Ahmad Kareh

Content creation has become one of the primary activities for many marketing and public relations agencies. Whether it's blog posts, newsletters, whitepapers, infographics, social media copy or thought leadership articles, every brand wants a slice of the content marketing pie to satiate consumers' growing demand for high-quality, valuable information.

It seems there's a podcast for every professional interest out there, from broad topics like entrepreneurship and career advancement to niche subjects like agile development and software as a service. With 67 million Americans tuning into podcasts each month, there's a growing potential to reach your customers through this medium.

Your brand's unique value proposition (UVP) is a critical asset that should serve as the core tenet of your marketing messaging. It tells consumers, employees, investors and other stakeholders exactly what your company offers that no others can. It defines your point of differentiation and explains why you're the right choice to help a customer solve their problems.

When you first started your business, you may have worn every single hat yourself, including marketing. Now you've grown to the point that you need help – but do you hire an in-house staff member or outsource an agency?

Not long ago, mom-and-pop shops struggled to compete with the big conglomerates and internet businesses luring their customer base away with convenient shopping at low prices. Today, the local business scene has made a resurgence, thanks in part to millennials who want to "shop small" and support entrepreneurs in their own backyard. In fact, nearly half of consumers in this generation are willing to pay more to support a small business.

There are three key components to any great advertising campaign: It must communicate a promise, be strategic and come across as effortless. People engage with brands that are real and authentic, not brands that try too hard to be cute or that don’t seem to care.

Determining pricing structure is often one of the most difficult tasks for a service-based business. Product-based businesses can easily quantify the cost of making, storing, displaying and shipping goods, but the intangible nature of creative agency work often means that campaign metrics determine your firm's value and worth to a client.

I was recently invited to join McGraw-Hill for their spring Principles of Marketing symposium series in Austin. The session that I attended was the first of the series and was geared toward new products currently in development, emphasizing innovation and a strong digital focus. This session explored teaching trends in Principles of Marketing, examined various learning tools, and provided the opportunity to network with instructors from across the States.

A robust social media presence has quickly gone from a "nice to have" to an absolute necessity for new and established brands alike. Whether your target audience is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or all of the above (and then some), being where your customers are and providing consistent, interesting content is key to creating loyal followers.

In November 2017, Snapchat unveiled a new design that separates content from a user's "friends" from branded content by publishers and creators. Parent company Snap hopes the changes to its popular social app will "lead to more conversations between close groups of friends," and ultimately expand its stagnant user base, reported The Verge.

This past September, Amazon announced plans to build a second headquarters to complement its existing Seattle location. Since then, cities across North America have been scrambling to draw the attention of the tech giant in hopes that they'd become the chosen location for HQ2. By the time submissions closed in mid-October, Amazon had received more than 200 proposals from the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The integration of virtual reality (VR) is gaining more ground across all industries, and your company will have to decide pretty soon whether the technology is beneficial for interacting with your customers.

With 30% of consumers likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger, according to a study by Collective Bias, investing in influencer marketing just makes sense. It can be the push in taking you to a new level of awareness with your customers.

Picking the right agency for your business takes some effort and homework on your part. You need to find a company that meshes with your personality and your business style, but you also want an agency that is affordable and in tune with your industry.

In the modern world, flawless design and functionality of digital assets – including your website, social media content and marketing materials – is essential to keeping customers engaged. A top-notch product or thoughtful blog post will go ignored and unseen if it's housed on a site with a poor user experience. To that end, it's important for web developers and marketers alike to keep up with the latest trends and consumer expectations. Members of Forbes Agency Council offered their take on popular design trends popping up in this space, and how you can integrate those trends into your branding.

Many professionals say they want to "work smarter, not harder" to make the most effective use of their time. This is often easier said than done, though – without a clear plan and strategy for your workday in place, most people end up overcommitted, overwhelmed and overworked.

Marketing can be defined as the means to communicate value to customers or, more formally, as “the science of satisfying consumers’ needs profitably,” according to one of my former Harvard University professors, Nick Nugent. The concept of marketing remains the same but the marketing mix, or combination of factors that influence the delivery of value, has evolved considerably.

For retailers, the line between online and offline shopping experiences no longer exists. Today's consumers expect consistent branding and service across all platforms, whether they're physically in a store, browsing products on a website or reaching out on social media.