Lazy Guide to Marketing Resources

Person in hammockHaving trouble keeping up with all the
latest marketing tools (or even getting started)? Fortunately, there are lots of places—most of them free–to find great articles, videos, and resources to help you up your marketing game. So if, like me, you’d rather spend your vacation time gardening than sitting at your computer, here’s my lazy guide to marketing resources.

HubSpotHubSpot has a Marketing Blog and a Sales HubSpot LogoBlog–both offer simple, practical tips and tools on multiple topics.

MarketingProfs. What I love about Marketing Profs is that it covers all aspects of marketing, not just social media or search engine optimization. It’s got articles, podcasts, webinars (live and recorded) on just about everything. While some of the content is restricted to paid subscribers, there’s still plenty of great stuff for free.

Michael Smart PR. Weekly short great tips on how to pitch to the media.

Social Media Examiner. This site has tons of “how-to” articles on how to use all the major social media channels. They’re great about giving examples and keeping you updated on the latest changes in Facebook or Instagram. If you’re new to social media, their Getting Started section has lots of good beginner articles.

Smart Brief. Smart Brief creates some of its own content and then curates the best articles it can find on marketing, small business, leadership, social media, food trends, the restaurant industry, and more. Easy reads, practical tips. You can sign up for as many newsletters as you want; personally, I follow a few of the business and food and beverage industry newsletters.

Small Business

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog. If you’re trying to sell your

LinkedIn logo

products or services to other businesses (B2B), LinkedIn is often the best tool. A recent study by NewsCred found that LinkedIn Sponsored Updates yielded almost 6 times greater return on investment than Google AdWords. This blog has lots of great ideas about how to use LinkedIn to generate sales leads.

Prove Your Purpose. Interested in socially responsible business and cause-related marketing? Cone Communications invented the term, Cause Branding. Their weekly newsletter provides examples of the creative campaigns, contests, and ads that big companies use to promote a cause (and themselves).

Nonprofits

Nonprofit Tech for Good has a good selection of articles and
Nonprofit Tech for Good logo<

webinars on various marketing and fundraising topics for nonprofits.

Nonprofit Quarterly. Although their focus covers the entire nonprofit world, not just marketing, their website and daily emails are a great way to keep up with nonprofit news and issues, such as branding, ethics, and crisis communications.

Advanced Tools

Brand Strategy Insider. Want to know more about branding? This blog alternates between timely commentaries on what the big brands are doing and how-to articles about branding fundamentals. If you’re a branding nerd, like me, you’ll enjoy articles like this analysis of Nike’s classic slogan, “Just Do It.”.

Listrak. Ready to take your web anListrak logod ecommerce marketing strategy to the next level? The Listrak blog offers great tips on a variety of digital marketing topics, but is especially useful if you do holiday-related marketing.

Target Marketing. Their website includes articles,videos and webinars on a full range of marketing topics, from direct mail and creative to how to create simple videos. Their newsletter keeps you updated on new content. Tends to be more oriented towards marketing professionals than to beginners.

Wordtracker. Wordtracker sells a tool for finding keywords to help you generate more targeted traffic. Their blog has many useful free articles on the intricacies of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), social media, and marketing in general.