The Thomas Blog

The Top Marketing Conferences You Need To Attend in 2018

The new year is the perfect time to take stock of your current marketing plans, map out goals for the future, and review your budget and spending objectives. But to truly stay ahead of the pack, you need to be plugged in to the latest trends and technologies.

Industry conferences and trade shows are a great way to stay up to date on new innovations while also taking advantage of valuable networking opportunities — and maybe even enjoying a cocktail or two in a new setting. (Who says you can’t mix business and pleasure?)

But, as we all know, attending conferences requires an investment of time, money, and energy, so it’s important to choose wisely. Marketing conferences abound in 2018, all with the ultimate aim of helping companies like yours boost their marketing efforts in today’s increasingly digital landscape.

Here are a few of the top conferences we deem worthy of your time this coming year.

How To Boost Your Sales And Marketing Efforts In The New Year

The New Year is just around the corner. Business owners and managers should use this time to look back and reflect. Did you meet your goals? Did you try new tactics? Did they work? How can you improve upon existing efforts? 

It’s also time to set new parameters, specifically in regard to marketing and sales. How did you do with finding new business? Were your marketing strategies effective? Did you take advantage of all today’s technology has to offer? Were you afraid to try certain things, or lack the time or motivation to adopt new strategies?

A new year brings a fresh start. Here are some tips to boost your sales and marketing during this next trip around the sun.

12 Tips To Begin PPC On The Right Foot

Incredible numbers of businesses, many of them your competitors, continue to pour time and money into paid search. The reason? There is a lot of valuable traffic and new customers to be gained there. But it’s not an easy (or cheap) process—getting a return that justifies the expense takes careful planning and precise execution. Many business owners have a lingering feeling that they should at least be experimenting with paid search but are understandably reluctant begin.

4 Marketing Mistakes That Can Kill Your Chances Of Scoring New Buyers

There’s a ton of marketing and sales advice out there on how to grow your business, increase yourbottom line, and make your company stand out from the crowd. Keeping up-to-date on these expert tips and new industrial marketing trends is key to remaining relevant in today’s ever-changing landscape.

But even the most knowledgeable, well-versed companies make critical mistakes that can cost them new customers. Below are four of the most common B2B marketing mistakes and some tips on how to best avoid them.

The Digital Marketing Skills You Need To Succeed

In the old days, marketing was about brochures and word-of-mouth referrals. Some of the morevisionary types found a guy to dress up like a chicken and dance on the side of the road. These days, though, the internet is the medium of choice, which means companies have a much broader reach. But it also means that it's going to take a lot more than dancing chickens to be successful.

In this digital-driven landscape, success requires a particular set of skills, like these:

Why PPC Should Be Part Of Your Inbound Strategy

Successful inbound marketing campaigns should encompass a range of different elements, on various platforms and channels. While certain aspects, like blog posts and email marketing campaigns, are widely used and extremely well-known, others may be less familiar to marketers just starting out. In particular, PPC (pay-per-click), an advertising model that targets users with company ads based on their web search queries, can be an extremely valuable marketing tool. 

Through PPC, advertisers pay only when a user clicks on their ad; these clicks increase site traffic and, ultimately, also increase the chances of converting these leads into buyers. Unlike outbound marketing, which involves pushing your message out to potential customers, PPC is inherently inbound, since it brings potential customers in.

As with other inbound marketing methods, PPC has a high success rate and is quickly growing in popularity. In fact, 74% of small businesses have invested in PPC or plan to do so in the near future. Unsure if PPC advertising is right for you? Below are five compelling reasons you should consider incorporating this strategy into your marketing campaign.

How To Pitch Inbound Marketing To A CFO

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably implemented pieces of inbound marketing, but have realized that pieces here and there aren’t enough anymore. You need to shift resources around (or get more of them) to make the changes needed to increase lead generation, reduce costs, and grow new markets. (But between you and your vision for more effective marketing is your C-suite — especially your CFO, and in many cases, your CEO...)

5 Ways To Capture Marketing ROI

You probably have several different goals in mind for your marketing plan: increasing traffic, getting more leads, building your brand. But at the end of the day, what matters most to you? The answer has to be your Return on Investment (ROI). All of your marketing efforts should be based on clear, goal-oriented metrics, and how they relate to your bottom line.

With so many marketing tools at your disposal today — and a shift in buyer responsiveness from outbound to inbound marketing — it’s not always easy to lay out a plan to capture the ROI of a given campaign or program.

These five tips will help you focus your strategy on a metrics-driven marketing program – one that can deliver tangible, measureable results based on sales goals and objectives. Knowing how to measure and capture ROI helps you gauge your program’s success – and more importantly, gives you an organized, ready-to-present package for your CEO and executive team.

Is Your B2B Digital Marketing Strategy Powerful Enough?

The internet has conquered the world, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that a hefty portion of business, both new and repeating, stems from digital marketing efforts.

However, many businesses approach digital marketing with false assumptions and poor, shortsighted planning, leading to less-than-stellar results and few, if any, new leads.

If you’re serious about increasing your sales and garnering new leads, it’s critical to start off with a powerful, well-thought-out digital marketing strategy.

Unsure where to begin? Below, we’ve outlined a few key steps for getting started.