2020 sure has been a whirlwind. In this week’s Monday Marketing Motivation, we’re sharing a mixture of marketing resources but also can’t ignore the protests and movements that continue on in cities and streets all over the country. We hope to inspire and motivate people to keep marketing their incredible businesses, but not to cast a blind eye to the important issues that American’s are fighting for.

Your webinar registrants are rolling in and you’re preparing the content. Now what? How can you create a great experience for your attendees? What should you prepare for and what can you expect to happen during the live presentation? We’re happy to share our recommendations and walk through our best practices for Zoom webinar logistics.

Each week (or day), I feel a new way and think contradicting thoughts about the world we’re experiencing right now. On Monday I might be on top of the world and super motivated and on Tuesday, a news article might make the world feel too heavy to bear. I imagine many of us can relate. So read on, not only for some business motivation but for an investigation into the paradox of the self.

To enhance our webinars and nurture our registrants, we enlist marketing automation tools to help carry the load. By automating repetitive tasks, not only do we free ourselves up to focus on activities that require more brainpower, but we also provide a lot of value to leads.

Advertising can be tough. As a B2B marketer, the go-to online advertising channels haven’t served me or my clients very well in recent years. In 2010, when Google search results, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and LinkedIn inboxes weren’t saturated, you could get a lot out of a small budget. 

An offer marketers are inundated with is the offer for a list of leads. Don’t take the apple. Here’s why.

We’ve helped dozens of clients host webinars and we’ve done a few on our own. Through our experience, we’ve made mistakes, had some great successes and learned a few lessons. I’m here to share what we’ve learned and what questions you should ask before you host your own webinar.

The demand for more leads is the one constant in a marketer’s life. In every marketing role I’ve held, “More leads!” was the battle cry from the leadership team and the sales reps. As I’ve supported clients, the demand has remained consistent.

If you spend any time on the internet, you may have seen the letters “UX” in passing. Even if you haven’t, UX is something that affects almost every interaction you have with a product or company, online or off. Let us explain it’s importance and how you can successfully incorporate UX principles into your own work to provide a usable and delightful experience for your current and potential customers.

At Think Better, we’re all huge fans of podcasts so we were excited when Amy Metherell, host of Inbound Back Office, invited Think Better founder, Andrea Steffes-Tuttle, to be a guest on her show. They got together to talk about a topic that we have a lot of experience in; account-based marketing.

The key to any email marketing strategy (or any content for that matter) is to provide relevant, informative, and timely content. Without that as your foundation, your strategy will fall short. Even if a catchy tactic brings people in, they won’t stay unless you are providing value to them.

Since search engine algorithms regularly change, it’s a good idea to regularly update your search engine optimization (SEO) tactics and keep your site current. What might have been successful for your site a few years ago could be irrelevant today.

A few weeks ago the TB team attended a writing workshop with Tanja Pajevic. Tanja is an author of two books, has been published in many publications such as The New York Times and the Huffington Post, is a writing coach, and is the recipient of several awards and fellowships. She’s got a lot of tricks up her sleeve and I want to share with you the tips that hit home for me.

Whether you’re a marketer or not, being able to clearly express your views, or your company's message, through writing is a skill worth developing. Every one of us is, in fact, a writer, so you better get used to it.

Springtime is when I am ready to get my house in order, fall is when my focus turns toward my office. The back-to-school season has long been a time to step back, look at the big picture, and reorganize. During our elementary days, it may have been new binders and pencils, but the concept remains the same: fall = time to reinvest in the tools that help us work smarter and more efficiently. It’s time to say goodbye to lazy summer days and hello to productivity.

There's no substitute for direct customer insight. It's a marketer's superpower. This is a reminder to any marketer out there who isn't actively trying to connect with their customers and prospects that second-hand customer information doesn't cut it.

Understanding your companies customer journey map helps to align teams and improve overall customer experience because it cross-functionally helps to identify areas of weakness that one team might not see over the other.

Each business is different, but in every B2B there are basic elements of the marketing organization to consider as you grow and mature. Marketing is a critical and often overlooked area in many businesses. However, I believe it to be one of the most important practices in your business to invest in and plan for from the start. Marketing serves as the voice of your customer to help support business decisions. Without that voice and bridge to connect with your market, it's hard to create something that people will want and more importantly, pay for.

I want to share with you some ideas from one of my favorite workshops from INBOUND; Making it Last: How to Future Proof Your Content. As marketers who focus on B2B SaaS companies, we are often coming up with new content to educate our audience. Good content takes time and time is a limited resource. Because of this, we like to get as much out of each piece of content as possible so future-proofing whatever we can is a must.

It's enlightening to understand how experience impacts our decisions.

"Experience colors and influences all of our perceptions by anticipating and predicting everything that we encounter. This preferential set of intuitions, feelings, and ideas—less poetically described as 'bias'—poses a challenge to our ability to weigh evidence accurately to arrive at truth." - Neurologist and playwright Gerald Smallberg.