Archive June 8, 2023

How to Use XLookup in Excel

By in Operations Tag , , , ,

by Lauren Farrell for HubSpot Working with large data sets is always tricky. Excel is one of the most powerful tools you can use to manipulate, format, and analyze large sets of information. Several well-known functions exist to help you look up specific matches within a dataset, like VLookup. But functions like VLookup had certain limitations, so Microsoft recently introduced the XLookup function to Excel. It provides a more robust method for finding specific values in a data set. Knowing how to use it effectively can drastically cut down the time you spend trying to analyze data in Excel. What…

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How to Build a LinkedIn Strategy

By in Lead Generation, Marketing Tag , , ,

by RACHEL KARTEN for Link In Bio I’ll admit it: I’ve never thought of LinkedIn as a priority platform. Likely because most of the brands I’ve worked with are consumer-facing and I’ve generally found a lot of the posts on there fairly cringe. But that’s changing. Between the reach I’ve gotten lately on personal posts promoting this newsletter and the potential demise of a not-to-be-named platform, I’m starting to see the LinkedIn light. For today’s interview, I reached out to someone who has a lot of LinkedIn knowledge and has been a believer for awhile now. Chris Kim is the Director of…

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AN 8-POINT WEBSITE CHECKLIST FOR EFFECTIVE B2B CONTENT MARKETING

By in Content Marketing, Marketing Tag , , ,

by Matt Bell for The Framework Your company’s website is one of its most important assets when it comes to effective content marketing. You own it. You control the content. You can direct visitors to the parts that are most relevant for them. And yet, many B2B companies still treat their website as little more than a digital catalog. Some practically reproduce the catalog format, with an index-like homepage and subpages dedicated to product lines and spec sheets. Is that what your audience wants to find? All of them, all the time? Those are rhetorical questions, of course. As I’ve…

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Long sales cycles, the #1 enemy of SEO attribution

By in Sales Tag , , , ,

by Kevin Indig for kevin-indig.com Attribution models are the most common way to quantify the returns on marketing investments, but not every company can use them successfully. Long sales cycles (+90 days) are the biggest enemy of attribution models, often to the detriment of channels like SEO that play an important role in early touches. Companies with long sales cycles often either sell B2B enterprise software (SaaS), high-priced products (e-commerce) or long-term commitments (consumer). The function of Marketing is to drive customers (if they can complete the buyer journey without talking to a person) or leads who connect with a…

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Top A.I. Powered Tools Not Named ChatGPT

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Information Technology Tag , , ,

by MICHAEL SPENCER for A.I. Supremacy Hey Everyone, If I had more time, I’d like to dive into A.I. and Generative A.I. tools. I’m sure you might as well, while I think it’s early days for A.I. tools in 2023, it might be useful to take a short survey of some of the ones that are trending. In 2023 we are entering new terrain: Prompt-engineering based solutions No and low code solutions A proliferation of tools to automate and speed up repetitive tasks A plethora of writing-tools and chatbots Productivity platforms (Notion, Mem, etc…) Increasingly better thought leadership around A.I. and trends. To see…

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Creatives are more than a remix

By in Marketing Tag , , , , , ,

by ALEJANDRA CÉSPEDES AND SEBASTIAN CUERVO for 42 Slash Advertising uses graphic representations to connect brands with buyers. The more your brand resonates, the easier you can capture value and turn it into revenue. In the B2B SaaS world (and digital marketing in general), these visual models are often called "creatives." While the name is not wrong- they result from creative processes- "creatives" often are distant from genuine creative work. Why is that the case? How does it affect marketing? Creatives aren't creative... but they should. In marketing, creatives usually refer to adding an image to a previously prebuilt copy. This text…

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Content Marketing During a Downturn: Here’s What the Conventional Wisdom Gets Wrong

By in Content Marketing, Marketing, Uncategorized Tag , , ,

By Sharla Moody for Contently Recession. Downturn. Economic uncertainty. When these words start to appear, conventional wisdom tells businesses to cut their marketing budgets. It turns out that advice is dead wrong. As multiple researchers have found over decades of studies, stopping your marketing efforts during tough times is a mistake. Data shows that proactive marketing “pays off” during recessions—for brands across industries, including the likes of Toyota, Amazon, Coca-Cola, etc. As two marketing professors put it in a 2020 Harvard Business Review article: “Firms that maintain their marketing spend while reallocating it to suit the context … fare better than firms that cut their marketing…

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Reimagining B2B Coaching

By in Work Tag , , , ,

by JUSTIN MICHAEL for Justin's Newsletter A way of being before thinking and doing Sales coaching and training are broken. It's broken because it's focused at the surface level of doing. And that's Einstein’s definition of insanity. Surface level tactics repeated may hone in a new habit but in time, the gains fade and the results ebb. It's a proverb! Why? Because it actually works like this: below doing, is thinking, and beneath thinking is being. It's a cosmic layer cake of cause and effect. It's been called dharma. From acorns, oaks. An apple seed cannot become an apricot tree.…

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“The Lean Startup” is Bullshit

By in Operations Tag , , , ,

by The B2B Growth Newsletter Hi all — After talking with approximately 2.4 billion B2B founders, I’ve realized one of the main root causes of everyone’s pain and frustration. “Experimentation.” We’ve been told since the dawn of the Lean Startup that we need to generate hypotheses, experiment, measure, learn, and pivot. But the Lean Startup’s experimentation orthodoxy is wrong and counterproductive for founders and GTM teams. Why? It assumes you can generate testable hypotheses and learn real things. Generally, you can’t. Every time you try to do this in a startup setting, you realize your hypothesis was dumb and wrong, but can never…

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AI Applications Across 12 Different Industries

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Information Technology, Marketing Tag , , , , ,

by Flori Needle for HubSpot Some businesses have used AI for years; others were prompted by the recent AI gold rush to jump on the train. AI’s applications are far and wide as every business can leverage it differently to meet their goals. In this post, we’ll review AI application examples across 12 industries. AI Applications Examples AI has transformed the business landscape as time-saving tools complete tasks and help make data-backed decisions. Virtually all industries can benefit from AI, from medical providers to students pursuing an education. Below we’ll go over how AI applies to the three main business…

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