Ambiguity almost always accompanies failure. Not knowing how you’re going to complete a given task is a frustrating experience. Not knowing the point of an assignment is even more draining and infuriating for employees. That’s why businesses that set SMART goals tend to enjoy greater success in marketing, advertising, and sales than companies that neglect this vital process. We’ve talked about SMART goals before on our blog, but for the uninitiated, SMART stands for: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Today though, we’re going to take the extra step and provide you with three SMART goal examples and how to build similar goals for your company: 

There’s an unfortunate misconception surrounding pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Many professionals seem to think that unless you spend exorbitant amounts of money on PPC campaigns, they won’t make much of an impact for your business. It’s understandable to a degree why business owners might think this way. After all, how much you spend on PPC advertisements will affect their visibility. However, the truth is you don’t have to splash the cash to make sound PPC decisions. Indeed, progressive companies are able to use PPC advertising to effectively draw in leads and customers at a cost-efficient rate. To that end, we’re here to explore three PPC lead generation techniques that will help you create better, more efficient, and ultimately productive PPC ad campaigns:

Running a successful business is a multi-layered operation that requires entrepreneurs to possess a number of skills that are both related –– and unrelated –– to their industry of choice. By that, we mean that it takes more than an effective product or service to create a thriving company. Modern business owners need to understand not only how to create a compelling product, but also how to market, advertise, and sell that product. Otherwise, no matter how excellent your service, you’ll likely struggle to gain any traction in your field. With that in mind, today we’re going to focus on Pay-per-click advertising –– one of the most popular, but least understood –– methods of modern marketing. Indeed, if you’ve been running PPC campaigns for years but aren’t seeing the results you want, chances are you could benefit from outsourced PPC management services. Here are four signs it’s time to bring in a professional.

For the average business owner, stepping into the field of search engine optimization (SEO) can be a daunting and difficult transition. Indeed, it’s one thing to recognize that your business needs a boost to improve its online presence; it’s quite another to have the expertise to actually achieve it. As such, simply finding the right SEO consultant can prove a frustrating task. Even knowing what to ask an SEO company is tough if you haven’t been keeping a close eye on the latest marketing trends. Still, if you want to ensure that you find the right SEO partner for your business, you need to vet the candidates properly. Here are three questions you should ask before you decide to hire an SEO expert:

Small business owners are constantly on the lookout for competitive advantages. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is one of the most fashionable and effective marketing methods companies use to reach new heights (on Google and otherwise). But what’s the best way to utilize PPC for your business? Should you attempt to run your campaign in-house or should you even adopt PPC for your search engine marketing strategy in the first place? Today we’ll look at a few of those questions and explain what a PPC agency can do for your company:

Every company takes their marketing efforts seriously these days. Indeed, success in marketing is too lucrative to ignore, and attaining the best possible results is imperative to the long-term viability of your business. However, given the amount of time and money companies spend to market themselves, you’d think that every business would have a fleshed-out method for measuring marketing ROI. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. On the positive side, there are plenty of ways for businesses to get started, though. With that in mind here are a few softwares that can help you determine your marketing ROI:

Your website’s home page is the face you present to the rest of the world. As such, it’s important that you tailor it to reflect the best aspects of your company. This isn’t revolutionary stuff. Chances are, most businesses already understand that they need to make their home page engaging and easy-to-navigate. If it’s not, you’ll struggle to attract many visitors to your site, and those that do come won’t stay for long. However, a home page needs to beoptimized for search engines, as well as human visitors. And this can prove trickier. Fortunately, we’ve separated the wheat from the chaff to show you exactly what you need to do to get the most from your home page optimization efforts:

While there are all kinds of systems, methodologies, approaches and procedures in the marketing world, in essence marketing is a conversation between a business and its target audience. Or rather, it’s supposed to be.

It goes without saying — which is what everyone says before they say it anyway — that content marketing is a fundamental staple on the digital landscape, where articles, ebooks, infographics, social media messaging and other elements fly fast and furious.

It’s probably the most common — and maybe also the most exasperating — problem that businesses encounter as they navigate the online world: despite investing thousands of dollars and spending hundreds of hours, their website isn’t generating nearly enough traffic. In fact, the only people who seem to stop by on a regular basis are spammers. That’s like having a restaurant where most of the folks who stop by want to use the restroom or the phone.