Marketing is important to your business.

Just call me Captain Obvious.

But as customers evolve, so does the unpredictable marketing landscape.

This means you’re likely spending more and more time trying to keep up with the latest tips and trends.

And that’s wasting your precious time that you could use for other tasks.

But what if there was a way to simplify? Or automate?

And I’m not just talking about emails.

Keeping up with what you should be measuring or targeting can be exhausting, difficult, and time-consuming.

But marketing automation tools make your job a little more painless, so you and your team can focus your time and attention on other efforts that drive revenue.

Luckily for you, I’ve compiled a list of the best marketing automation tools with countless features and automated workflows that will make marketing less of a headache.

Here are 23 tools (in no particular order) that you should try out if you’re looking for new, easy ways to streamline marketing functions. [click to continue …]

Viral content is the sometimes-elusive white whale that everyone wants, but that can be very hard to get.

But that doesn’t mean we aren’t trying.

Large companies have entire teams dedicated to creating a viral buzz.

This means that it’s probably unlikely that your small business can fully compete.

Which is why promoting content is often thrown on the backburner. You’re busy doing ten other things to grow your business.

But you need that consistent, viral traffic that will drive insane growth for your business.

If you stick to the same old channels, you risk locking yourself into the same growth pattern that you have now.

But, thankfully, there are ways around that.

Influencers are one of the best ways to drive the sales of a product or service.

They work just like a personal recommendation would, by providing the power of an industry expert who has a loyal following primed and ready to listen to their suggestions.

This makes them a great way to drive fast sales from relevant traffic sources.

And that’s why influencers are one of my favorite ways to grow a business.

This doesn’t mean paying Kim Kardashian to post about your SaaS product, though.

Keep your focus on relevant, accessible influencers who can bring value and growth to your brand.

Here’s how you can grow a team of influencers for your company (and why you need them).

[click to continue …]

1,500 words.

That was Jack London’s target word count for each and every day. You’ve likely heard of many successful authors who set similar goals for themselves.

For them, it’s not about a meaningless outpouring of information onto a page. By sticking to their goals, these authors keep their skills sharp and remain committed to their task.

I’d argue that the same is true for marketers.

Sure, your website is optimized for search with relevant keywords.

Yes, you have a team of writers creating content for you on a regular basis.

And, of course, your email campaigns and responses are fully automated.

But is that enough? Probably not.

If you want to grow your business — and fast — you need to reach more prospects. Every. Single. Day.

You are responsible for the heavy lifting.

This means that you need to work on reaching more prospects each day. You can even use the example of those famous authors.

They carve out a specific time each day and dedicate it solely to their work. Much like what you need to do with your own schedule.

Now, this won’t be easy. It will require a strategic “attack” that will target prospects across all channels.

Prospects are expecting genuine, well-thought-out engagements.

You’ll need dedicated time for this.

So, set aside 90 minutes every morning to:

1. Find prospects
2. Reach those prospects across a variety of channels
3. Nurture your prospects

The end goal: to do this regularly enough that your top-of-mind presence and valuable interactions convince them to convert.

Keep in mind that reaching prospects isn’t about making a sale. This is about building relationships.

You have 90 minutes. Are you ready to make them count?

Then let’s take a look at the seven ways to reach more prospects every day. [click to continue …]

Every inbound marketing resource recommends that you develop buyer personas for your target audience.

A buyer persona is a representation of your target customer’s preferences and behavior as they shop and interact with your online business.

Personas help with content creation, product building, and service packaging.

In a NetProspex case study, their personas resulted in:

• 900% increase in the length of visit
• 171% increase in marketing-generated revenue
• 111% increase in email open-rate
• 100% increase in the number of pages visited

Because the Internet has become more accessible, the process of reinforcing personas has become easier.

A process that would take months to complete now only takes a few days or weeks. [click to continue …]

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “What do you spend your marketing budget on?”

It’s kind of a boring question, right?

Who wants to talk about marketing budgets when we could be talking about exciting stuff like chatbots or growth hacks?

As it turns out, how you spend your marketing budget is actually pretty important.

It’s like taxes. It’s not fun to discuss, but you absolutely need to. And it can make all the difference.

And just like you can lose tons of money if you don’t pay attention to your taxes, you can bleed money if you’re spending your marketing budget in all the wrong places.

I’ve talked with hundreds of marketers who use too much software or spend tons of money buying fake social media followers.

They don’t make nearly as much money as they could because they’re throwing it away on useless stuff.

Take it from me. I’ve wasted millions of dollars over the course of my career.

Now, I’m good with budgeting, but I had to learn the hard way.

Let me give you some insight into how marketing experts are spending. Hopefully, this information will help you budget better and prevent you from flushing money down the toilet. [click to continue …]