Research Finds Data Standards for Marketing Are a Must, But Few Brands Have Them

Any fully open system of digital communication will corrode over time. Bad messages will crowd out the good ones. The new normal: Someone finds a database of every residential property, then another of cell phones. An AI is trained to call every homeowner, every day, asking if they’re thinking of selling their home. Millions of…

If you’re a marketer, you cannot ignore meme culture. No, I’m not talking about making tone-deaf corporate memes that shout “How do you do, fellow kids?” I’m talking about real, organic viral trends. They might seem silly on the surface but– when timed right– jumping on the right meme can mean marketing magic. Case in…

A colleague got an angry note. It concluded with, “you should know better.” The transgression? The sender was offended that my friend had written a post about a concept she’s been developing for nearly a decade. Of course, no idea is unique, and the posted idea sort of rhymed with one that the professor had…

In action movies, there’s a lot of leaping. Brave shifts in which the hero gets from here to there, all at once. It’s easy to imagine that sudden leaps are how we make our impact. This is blog post #9000 (give or take). When did the leap happen? It wasn’t an external leap. The first…

Pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing can feel like a daunting task. From creating ads to monitoring performance and understanding bidding strategies, there’s a lot to take in. But PPC keyword research is an often under-appreciated, yet necessary, component of search engine marketing. With proper keyword research, you can more accurately build ads and landing pages that…

Deciding to fix a big dent in a car isn’t perplexing. It’s an easy choice. There’s a huge dent, get it fixed. It’s the little dents that are a dilemma. But not fixing little dents means that pretty soon, we’re driving a car that we’re not happy with. Either that, or we define happiness as,…