Brand awareness is the extent to which people are able to recall and recognize your brand. It has two components: brand recall, which is a measure of how well a brand name is connected to a product class (e.g. Do customers know that Toyota is connected with the product class of cars?), and brand recognition,...

Expanding your production or your sales internationally could be an extremely difficult decision. If you're already doing well in your local market, the idea of growth into an international market might be very tempting for a business owner. But how do you know if you're ready to expand and if an international market might be...

Content marketing is a discipline of marketing, most often used within the inbound marketing framework, which relies heavily on creating and disseminating original content, such as articles, tips, videos, images, webinars, podcasts, and other assets which a potential customer may find interesting. Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but...

Much as the term implies, marketing automation is a system to nurture leads and turn them into customers through a pre-determined set of processes. HubSpot describes marketing automation at its best as: “software and tactics that allow companies to buy and sell like Amazon — that is, to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content...

Outbound marketing is the exact opposite of inbound, where the tactics often involve “yelling” at potential customers to get them to check out your offer. Outbound practices can include cold emails, cold calls, display advertising, SEM. Typically, outbound marketing is a viable strategy when your business is looking for a quick win – getting a...

Inbound marketing is a form of marketing focused on building a lead or customer base by providing interesting, relevant information, at the right place at the right time. This is a “softer” approach than Outbound Marketing, and generally relies heavily on blogging and content, as well as webinars and other educational tools to reach the...

Lead generation is a marketing approach primarily used in business to business marketing but sometimes in consumer marketing initiatives. Simply explained, this approach focuses on identifying candidates who are most likely to make a purchasing decision and reaching out to them through various marketing channels and offers. A business focused on lead generation techniques may...

Retargeting is a form of display advertising which kicks in when a person visits your website through an SEM campaign, or other means. A piece of code is then stored on their device which then ques up display ads for your business across a network of other websites, making a potential customer more likely to...

Search Engine Marketing is a marketing tool which allows advertisers to appear higher in search rankings. As opposed to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SEM relies on paid advertisements, rather than organic reach, to push a link to the top of the search results. SEM is a numbers game, and it can be a difficult one...

Reputation management is an activity which involves the tracking of online reviews of your business and your business listings on the internet. It’s defined  as “the influencing and/or control of an individual’s or business’s reputation.” Even back in 2010 an article in the Guardian suggested that, in the future, millions will employ reputation managers —...

Search Engine Optimization is a mix of techniques used best in conjunction with your own business website, as opposed to a webpage hosted for your business by a service like Wix or one of many others like it. The purpose of SEO is to get your business website to appear when people search for certain...

Email marketing is another long-standing staple of digital marketing and, when done the right way, can be an amazing tool for your small business. In 2014, email marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States. (eMarketer) There are two approaches to email marketing: The first approach...