Finding new tactics to grow your business is tough.

It’s especially difficult when your competitors are trying the exact same things.

But you need to differentiate yourself.

The same old marketing tactics won’t help you stand out.

One of the best ways to attract potential customers is to use new platforms.

That’s where live video comes into play.

Live video is slowly but surely becoming the future of online video marketing.

It’s no secret that videos, in general, generate tons of traffic, views, and engagement.

People are now watching billions of hours of video daily on platforms like Facebook and YouTube. While pre-recorded video still dominates the space, live video is catching up.

In fact, people spend more time watching live videos than pre-recorded videos.

You can’t risk waiting any longer to start using live video.

Thankfully, there are a few brands that are already leading the way with live video marketing.

Here’s why you need live video and how you can use it to dominate the competition. [click to continue …]

Virtual reality isn’t just for The Matrix anymore.

In fact, it’s taken a pretty prominent place in the real world over the past five years.

Products and services dedicated to the use of virtual reality (VR) have already been developed and are being used daily.

You can find it in video games, movies, and more.

For example, the VR game Pokémon Go took the world by storm when it was released to the mobile-gaming market in July of 2016.

And companies like Samsung have created VR-gaming headsets you can instantly connect to your phone.

Step into any technology store, and you can probably catch a glimpse of virtual reality taking shape.

This explosion in growth for VR is good news for marketers.

New marketing platforms and tactics don’t come around often.

But when they do, you need to be one of the first companies to jump on board if you want to succeed.

How do you take advantage of this new, growing platform?

What is VR, really? And how on Earth does it apply to the future of marketing?

Today we’re going to dive into just that.

Here’s how VR will impact the future of marketing and why you should care.

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Good landing pages are the lifeblood of any digital marketing campaign.

Without them, visitors don’t know what to do next.

Where can they buy? Where do they find the product from the ad they just clicked?

Simply driving traffic to your homepage from search engine optimization, paid search, or lead magnets won’t work.

That makes landing pages key for conversions.

But they can also take hours to build — especially when you want to create multiple landing pages for a specific keyword or for different campaigns.

This can take serious time to coordinate and perfect.

And building them by HTML or on WordPress is a pretty big pain.

Trust me. I’ve done it before.

So what do you do?

You need landing pages, but you can’t afford to spend your precious time creating them for campaigns that are about to go live.

Thankfully, there are lots of useful tools out there to help you create beautiful landing pages in a fraction of the time.

Instead of spending weeks creating pages, use a tool to simplify the process.

You can even A/B test within these tools.

The features are nearly limitless and they can have a positive impact on your efficiency.

Here are four of my favorite landing-page creation tools that can save you hours and drive conversions through the roof.

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Like everything in life, learning from the people who have gone before us can be a great way to get ahead.

No startup survives on sheer luck. Rather, entrepreneurs are guided by knowledgeable advice from people who’ve been there and done that.

Taking a page from your “elders” can have the power to make or break your business.

Much like a successful or unsuccessful marketing campaign.

Every business survives or fails based on how well it markets its product.

This means that learning effective marketing tactics from entrepreneurial powerhouses should be a top priority.

These are people who used to be exactly where you are.

Did you know, for example, that Apple was started by Steve Jobs in this garage?

And Apple isn’t the only big business with humble beginnings.

Amazon, Google, and Disney also started small. And now, all four are listed in the world’s top 13 most-valuable businesses.

This means two things for your startup.

First, it’s possible to achieve the same level of success that these brands have.

And second, it means that these brands, in a very real sense, have gone through exactly what you’re going through.

So they probably have a lot of advice to offer your growing business.

But what advice is that?

Here are 12 marketing lessons from brands that have gone through your exact experiences and have lived to tell about it. [click to continue …]

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 …]