Google Affiliate Network Closing Shop + MORE

Trades shows and events. A marketer’s best friend? Or too old-school?
I guess it depends on your perspective, and how up-to-date (or out-of-date) your event marketing strategy is. As an inbound marketer, I’m all about finding ways to draw people in instead of interrupt them to get my message heard.
Unfortunately, it often feels like events are just totally contrary to the inbound marketing methodology…

If you have an idea you’ve been thinking about putting into action, I’d like you to consider the following.

What if your idea became a huge success?
What if it were to be the start of a pivotal moment in your life?
What if it were to be all this, yet you failed to put the idea into play?

Negative influences
The world is full of people, telling us what we can’t do…

Google announced it is retiring their Affiliate Network to focus on other products. According to a statement on the Google Affiliate Network blog, the company stated that it will continue to support customers as they “wind down” the product over the next few months. Indirectly blaming…

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article…

Danger! Don’t Optimize Presentations to Suck. Image via Shutterstock
Over the past 5 years I’ve given a few hundred presentations in front of crowds from 10 to 1,000.
I also make sure to attend other speakers’ presentations, sometimes to delight and sometimes to horror.
Despite that experience, I’m far from a perfect speaker…

The greater the noise, the less the productivity as the user is going to get fed up and leave the room. If you’ve been subjected to the clatterwheels of noisy PCs long enough there are steps you can take to restore peace and quiet.Related Articles
Configuring A High-End, Mainstream Workstation On A BudgetObituary For the Upgradable CPURecognizing Toxic Chemicals in Computer Electronics

Tweet
One of the classic Web usability “best practices” is to put the call-to-action above the fold. I did a little research (thank you, Wikipedia) and  apparently, the term dates back to the mid-90s – practically the Paleozoic era of Web marketing.
So, is above the fold still a best practice in 2013? Let’s take a look at a recent discovery from our lab …
Background: Sierra Tucson is an addiction and mental health rehabilitation facility
Goal: Increase the total number of leads captured
Primary Research Question: Which page will obtain the most form submissions?
Approach: Multi-factor split test
CONTROL

 
The control was an average, short-form page template with a rotating banner…

(Image source)
It’s time to get schooled in the sales tactics of the much-revered, much-admired used car salesman. Hurray!
Okay, sure, people say they despise these types of salespeople…
Yet when we’re talking about selling online, we rarely jump to learning how the masters – like Napoleon Barragan or Dale Carnegie – do it…

  

For a few years, Smashing Magazine has been my first tab to start every browsing session (right after checking Gmail and Facebook). Assuming that the company was based somewhere in the US, I was quite surprised to discover that its headquarters are — from a global perspective — just around the corner from me…

In today’s inbound marketing, content driven, socially connected world organizations have become very, very good at building trust, providing education and moving prospects to the point of buying, but not always as good at transitioning all the warm fuzziness to the actual purchase experience.
I’ve long contended that repeat and referral customers are born during the first transaction…

If all of the business to business marketers could come up to the front of the room please? Now, could you raise your hand if you think Twitter is the number one social platform for business?
Hmm…wow, B2B Marketing is right. 85% of you chose Twitter as your number one social platform. LinkedIn? A close second with 82%…

TurboTax is like the financial equivalent of anesthesia before a surgery … you know you are about to do something painful, but at least you can suffer a bit less.  Yesterday was tax day in America, and for millions of users of the most popular tax software – it was a little easier to get this necessary chore out of the way thanks to TurboTax…

Are you writing or curating content for a company with a seemingly unsexy product or service?
Trust me, you’re not alone. Most writers don’t work for Vogue, Apple, or Ferrari, and we’re faced with writing copy, blog posts, and other material for less than sexy stuff.
Fortunately, there are tons of ways to use words to amp up regular stuff…