By JUNTAE DELANE for digitalbrandinginstitute.com Today marketers face many challenges within the digital marketing space. From working with bootstrapped budgets to creating buy-in with senior managers, the modern-day marketer must find creative ways to balance resources. To be successful, marketers must overcome challenges and  juggle many responsibilities within their departments. Here are the top 5 problems marketers face today and how they solve these problems within their organizations. 1. Providing ROI If you’re a small business, local organization, or Fortune 500 company, your marketing efforts must be measured. At the end of the day, campaign tracking is critical. Not only is tracking a necessary business practice, but it also provides more weight when negotiating a marketing budget increase. The best advice I can give marketers is to track everything. Even if it is not required. This is critical because one day you will be asked to provide more insight on a metric you previously weren’t expected to track.…

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One of the most talked about topics among CPA firms as it relates to marketing is “How much should we be spending?” National studies on CPA firm spending indicate that the range of spending for most CPA firms is somewhere between 2-3% of gross revenue. The latest Association of Accounting Marketing Study on CPA firm marketing budgets (conducted by Hinge), indicates the fastest organically growing CPA firms spend less on marketing than slower growing firms.[1] While it seems counter-intuitive that low-growth firms are spending more, there are a number of factors that upon deeper consideration likely explain the finding. Here are four likely reasons: 1. High-growth firms know how to get a better return on their investment. What dynamics are involved in getting a return on investment on marketing budget? Certainly the quality of the activities is important, but two other elements that carry more weight are having a solid…

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For a while now there has been some debate over how to use LinkedIn. Some suggest connecting with only people you know and work with, while others encourage inviting people to your network. The same way you would with Twitter, in other words, adding anyone and everyone. It doesn’t matter if I am delivering a key-note, conducting a workshop or presenting a webinar, a question that seems to always be asked is: “When building my LinkedIn network, is quality better than quantity?” But first lets look at some LinkedIn facts that show the quantity piece. Some cool Linkedin facts. The LinkedIn facts The global web produces some big numbers and the Linkedin facts are hard to ignore. Here is a snapshot of an infographic created by Linkedprofilewriter.org, that reveals some of those Linkedin stats. Over 300 million people are on LinkedIn.  In fact at the time of publishing this post there…

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We need our mojo–our magic, our very best energy–to run our business, to lead our teams, to talk to our clients, and to be the best leader we know we can be. Our mojo is our source of confidence–the thing that lets us know we can be successful. When we question ourselves, when we doubt ourselves, it helps us do the things we need to do to achieve, succeed and have impact. But a setback or crisis can leave your mojo shattered just when you need it the most. So how can you go about restoring it? Here are six simple options: 1. Start with one small win. When you let yourself think you’ll never be able to win again, you’re setting yourself up for the very failure you fear. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re trying to reverse your mindset, so try focusing on doing small things well.…

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Sales is a people business, but that doesn’t mean that tools can’t help you work more efficiently. Data, automation and integrations can make your work easier, your customers happier and your business more profitable. If you haven’t already embraced the flood of great software in the sales market, it’s time to start. Here are some of the best tools out there for modern sales reps. Clearbit Connect Clearbit’s Gmail extension is already used by more than 40,000 people. It sits on top of your Gmail to enrich each of your contacts with contextual information about where they work, their role, the company size, fundraising updates and much more. That alone is worth the free install, but there’s more to it. You can use Connect to find email addresses from people within a company and search for people by job title. This is the easiest tool we’ve ever used to find…

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There are habits that make us successful and there are habits that sabotage our success. PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images When the success we want remains out of reach, it’s natural human nature to want toblame something. The opportunity wasn’t right. The timing was bad. Someone or something got in the way. It was an unlucky day. More often than not, though, we hinder our own success. That statement is not meant to be victim-blaming or judgmental, but a simple statement that you can improve the odds of your success by looking at your own actions and asking yourself whether they undermine you or give you confidence. Here are the three particularly bad habits that others aren’t even able to see, that will hinder or even prevent your success if left unchecked. 1. Not believing in yourself. Every successful person–man, woman, or child–is a big dreamer. They’re constantly imagining what their…

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By lollydaskal When you think of leadership, you want a wise leader who is quick on their feet and sharp in their vision and intelligent in their decisions. But there is something that triumphs intelligence when it comes to leadership. Because even for the quickest, smartest, best leader, if they don’t have integrity all the intelligence is for naught. As we have learned in history and in current events, high intelligence is no guarantee of good judgment, and good judgment is closer to wisdom than high intelligence is. When we lead with integrity, our leadership is asking us to meet reality with the core of who we are—and frankly that takes courage. Integrity trumps intelligence when the leader knows … Brains are good but character is better. Our work environments are designed for us to be nimble and smart, but intelligence doesn’t get people to connect with you or follow…

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by John Rampton Having a website as a small business owner is just sort of a given and a known fact. What isn’t as common is the fact that small business owners seem to know little if anything about the actual mechanics behind the website that ensures a website is available 24/7/365. Besides knowing generally how small business website hosting works, it’s important to determine if the website hosting you are currently using is the best option for your business and future growth plans. What small business website hosting companies do Web hosting companies host your website on their servers and make sure that it is available for your traffic and customers at all times, as well as make it available to you or your developer to update on a regular basis. It is the hosting company’s job to handle all the technical aspects that go into running a website, including…

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By Gordon Tredgold Previously I have mentioned that I think planning is one of the dying arts, especially within IT, and that we should invest much more time in training planners and  planning projects. However, there is one thing that I actually think is worse than not planning, and thats to spend time and energy planning and then not actually following the plan. Many times I have seen this happen, people get ahead of schedule they think everything is on track, and then they stop to review their progress against their plan. More often than not, this results in failure, either delays or costly budget over runs as they look to get back on track. I am a strong believer in the saying Plan, Plan and Follow the Plan. If we are going to go to the bother of creating  detailed plan, then the least we can do is follow…

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