By Richie Hecker, Chairman of inSparq A major theme at NRF Retail's Big Show this year was how to put your customers first. With more competition than ever before, creating personalized and tailored experiences for customers are sure-ways to capture their loyalty, drive up average order values and increase overall conversions.

The Super Bowl was interesting, to say the least, thanks in large part to the 34-minute blackout in the third quarter. From a marketing standpoint, this opened the door wide for insightful takeaways: –

Facebook might be the most popular social network and, consequently, the first site to pop into people’s heads when they think about “social promotions.” However, it’s important to remember that emerging social networking sites like Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ warrant consideration when it comes to social media promotions. “Users’ social networking time has become more…

Brafton, an online news content marketing agency, has created an infographic that goes over the 10 best ways to optimize your business YouTube channel. According to the company, more than 70 percent of B2C and B2B companies are investing their money into video marketing in 2013, with Google’s YouTube leading the way with the lion’s…

Sponsored by Jive Software: Download this infographic to see the results of a study by a top 3 global consulting firm on the impact of social business in the enterprise. According to the data, companies using social collaboration software reported a 15 percent increase in worker productivity and a 4 percent increase in revenue.

Local search is growing up before our eyes, but that doesn’t mean it’s still got some maturing to do. The realm is still rife with questions, so to help clear up some of the confusion, Mike Ramsey, president of Nifty Marketing, is here to answer 40 questions about local search. They’re broken up into the…

Outbound lead-generation teams don’t always have the warmest of relationships with sales teams, which means management should keep a close eye on any tension that develops between those two parties. “When the sales team cooperates, and actively participates in the outbound lead generation process, they will bring a tremendous amount of value to the team,…

Today Foursquare announced a subtly sweet feature for small businesses. Users who manage their business on the location-based social network can now choose to display their Twitter handle when someone tweets or checks in at one of their brick-and-mortar locations. Foursquare uses this example: Instead of Melanie Travis’ tweet saying she was “at Butter Lane,”…

By Micky Long, vice president and practice director of lead nurturing, Arketi Group The new year is here, and now is the perfect time for marketers to make (and start on) a few New Year's resolutions related to optimizing lead-nurturing efforts. Here, in no particular order, are five things for consideration:

If you’re a small-business owner, chances are you don’t think much of Twitter’s ability to help you. That’s according to a survey from The Wall Street Journal and Vistage International, which found that just 3 percent of the 835 business owners surveyed said Twitter had the most potential to help them. LinkedIn was on the…