come in to experience Buffalo Wild Wings that we have a game on mentality and that we bring them the very best of who we are.”

    Seth Freeman, Chief Marketing Officer of Buffalo Wild Wings, was recently interviewed on Adweek’s CMO Moves podcast with Nadine Dietz. Freeman discussed their new “game on” brand architecture that defines not just their new marketing strategy but really the heart of the business. “The purpose ultimately is really about inspiring legendary experiences between friends,” noted Freeman:

    Turning Good Times With Friends Into Great Times With Brothers

    When I think of brand architecture it really gets to the essence of the brand. There are three components to it in the way we framed it up.  They are the promise, the essence, and the purpose. We identified an insight out there that guys want to turn good times with friends into great times with brothers. More accurately, legendary experiences with brothers. That was the cultural insight that really framed our brand architecture.

    When we think about our purpose we defined our promise as the great American sports bar that turned game time into stories worth telling. It wasn’t just about inviting folks to watch a game. It was about translating that into an experience worth telling. That’s what folks are really looking for. That’s the promise that we deliver on every single day. That’s why we get up. That’s why folks are going out there and doing the job that they do and delivering a great experience.

    It’s “Game On” for Buffalo Wild Wings

    Our purpose ultimately is really about inspiring legendary experiences between friends. The essence of the brand is around this idea of camaraderie and ritual and something that we like to call “game on.” It’s our ability to make sure that when folks come in to experience Buffalo Wild Wings that we have a game on mentality and that we bring them the very best of who we are. We have 80,000 folks out there working across Buffalo Wild Wings and they bring it every single day.

    https://youtu.be/AkGZHYM-D90
    It’s Game Time at Buffalo Wild Wings!

    As we were talking to consumers, one of the things we learned was that some of the most impactful experiences that they talked about was with the bartenders and servers. They are influencing whether or not those folks come back. For instance, one of the most memorable experiences they talked about was the bartender remembering them when they came back.

    That is our brand architecture, but it also lends itself to things we have done in rolling out this purpose to the broader community through our Brand Champ Initiative. That really is a cultural movement that we are employing across our franchises and corporate stores. We have over 1,200 locations where folks are trained to make sure that the brand architecture is translating to a way that is meaningful to the consumers and also meaningful to the folks that are on the front lines every single day.

    It’s “Game On” for Buffalo Wild Wings New Brand Architecture


  • Verizon Updates BlueJeans to Support Remote Learning

    Verizon Updates BlueJeans to Support Remote Learning

    Verizon has announced an update to BlueJeans, one that brings support for remote learning.

    BlueJeans is the Zoom competitor that Verizon bought in April 2020, at the outset of the pandemic. The company has since been integrating the platform in its various services, striking deals for other companies to support it and expanding its support for other industries, such as Telehealth.

    In the latest update, Verizon is adding Remote Learning to BlueJeans’ capabilities.

    “Teachers are telling us they’re lost, and they’re struggling to keep students engaged in today’s live virtual setting,” said Amy Jefferson, Head of Americas Revenue and Growth, BlueJeans by Verizon. “Having to spend time playing administrator and technical support expert is minimizing their ability to think through compelling, interactive ways to deliver the curriculum virtually. By bringing together our comprehensive education, collaboration and training features into one consolidated experience, we’re making it easy for teachers to operationalize their learning environment so they can go back to focusing on what matters most—educating students.”

    The new Teacher Dashboard is designed to provide an instructor with the various classroom management tools they need. Remote Learning features include student rosters, customizable layouts, flexible views, floating chats and teaching apps.

    Teachers and organizations can learn more at https://www.bluejeans.com/use-cases/education.

  • You Can’t Find A 24-Year-Old On Facebook Today

    You Can’t Find A 24-Year-Old On Facebook Today

    “You‌ ‌can’t‌ ‌find‌ ‌a‌ ‌24-year-old‌ ‌on‌ ‌Facebook‌ ‌today,” says social media marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk. ‌”Every‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌them‌ ‌was‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌platform‌ ‌eight‌ ‌years‌ ‌ago.‌ ‌So‌ ‌it‌ ‌ebbs‌ ‌and‌ ‌flows‌ ‌and‌ ‌as‌ TikTok‌ ‌gets‌ ‌older‌ ‌an‌ ‌audience‌ ‌can‌ ‌emerge.‌ ‌I’ve‌ ‌been‌ ‌putting‌ ‌out‌ ‌business‌ ‌content‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌platform‌ ‌from‌ ‌day‌ ‌one,‌ ‌it skews ‌entrepreneurial,‌ ‌which‌ ‌may‌ ‌work‌ ‌in‌ ‌teenage‌ ‌and‌ ‌early‌ ‌20s.”

    Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vayner Media, social media star and entrepreneurial guru followed by millions, says you can’t even find a 24-year-old‌ ‌on‌ ‌Facebook‌ ‌today:

    I Don’t Believe TikTok Is A National Security Threat

    The‌ ‌pitch‌ ‌started‌ ‌before‌ ‌all‌ ‌the‌ ‌brouhaha‌ ‌started.‌ ‌We‌ ‌were‌ ‌awarded‌ ‌the‌ ‌business‌ ‌(with TikTok) during‌ ‌this‌ ‌time‌. ‌Obviously,‌ ‌like‌ ‌every‌ ‌other‌ ‌American‌ ‌business‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌world, we‌ ‌will‌ ‌deal‌ ‌with‌ ‌whatever‌ ‌the‌ ‌rules‌ ‌are.‌ ‌Like‌ ‌everybody‌ ‌else,‌ ‌we’re‌ ‌standing‌ ‌by.‌ Personally‌, ‌I‌ ‌don’t‌ (consider TikTok‌ a national security threat). ‌But‌ ‌maybe‌ ‌I’m‌ ‌not‌ ‌sitting‌ ‌on‌ ‌information‌ ‌that‌ ‌others‌ ‌are.‌ ‌But‌ ‌no‌, ‌I‌ ‌do‌ ‌not.‌

    ‌Our‌ ‌small‌ ‌scope‌ ‌with‌ ‌TikTok‌‌ ‌at‌ ‌the‌ ‌Vayner‌ ‌Media‌ ‌level‌ ‌doesn’t‌ ‌really‌ ‌impact‌ ‌what‌ ‌I’m‌ ‌interested‌ ‌in‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌scheme‌ ‌of‌ ‌business.‌ ‌Facebook,‌ ‌Inc.‌, ‌Pinterest‌, and‌ ‌Linkedin‌ ‌all‌ ‌our‌ ‌platforms‌ ‌that‌ ‌all‌ ‌of‌ ‌our‌ ‌brands‌ ‌work‌ ‌on.‌ ‌I’m‌ ‌not‌ ‌overly‌ ‌emotional‌ ‌or‌ ‌I ‌have‌ ‌no‌ ‌feelings‌. ‌I ‌could‌ ‌care‌ ‌less‌ ‌if ‌Facebook‌, ‌Snapchat‌, ‌Linkedin,‌ ‌CNBC, ‌the‌ ‌New‌ ‌York‌ ‌Times‌ ‌disappeared‌ ‌off‌ ‌the‌ ‌face‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌Earth.‌ ‌I’m‌ ‌focusing‌ ‌on‌ ‌attention‌ ‌and‌ ‌that’s‌ ‌what‌ ‌our‌ ‌clients‌ ‌are‌ ‌focusing‌ ‌on.‌ ‌Where‌ ‌is‌ ‌the‌ ‌actual‌ ‌attention‌ ‌and‌ ‌how‌ ‌do‌ ‌we‌ ‌advertise‌ ‌on‌ ‌that‌ ‌platform?‌ ‌

    Every Influencer Needs To Be On Every Platform

    As‌ ‌far‌ ‌as‌ ‌the‌ ‌influencers,‌ ‌every‌ ‌influencer‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌‌ ‌world‌ ‌needs‌ ‌to‌ ‌divest‌ ‌and‌ ‌be‌ ‌in‌ ‌every‌ ‌single‌ ‌platform‌ ‌and‌ ‌create‌ ‌contextual‌ ‌content‌ ‌on‌ ‌each‌ ‌of‌ ‌those‌ ‌platforms.‌ Whether‌ ‌it’s‌ ‌a‌ ‌government‌ ‌getting‌ ‌involved‌ ‌and‌ ‌shutting‌ ‌it‌ ‌down‌ ‌or‌ ‌if‌ ‌it’s‌ ‌the‌ ‌consumers‌ ‌shifting‌ ‌if‌ ‌you‌ ‌put‌ ‌all‌ ‌your‌ ‌eggs‌ ‌into‌ ‌MySpace‌ ‌you’re‌ ‌not‌ ‌doing‌ ‌so‌ ‌well‌ ‌today.‌ ‌So‌ ‌something‌ ‌I’ve‌ ‌been‌ ‌screaming‌ ‌about‌ ‌in‌ ‌my‌ ‌content‌ ‌for‌ ‌a‌ ‌decade‌ ‌is‌ ‌if‌ ‌you’re‌ ‌not‌ ‌creating‌ ‌content‌ ‌across‌ ‌the‌ ‌board‌ ‌you’re‌ ‌losing‌. ‌It’s‌ ‌something‌ ‌that‌ ‌brands‌ ‌need‌ ‌to‌ ‌be‌ ‌doing.‌ ‌

    Way‌ ‌too‌ ‌many‌ ‌are‌ ‌pot-committed‌ ‌to‌ ‌commercials‌ ‌on‌ ‌a‌ ‌TV ‌network‌ ‌when‌ ‌all‌ ‌the‌ ‌attention‌ ‌is‌ ‌shifting‌ ‌to‌ ‌your mobile device. ‌

    You Can’t Find A 24-Year-Old On Facebook Today

    What’s‌ ‌funny‌ ‌is‌ ‌if‌ ‌you‌ ‌look‌ ‌at‌ ‌what’s‌ ‌happening‌ ‌on‌ ‌TikTok‌, ‌‌we’re‌ ‌getting‌ ‌our‌ ‌advertisers‌ ‌that‌ ‌are‌ ‌trying‌ ‌to‌ ‌reach‌ ‌35‌ ‌to‌ ‌45‌ ‌going‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌platform‌ ‌pretty‌ ‌aggressively‌ ‌because‌ ‌every‌ ‌platform‌ ‌gets‌ ‌much‌ ‌older.‌ ‌Don’t‌ ‌deviate‌ ‌from‌ ‌what‌ ‌you‌ ‌know.‌ ‌If‌ ‌you‌ ‌and‌ ‌I ‌dance‌ ‌on‌ ‌that‌ ‌platform‌ ‌I ‌don’t‌ ‌think‌ ‌we’re‌ ‌getting‌ ‌that‌ ‌many‌ ‌views.‌ ‌You‌ ‌need‌ ‌to‌ ‌stay‌ ‌in‌ ‌your‌ ‌pocket‌ ‌and‌ ‌create‌ ‌the‌ ‌content‌ ‌‌and‌ ‌let‌ ‌platforms‌ ‌evolve.‌ ‌

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B_d-65RFQNd/

    You‌ ‌can’t‌ ‌find‌ ‌a‌ ‌24-year-old‌ ‌on‌ ‌Facebook‌ ‌today.‌ ‌Every‌ ‌one‌ ‌of‌ ‌them‌ ‌was‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌platform‌ ‌eight‌ ‌years‌ ‌ago.‌ ‌So‌ ‌it‌ ‌ebbs‌ ‌and‌ ‌flows‌ ‌and‌ ‌as‌ TikTok‌ ‌gets‌ ‌older‌ ‌an‌ ‌audience‌ ‌can‌ ‌emerge.‌ ‌I’ve‌ ‌been‌ ‌putting‌ ‌out‌ ‌business‌ ‌content‌ ‌on‌ ‌the‌ ‌platform‌ ‌from‌ ‌day‌ ‌one,‌ ‌it skews ‌entrepreneurial,‌ ‌which‌ ‌may‌ ‌work‌ ‌in‌ ‌teenage‌ ‌and‌ ‌early‌ ‌20s.‌ ‌CNBC‌ ‌and‌ ‌‌your‌ ‌incredible‌ ‌show‌ ‌could‌ ‌dominate‌ ‌on‌ ‌TikTok‌‌ ‌if‌ ‌you‌ ‌put‌ ‌out‌ ‌information‌ ‌and‌ ‌just‌ ‌had‌ ‌the‌ ‌nuances‌ ‌of‌ ‌TikTok‌ ‌more‌ ‌than‌ ‌trying‌ ‌to‌ ‌become‌ ‌Charlie Demilio.