Branding used to be a high-level exercise bigger companies went through as part of their strategic marketing processes. You get an agency, brainstorm cute pictures, logos, and tag lines, come up with the visual guidelines, and move on. Every now and then you refer back to those branding guidelines that tell you the correct position for your logo and the approved color scheme. Fast forward to today. You’re not doing passive marketing anymore, you’re actively seeking out, enticing, educating, and engaging your audience. You are creating content. Where is your brand now? It Starts With the Brand. MORE >>

What does it take to put together a successful email campaign? It all sounds pretty simple when you think of it. Segment your list, create the email, send it out, evaluate results, repeat. Right? Well, not so fast. ve now spoken to small business owners and startup founders and they have the same initial feeling that it should just work. But, when it comes time to actually execute, something is missing. Although “email marketing” is the name of the game, there are actually many pieces you have to put into play and organize in order to make the most of it. Anatomy of an Email Marketing Campaign. MORE >>

HubSpot does it again, taking content that is not necessarily new or revolutionary and putting it in a nicely formatted eBook that makes reading it a pleasure. With “ An Introduction to Inbound Marketing Analytics “, you get an overview of what to measure and why. Especially useful for small companies and those who are just starting out with their marketing programs and need some help identifying key metrics, the eBook is packed with good advice. Inbound Marketing Analytics Overview. In the eBook you will see metrics for the following marketing tactics: Social Media. Paid Search. MORE >>

Although the level of marketing spend doesn’t usually correlate to marketing effectiveness, it is useful to know how others in your industry or other companies of similar size are spending their money on marketing. Forrester Research has recently released a study, “ Benchmark Your Interactive Marketing Maturity “, that aims to give you some metrics to figure out whether you are putting your money on the right marketing tactics. Five Benchmarks. Size of interactive marketing teams : unless you have people dedicated to interactive marketing, not much will get accomplished. MORE >>

A recent report from On24, “Webcast Benchmarks and Best Practices for Lead Generation“, has some interesting numbers when it comes to how webinars are being used and their effectiveness at lead generation MORE >>