Ahmad Kareh

Content is king for a reason. Standing out from the crowd and building a brand is a challenge in today’s saturated market. What people experience when they encounter your brand for the first time not only needs to be attention-getting, but also what they should expect to find going forward. When it works well, marketing content can drive consumers to seek out more information about your company by heading to your website.

Effective customer engagement is the driving force behind drawing people in the first time, keeping them coming back in the future and holding their loyalty to your brand. Recently, video has emerged as one of the leading ways to reach and engage an audience—especially online. On Facebook alone, over 500 million users watch videos every day.

The marketing landscape is ever-changing, and it can be difficult to keep up. Even if you’ve been in the industry for years, there are always new trends emerging and methods evolving.

The new year is a time to set new goals. Many business owners do this by reflecting on the past year, asking themselves what worked and what didn’t. This isn’t a process that you can do alone, though; your goals will impact your entire team, so it’s crucial to get their thoughts and, more importantly, their commitment.

It’s undeniable that Google Analytics (GA) has become a large factor in current marketing strategy development. As such, it’s no surprise that most successful marketers are familiar with the program. Yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean that marketers truly know how to fully optimize the data it provides.

Some of the biggest sports events of the year are already upon us, with families and friends eagerly donning their jerseys, setting up snacks and getting ready to watch the games and ads. In fact, particularly on Super Bowl Sunday, some people tune in just to see the special, spectacular ads.

As a business, you want to provide the highest-quality products and services to your customers. To make sure the launch of a new offering goes smoothly, it’s essential to thoroughly and effectively test it first. That way, if any issues arise, you’ll have time to revise without risking your reputation.

The start of a new year is a great time to assess the challenges faced and the milestones reached in the last year. Doing so can help agency professionals set up for further success in the new year — it is important to learn from things that didn’t go so well and to build confidence through celebrating well-earned achievements.

Businesses of all sorts depend on consumer data to deliver more personalized, engaging brand experiences. However, new policies, such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), are holding businesses to a higher standard of how they store and use that personal data.

Instagram Stories are now used by more than 400 million people each day. As such, it might come as no surprise that other platforms, like Facebook, have begun adopting this content format. But even Google has announced that it's started to leverage stories in its search results. For example, if you do a mobile search on Google for "Giada De Laurentiis," a story with her life and career highlights appears for searchers to click on.