Marketing is a complex and often confusing industry and even though you may have one of the best marketing agencies, you may still have some questions. There are a lot of blogs that focus on the different points of marketing and reading them can help you to better understand what your marketing agency is doing, or how to better market your business. Discovering interesting and useful articles is as easy as subscribing to a few RSS feeds. What do you need to improve in your marketing strategy in 2013? Here is our list of the top marketing blogs for beginners for 2013.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
If you want to make more sales through your website without trying to find new visitors, you need to learn about Conversion Rate Optimization, to increase how many of your visitors turn into customers. Try reading The Daily Egg or Smashing Magazine to increase your company’s efficiency.
Content Marketing
The key to marketing effectively these days is to provide potential customers with valuable and informative content, instead of spraying your company's name on billboards and the like. It may seem counterintuitive, but the content you put online is often critical to bringing in customers than your actual product or service. Visit MarketingProfs or Content Marketing Institute to learn how it works.
Email Marketing
How can you market effectively through email without turning it into spam? It’s a tricky balance, but Benchmark and AWeber will help you out.
Paid Search
Also known as Pay Per Click (PPC), Paid Search is where you bring in more traffic by purchasing ads to appear at the top of search engines. Don’t plunge in without help, though – visit WordStream and PPC Hero to learn more.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Need some help with Search Engine Optimization? Look no further than SEOmoz, Search Engine Roundtable and Wordtracker Academy for information on keywords, link building and more to rise to the top of Google without paying big bucks.
Analytics
Need hard data, such as graphs, charts and statistics to analyze your website's traffic and find your target demographic? Try reading Analytics on Search Engine Watch or Google Analytics Blog.
Blogging
You can’t just plunge into your marketing blog without guidance and expect it to be effective. First, look at How To Make My Blog for tips on getting started and designing. Next, check out ProBlogger for frequent updates about everything relating to blogging. If you want more visitors, Think Traffic will help you.
Social Media Marketing
Want to market through Facebook, Twitter and others, but don’t know where to start? Take a look at WindMill Networking and Social Media Explorer to learn the strategies you need.
Conclusion
If most of these marketing blogs seem right up your alley, you might need a one-stop place to read about everything that has to do with marketing. HubSpot, MarketingLand and Unbounce are all great sites. If you’re running a small business, Duct Tape Marketing might be right for you.
The ever-changing field of marketing takes a lot of work to keep up with, and that’s why we’re here to help. Read, study and apply what you know. The more work you put in, the bigger payoff you’ll get.