It’s pretty common for marketing and sales to function as two completely different departments. After all, our objectives appear to be very different:  marketing generates leads, sales closes them. One is responsible for bringing in the bodies, the other for converting them into customers. But what might it look like if your marketing and sales teams worked together, rather than separately? Studies have shown that 50% of sales time is wasted on poor prospects. And that’s frustrating for both parties, because it’s hard to pinpoint why that’s happening. Is sales…

Voice search. Voice applications. Voice technology. Once a buzzword, voice technology is quickly becoming a necessity for brands who want to form deeper, more meaningful relationships with their customers and target audience. With over 55% of US households predicted to own a voice-enabled smart speaker by 2022, this growing market is set to offer significant opportunities to the brands that embrace it in the coming years. What is a Voice Application? Voice Applications are platforms that use voice technology to accomplish a variety of goals. From Amazon’s Alexa, to “Ok…

In the final session of the day, we heard from Podcast Guy and Creative Director of Abrupt Audio, Ant McGinley. To say that Ant is an engaging and dynamic speaker would be an understatement. He used the entire audience to create a podcast on the fly. (We named it I Scream Ice Cream, and we basically all shouted our favorite ice cream flavors into his phone. But I digress…) Here are some actionable tips you can take from The Ant Man about creating a podcast (which conveniently spell the acronym…

In this session, we’re hearing from CEO and Chief Revenue Scientist Mike Lieberman of Square 2 Marketing. Mike starts the session by asking the audience to stand up, then sit down if they haven’t met their revenue goals (not “I had a good year”, but hitting the actual GOALS you set) for 2017, Q1 of this year, Q2 of this year, and Q3 of this year. By Q3, only about 15% of the audience is left standing. So we see that, even in a room full of people interested in…

This blog’s coming at ya from the brain of possibly the coolest person at Inbound – Nadya Khoja. I mean, seriously, I want to be that cool when I grow up. But I’m OK if it doesn’t happen. Nadya talked about a topic that’s hot for social media marketers and content marketers alike – viral content. First off, let’s talk about what viral means. Viral content is something that gets a lot of engagement and shares. Not more than your usual content kind of sharing, but like the whole internet…

This morning was my personal favorite breakout thus far:  How to Supercharge Your Marketing Automation Using Audience Research and User Data. In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m Overit’s marketing automation specialist. Which means I get to work with a lot of our clients to find creative ways to help them streamline and automate their marketing and sales funnels, so they can spend more time on the things that require human interaction (because machines can’t do everything!). This particular breakout was hosted by Element Three’s Dustin Clark – a funny…

This afternoon we heard from PR 20/20 CEO Paul Roetzer. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a pretty heady subject, so I want to start with two disclaimers: The content of this talk and this blog are meant to be more high level – what’s happening with AI, where it’s trending, and how it’s being integrated into marketing and sales. AI is still in the early adoption stage. Even though we’ve been watching sci-fi movies with AI for years, most of that AI has not been created yet. We’re still in the…

This morning we heard from HubSpot’s Director of Marketing, Rachel Leister. A pint-sized powerhouse, Rachel is full of incredible insights and information. In this presentation, she’s talking about how to grow and manage your growth marketing team. In her talk, she shares the keys to running a successful marketing experiment. As marketers, we know that part of growing is testing and optimizing our content, landing pages, copy, emails, and pretty much anything else our audience interacts with so we can improve conversions at each point of the marketing funnel. Rachel…

You’re talking. Your colleagues are talking. Your boss talks. Your sales team talks. The new guy is definitely talking. It’s happening face-to-face. Online. In email. On your website. On social media. In press statements. And wherever you think anyone might be listening. When you’re not talking in real-time, you’re automating all of the talking. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a guide for what to say? Or if you were confident everybody talking was saying the same thing? You can be. You just need a messaging framework to make…

With hundreds, maybe thousands, of marketing softwares out there, and equally as many articles touting the benefits of each, how are you supposed to choose the right marketing software for your needs? First of all, let’s start off with:  what is a MarTech stack? A MarTech stack is essentially all of the tools and softwares you’re using for your marketing. This can include your CRM, your automation platform, email marketing, social media, and just about any other tool you use when marketing your business. While we, of course, have our…