Every field has its vernacular. Lawyers like talking about “rubrics” and “fulcrums”, doctors say things like “idiopathic” and “code brown” (yup – it’s what you think it is), and don’t get us started on politicians. Can anyone say “dollar diplomacy” and “sunset provisions”?

If you happen to own some Google stock, then you might be surprised that we’re even asking the question “is pay per click effective?” Some estimates peg Google’s AdWords revenue haul at a cool $100 million per day. And that’s just Google. Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, and even LinkedIn are all enjoying plenty of ROI. So yeah, if you’re on that side of the fence, asking “is pay per click effective?” is about as pointless as asking “is water wet?”  

While the idea of a content workflow certainly isn’t new – TechPubs folks have been using them for decades to create all kinds of product documentation – it’s only in the last few years that the sales and marketing world (outside of large enterprises and media companies) have started paying serious attention to them. 

As Forbes contributor Nicole Leinbach-Reyhle correctly points out, the simple reason that all businesses need to use online marketing is because their customers are online. If you're customers are online, then your business must be too!

However, just because a business has an online marketing presence doesn’t mean that they’re exploiting it to their full advantage. In fact, in our experience – and we’ve evaluated tens of thousands of websites in our travels across the web – most businesses aren’t firing on all cylinders when it comes to online marketing. 

When it comes to establishing thought leadership, increasing brand awareness and ultimately generating more customers, few strategies are more effective than creating educational eBooks. Publishing educational eBooks allows your business to share your expertise on solving common customer problems while getting new lead information on visitors who are downloading them. It’s really a win-win!

In the last several years, few things in the online and inbound marketing world have changed more than guest blogging. In fact, things have become so confusing today, that if you ask 10 people “what is guest blogging?” you’re likely to hear 10 different answers. In fact, if you ask some of the same people “what is guest blogging?” 10 times, you still might get 10 different answers.

According to the Hoover’s, a business information service owned by Dun and Bradstreet, the consumer services industry is comprised of thousands of companies delivering services in a number of areas, including (but not limited to): 

In order to succeed in the short-term and survive in the long-run, a business must accurately distinguish between MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualified leads).

If one of your key marketing goals is to increase organic traffic, then you’re definitely headed in the right direction. As noted by Forbes, even after all these years investing in SEO is a smart strategy because it’s cost effective, your competitors are doing it, and most importantly: it works!

So, your boss has just told you that the company needs a killer marketing campaign -- one that is going to make it rain customers so that everything will be gloriously profitable and profitably glorious.