The PR 20/20 Blog

Take a second to think about the last interaction you had with a brand online. Positive? Negative?

If it was a positive experience, what stood out to you?

Let me guess… it was some type of seamless interaction that offers real-time messaging to ask and answer questions almost instantly? Sounds a lot like online chat.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated to be more current and comprehensive.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: conference season.

It’s up to proactive marketers to stay on top of emerging trends and best practices— or risk falling behind. What better way to come together with fellow marketing pros than during industry conferences? 

Why do visitors come to your website? And what do they want when they get there? The answer to these questions should be the heart of website design.

It’s easy to get caught up in visuals, such as the interactive elements that can make you feel like your website is living in 2118 when everyone else’s is in 2018.

But when it comes down to it, your website needs to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for. In fact, 76% of survey respondents said the most important aspect of a website’s design is that it makes it easy for them to find what they want.

Editor's note: This article was originally written by Loraine Burger, published on Simplilearn, and has been reprinted with permission. Burger is a content marketing specialist with more than ten years of experience in technical writing, content management, social media strategy and analytics.

The most astounding takeaway from Paul Roetzer’s presentation at INBOUND was the amount of misinformation and false hype around the reality of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Roetzer, who’s the CEO and founder of PR 20/20 and Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, unleashed a slew of examples of what AI is and what it isn’t, leading to an informative discussion about what digital marketers can be doing right now to prepare for future innovations.

I’m surrounded by smart people. Some would call them strategists. Some would call them visionaries. Every day, I’m inspired to learn from my colleagues, clients, industry peers … I learn a lot about life from my two-year-old son, too.

As an agency, I believe this power to strategize, collaborate, and bring visionary ideas to life is our core strength. It’s part of our culture. And it’s part of each person we work with. It’s that power to look beyond that drives us—always forward.

And it’s no accident that Look Beyond is our company tagline.

It’s that time again… welcome to the kickoff of marketing conference season!

Every year, a handful of PR 20/20 team members head to Content Marketing World (#CMWorld) hosted in our very own Cleveland, Ohio. CMWorld is the largest content-focused event of its kind, bringing together 4,000+ marketers to learn the tools and materials needed to build the best content marketing strategies.

Attendees get access to some of the top industry influencers and keynote speakers (who agrees that seeing Tina Fey speak gives us serious bragging rights?!).

This post originally appeared on the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute's blog. The Marketing AI Institute was created and is powered by PR 20/20. 

Artificial intelligence has reached peak hype stage, but is it possible that its potential to transform marketing, and your career, is even greater than advertised?

Gartner forecasts global business value derived from AI is projected to reach $1.9 trillion in 2019, ramping up to $3.9 trillion in 2022 through three primary sources of customer experience, cost reduction and new revenue.

Meanwhile, McKinsey Global Institute projects up to a $6 trillion impact of AI and other analytics on marketing and sales, including the areas of pricing and promotion ($1.9T), customer service management ($1.0T), next product to buy/individualized offering ($1.0T), customer acquisition/lead generation ($0.7T), marketing budget allocation ($0.6T), churn reduction ($0.38T) and channel management ($0.32T).

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2016 and has been updated to be more current and comprehensive.

Lights, camera, action. Video has taken the marketing world by storm, and it's here to stay.

Think video marketing is just another fad? Think again. Our customers are demanding it, and the proof is in the numbers: 

• 82% of consumers surveyed indicated that they favor live video over other types of social media posts.
• Video content receives 12 times more shares than text and images, combined.
• Video viewers retain 95% of a message when they see a video— compared to only 12% of written word.

Sometimes, social media can be an enigma.

You manage your brand’s social media presence, and you post stimulating photos with catchy captions day in and day out. Unfortunately, your fans don’t seem to see it that way, and you die inside at the measly 33 likes you received on your last Instagram photo.

Your competitors, on the other hand, are falling asleep each night to sweet dreams of likes, comments and DMs galore.

Editor's note: This article was originally written by Amanda Zantal-Wiener (@amanda_zw) published on HubSpot, and has been reprinted with permission. Zantal-Wiener covers tech news for the HubSpot Marketing Blog. 

Earlier this year, a handful of my extremely bright and capable colleagues compiled a report on topic clusters. Now first, what the heck is a topic cluster?

A topic cluster is a method that uses a single "pillar page" as the main hub of content for a given topic. All of your content assets related to that topic link back to the pillar page— and the pillar links out to each asset.

Here's why it's critical to your content strategy.