They’re both in this together for the long haul, after all   It’s no one person’s fault that sales and marketing have grown apart within recent years. These departments play fundamentally different roles within organizations, and over time, this has led to a natural division of processes, goals and even the technologies used. Decision makers are to blame, however, when they allow this distance to stand in the way of

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Influencer marketing can play an active role in branding, on-point positioning and accelerated business growth. But before you think about influencer marketing, it is essential to understand how you can create a strong brand and optimize it to leverage influencer positioning to your strategic advantage. Before we proceed with that, let’s get one thing clear: Real influencer positioning is not about reaching out to an influencer to endorse and/or promote

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Every digital marketer knows that good traffic doesn’t always translate to high conversions. Unless the leads are guided into a system nurturing them throughout the process, they don’t stick around. As a result, all of the likes and shares amount to nothing. That’s a big waste of marketing money. How big, you ask? According to The Content Factory, the average cost of outsourcing social media services ranges between $200 and

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Google desperately wanted to copy Facebook’s success on social media. Instead it may be left with a version of one of Facebook’s biggest failures. In 2011, as Facebook was rapidly approaching the one-billion-active-user milestone, Google made a last-ditch effort to beat back its online rival with the launch of a rival social network called Google+. The service unmistakably resembled Facebook, though with some novel additions, including more customized sharing options

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Management consultant, educator and author Peter Drucker once declared that increasing the productivity of knowledge workers was “the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century.” AI is changing that. More than 75% of companies are firing up AI to accelerate business development, automate busy work and deliver a better customer experience. AI algorithms are powering massive amounts of calculations and decisions because they can find patterns

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Facebook VP Carolyn Everson discusses how Facebook plans to monetize and improve the marketing experience for Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook’s VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson, sat down with The Wall Street Journal’s Media and Marketing Reporter Lara O’Reilly at Advertising Week and discussed, among other things, the future of Instagram and WhatsApp as far as marketers and advertisers are concerned. IG and WhatsApp are two of the highest

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Did you know that 80% of Instagrammers are following at least one business page? With so many opportunities to get in front of your audience and engage with your customers, this social media app is an indispensable tool that every online and small business should be using. However, it takes more than choosing the perfect filter and hashtag to boost conversions and reach a wider audience. There are several creative hacks

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In November of 1993, Royce Gracie of Rio de Janeiro forever changed the martial arts. Gracie, at barely 180 pounds, used a style of martial arts called Brazilian jiujitsu (BJJ) to win the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s first tournament. At the time, few martial arts studios in the U.S. had heard of BJJ, let alone were trained in it, and Gracie was able to capitalize on the style’s effectiveness and his

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How close to reality is 5G, the highly touted next-generation mobile networking infrastructure? Closer than you think. Many providers are already touting trials of network services that employ limited 5G radio spectrum on top of 4G core networking infrastructure. Real-world applications running on fully implemented 5G networks should start appearing around 2020. In technology time, that’s not far away. It’s why tech-savvy leaders at large enterprises are working 5G capabilities

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Google Search is undergoing an overhaul that will make it look much more like a social media platform, in order to compete with upstarts like Snapchat, Instagram, and Pinterest. Believe it or not, Google may be the feeling the heat from social media networks like Snapchat and Pinterest, and for one simple reason: search. Obviously, Google remains the number one name in search, by a wide margin. But Snapchat and

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