Marketing Technology for Growth

It seems that Target may have finally found its way into the next frontier of digital retail. Within the last week, Target has launched Cartwheel, a responsive website which will eventually become an application that allows users to earn and redeem in-store savings via Facebook and their smartphones. According to the Target website; “Target Cartwheel is a whole new spin on saving at Target stores. Together with Facebook, Cartwheel lets you connect with friends to share your favorite deals plus save money on the products you love.” 

Ever been told your website is all flash and no cash? If so, you’re probably sitting on a high-octane brochure website that has little else to offer. Somewhere down the line you forgot to create a coherent site structure or any form of rational organization; site visitors don’t know where to start. What about interoperability and interactivity? Come on, the experience is bad enough on PCs; mobile users don’t stand a chance. Social share buttons? Those are for companies that have content to share. Forget about on-site analytics; you’re not even sure anyone is visiting your site.

Wednesday night is volleyball night for this guy, and like many people in their mid-20s in a new city, my team consists of people in the same work field, in my case salespeople. After our domination (or lack thereof) on the court, we started discussing the things salespeople talk about: prospecting, leads, how much we hate cold calling, etc. While talking about what my company does with my new teammate, Ben, we started in on a long conversation about inbound marketing and what it means to a salesperson. Here are the benefits I outlined for Ben…

“Life gets a bit easier when your Google products work well together…” I couldn’t have said it better myself. In truth, I didn’t say it at all; this gem was plucked from a recent post on Google’s Official Gmail Blog announcing the company’s latest integration, this time of its heretofore disconnected free data storage offerings, Google+, Drive, and Gmail. For me, the Google post served as a reminder of three stark truths: 1) the gang from Mountain View is rolling out new products and services faster than I am loosing hair fibers (which is pretty fast), 2) these products and services are increasingly integrated and cloud-based 3) Like my hair loss, there is a certain inevitability to my integration with these services; as the Borg said, “all will be assimilated.” Finally accepting the reality of these truths, I decided to dive in to the Google Cloud headfirst; here’s what I found.

Some very cool branded content popped up this week from a few unexpected sources. Not only is this content unique and original, it is coming from companies new to the branded content game. It just goes to show that creative content marketing can be beneficial for just about every business. 

Yesterday, YouTube introduced a pilot program called YouTube Paid Channels. So far, about 50 paid channels have the ability to charge viewers for a subscription and there are plans to expand this to more partner channels in the future. Not surprisingly, there has been a great deal of uproar online following the announcement. It is definitely clear that not everyone is happy about the idea of paying for online video. This week, Spencer and Jacey discuss YouTube's new business model and the potential implications it could have for your brand.

The following is a guest blog written by Angie Picardo, a staff writer for Nerd Wallet.

Social media advertising is a great way to enhance the reach of your brand message and to help influence prospects at the evaluation, or middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU), stage of the buying cycle. Interestingly, Facebook’s marketing plan for advertisers is almost entirely focused on helping influence buyer purchase decision by facilitating MOFU offers. This makes sense, as it during this evaluation stage that buyers clarify what they want or need and begin to actively search for a solution provider. It is also in the MOFU stage that users are most likely to socially-share information throughout their networks, whether through a like, re-tweet, or pin.

This week the SyneCore sales team weighs in, as Jake and Sean offer insight into how sales and marketing can work together to improve the efficiency of your brand's online lead generation efforts. Whether its crafting the ideal lead-gen form, streamlining the sales-lead process, or giving feedback to sharpen up a new campaign, sales often has information marketing needs to increase website conversion.

There is currently much buzz, and much debate, in business and marketing circles over the meaning and usage of the term SoLoMo (social, local, mobile). Never one to miss an opportunity to inject myself into the conversation, here is my take on the two most relevant aspects of SoLoMo, what it is, and why it matters to businesses.