Whatever the size of your business, hosting events with a purpose is great for your overall marketing strategy. In fact, 85% of consumers stated that they have a more positive perception of companies after attending an event. Additionally, hosting an event gives you direct access to connect with your core audience and/or community and allows you to have in-person conversations. 95% of marketers agree that live events provide attendees with a valuable opportunity to form in-person connections in an increasingly digital world. Here are six steps you should take when considering hosting an event, no matter the type of event or size of your business.
 
Think back to when you were a kid, and you would stand with your back to the wall to measure how much you’ve grown. You’d put a mark for how tall you were, and you’d do this every few months, or every year. You’d then compare the marks over time to see how much you grew. While a micro example of benchmarking, we apply the same basic techniques to everything we do here at Zion & Zion, and user experience (UX) is no exception. Benchmarking is the process used to measure how much something has improved by comparing it to previous standards.
 

Guest blogging is one of the most contentious topics in the content marketing sphere. You’re either pro-guest blogging, and have followed your own formula to see some success with your blog or business, or you’re anti-guest blogging, and you can’t seem to understand why anyone would write for someone else—often for free.

If you’re here, you’ve probably already read the same old spiel bloggers regurgitate on the many pros of guest blogging. They tell you that guest blogging can grow your writing skills, can help you network when you’re just getting started, and can aid you in developing your…

 

CSS is incredibly transformative. Without it, the web would look like a Wikipedia page! While it is extremely powerful, it does have its limitations. Sometimes our styling needs are not fully met by the available CSS features and we need to seek out alternative solutions, like JavaScript. Ideally, we would keep design and functionality separate (of course there are exceptions to this rule like GSAP). Thankfully, new CSS features are constantly being released. In this article, we’ll overview some new and exciting CSS features. While these new features may not…

 

It’s no surprise users depend on copy to interact and navigate through the digital world. Whether it’s writing product descriptions or choosing the correct label for a menu item, copy that’s written for user-facing touchpoints and that embodies the voice of the organization are crucial parts of the way we design for experiences. It’s no longer enough to just provide the information users are looking for, but you must also write with users’ motivations, actions, and reactions in mind. Providing this human element behind copy without sacrificing a great user experience is what we refer to as UX writing.

In…

 
Walled Gardens

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about a role in the field of marketing is that I continually get exposed to a diverse range of industry verticals, customer segmentation and journeys, and the use of new technologies. Another benefit is the learnings that come from the people interaction, the diverse range of industries, and all the fun acronyms that firms use in their day-to-day operations. This led me to a term you may have heard recently, a “Walled Garden.” Though this isn’t a new term—according to Techopedia, John Malone (of Liberty Media fame) coined the term back in the…

 

Public Relations (PR) is defined as a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics. While this definition still rings true, the way in which PR practitioners build those relationships has changed. As marketing and technology evolve, PR also continues to evolve.

Today, PR professionals are responsible for designing and implementing integrated strategies across a variety of platforms to create awareness and build brand credibility. There are far more vehicles for relaying information to consumers than ever before. While this sounds like a good…

 

Marketing automation (MA) refers to the idea of automating repetitive marketing tasks and processes using software. In many cases, marketing automation works along-side a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, where live data can be passed back and forth between systems to share a cohesive understanding of an organization’s customer and prospective contact records.

Just like the relationship between a MA and CRM system, marketing and sales departments need to have a consistent, cohesive alignment to achieve success in today’s business world. This is done by gaining an understanding of not only when a customer or prospect should be communicated…