Most marketers I know are enjoying some much-needed time off before the new year begins. Yet, as much as we all love time to ourselves, as soon as we’re back at work, the pace will be quick, and the demands will soar. What’s the number one thing marketers can do to prepare for 2025? Learn … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you ready for 2025?" The post Marketers: Are you ready for 2025? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
“Confused clients don’t write checks.” One of my mentors used to say that sentence often in his workshops. It’s true. How do you feel when you read confusing marketing content? I’m betting it doesn’t persuade you to purchase from the company that published it. I asked several marketers why they sometimes publish confusing content, and … Continue reading "Marketers: Is your content confusing your audience?" The post Marketers: Is your content confusing your audience? appeared fir...| Crystal Clear Communications
Research shows that shorter words are better. Even highly educated people prefer shorter words that are faster to read and easier to understand. Yet content marketers still use long words that are harder to digest. The other day I was editing some copy for a client, and I changed the word “utilize” to the word … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you overusing “utilize”?" The post Marketers: Are you overusing “utilize”? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
In my last blog, I wrote about how talking to your customers directly about their information and research habits helps you discover the best way to market to them. In speaking with many business-to-business (B2B) buyers across several industries, one thing is clear regardless of industry and title: Marketers must personalize content. Every single person … Continue reading "Marketers: If you want to reach your buyers, you must personalize your content" The post Marketers: If you want to rea...| Crystal Clear Communications
Marketers spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to reach their target audience. Will they read a newsletter, will they click on an ad, do they use LinkedIn? So, we research the average open and click-through rates on different types of digital assets. Here’s an idea: Why don’t we just ask our … Continue reading "Marketers: Let your audience tell you how to market to them" The post Marketers: Let your audience tell you how to market to them appeared first on Crystal Clear Communic...| Crystal Clear Communications
Since AI became easy and accessible through ChatGPT, it’s led many of my clients to ask: Is it okay to use AI to create content? The answer: To create content; no. To make sure you haven’t left anything out of your content; yes. As my colleague Harry Semerjian, Principal at Infinium Marketing Group, puts it, … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you using AI to create content? Be careful" The post Marketers: Are you using AI to create content? Be careful appeared first on Crystal Clear Com...| Crystal Clear Communications
As marketers, our goal is that everything we produce is accessible to our target audience. That’s why we make message maps and conduct A/B testing to help ensure resonance and accessibility. But is that enough? Next time you’re in a meeting, look around. One in every five Americans has some kind of reading disability, according … Continue reading "Marketers: Do you care about accessibility? Then stop with the 2-minute read." The post Marketers: Do you care about accessibility? Then stop...| Crystal Clear Communications
I’m willing to bet that most of you create a company or product/service message, often in the form of a Message Map. But are you taking the critical next step and testing your message before using it in marketing content and campaigns? Since you only get one chance to make a first impression on your … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you testing your message before using it?" The post Marketers: Are you testing your message before using it? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
Marketers and salespeople spend a lot of time trying to get buyers to switch vendors and choose their own company’s solution. We create buyer personas, conduct account-based marketing (ABM), and do a plethora of other activities aimed at getting our prospects to purchase from us. And then we get frustrated when they don’t. I believe … Continue reading "Marketers: Your buyers aren’t switching vendors. Are you?" The post Marketers: Your buyers aren’t switching vendors. Are you? appear...| Crystal Clear Communications
Here’s a summary and review of Ben Guttmann’s new book, Simply Put – Why Clear Messages Win – and How to Design Them. Everyone is a marketer in some form, asserts Guttmann. “The entire act of marketing boils down to just two things: what you say and how you say it,” Guttmann writes. The real … Continue reading "Ideas to simplify your message" The post Ideas to simplify your message appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
As 2023 draws to a close, I’m reflecting on what lessons I learned this year and what I’m looking forward to in 2024. While the basic rules of marketing and communications haven’t changed, new technologies, lean budgets, and choosier buyers continued to both inspire and challenge marketers. As always, communicators and marketers adjusted from lessons … Continue reading "Marketing and communications lessons and predications to help you succeed" The post Marketing and communications les...| Crystal Clear Communications
In today’s fast-paced world, many marketers work more than 40 hours per week. I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to spend that much time at work, I want to be doing my best work. Yet I hear many marketers complain that they don’t have time to do their best work. Over the … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you doing your best work?" The post Marketers: Are you doing your best work? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
Is your company an innovative leader in your market or industry? Of course it is. And I bet most of your competitors say they are too. Yet many companies continue to put overused words such as “leader,” “innovative,” and others in their marketing materials. It’s time for all of us to stop using overused words … Continue reading "Marketers: Stop being “leaders”" The post Marketers: Stop being “leaders” appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
The field of marketing analytics has been around for years, yet many marketers I speak with still feel they’re not getting the most out of their data. How do they know if their Message Map is working? Why aren’t there more conversions on their website? How do they get more engagement on social media? I … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you getting value out of your analytics?" The post Marketers: Are you getting value out of your analytics? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
Technology continues to enable marketers to do more and more personalization, but do your buyers feel included? Buyer inclusion is different than buyer personalization. Personalization means you’re tailoring your marketing to specific buyers, such as using their first names, sending communications the way they prefer to receive them, and possibly knowing what holidays they celebrate. … Continue reading "Marketers: Do your buyers feel included?" The post Marketers: Do your buyers feel incl...| Crystal Clear Communications
Americans are bombarded with too much information. We average over 7 hours of screen time daily, consuming more than 100,000 words daily. Worse, we remember only 20% of what we read and just 10% of what we hear. It’s easy to see why we marketers have a tough job getting through to buyers. And given … Continue reading "Marketers: Are you giving buyers too much information?" The post Marketers: Are you giving buyers too much information? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
I had the luxury of spending last month in Nafplio, Greece, where I was embraced by the locals. Restaurateurs, shopkeepers, and even the gentleman at the printing place made me feel welcome. Almost every person I met offered recommendations and asked if I needed anything – and they didn’t just mean from their store. One … Continue reading "Are you earning brand loyalty?" The post Are you earning brand loyalty? appeared first on Crystal Clear Communications.| Crystal Clear Communications
Linkby connects brands with publisher content that advertisers pay for based on reader engagement. The startup raised $15 million in Series B funding.| AdExchanger
The post Different forms of advertising and when to use them appeared first on Cross Productions.| Cross Productions
When it comes to sound style, nearly half of all the best music for productivity were sonically clean meaning they avoided jarring effects...| Cross Productions
Discover the top five financial services affiliate partners for acquiring customers, reaching niche audiences, and growing affiliate marketing programs.| TUNE
If your business has not built its social online presence or a social media strategy yet, you might be missing out on an incredible marketing opportunity.| Next Level Singapore
How do we balance the human and the robot to make the best use of each? Ann Handley explores this questions and when exactly to use AI. The post When to Use AI: Lessons From My Fave Library appeared first on Ann Handley.| Ann Handley
Natural Intelligence owns and operates Top10.com and Bestmoney.com, offering comparison pages covering 80 different service categories.| TUNE
Badal Pandey runs XLR Media, an ecommerce growth agency that manages the growth of some of the fastest-growing ecommerce brands. He alone spends over $500k every month just on Facebook Ads for these brands and manages their overall growth strategies, paid ads, and creative strategies.| GrowthMarketer