I’ve been listening to Avenue Q lately (#throwback). I really commiserate with Princeton. What am I going to do with my life? Why can’t I live on Avenue A?  While some questions are hard to answer, others are much simpler. Like, what’s coming in the future of Internet marketing? Mary Meeker, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), released her annual Internet Trends Report, which outlines the Internet innovations and market changes we should expect to see over the next year. 

Search impression share. Those three words — just 21 letters — carry a lot of weight in our office. If you’re a Ford dealer, you know why. Last year, Ford created a new co-op policy requiring dealerships to use half of all digital media funds for paid search, unless search impression share was at least 35%. 

See the whole board. That’s the advice you need to launch a victorious campaign in chess — and it’s the same strategic approach you should use when studying your automotive sales funnel. Do you have all pieces in the right place? Are you anticipating moves and thinking ahead? Are you assessing every aspect of the game? You can only improve your sales figures when you’ve learned how every stage of the sales funnel affects the others.

If you’ve read a blog post written by me before, I probably mentioned Evernote in it. I’ve been singing the praises of the note-taking service for the better part of a decade. So when my dad found out I also used Google Keep, it was kind of a big deal.

“I’m Jenny, a project manager for 9 Clouds, and to be honest, the last year was kind of a dumpster fire.” That’s how I introduced myself to a group of 25 women — strangers — at the first session of EmBe’s Women’s Leadership Program. What an introduction, right?

My first day working at 9 Clouds, I knew there was something magical about this place. The reason? There was a donut sticker on the break room door. Silly, I know. But little did these people know how much I love donuts. I mean, I really like donuts. It doesn’t matter if they are glazed or filled — I love them all.

Sometimes, we say hurtful things that we don’t mean. We feel guilt when we blab something regretful to someone’s face, and we usually end up apologizing to them later on. However, when it comes to leaving hurtful review comments about a business, we don’t hold back — and we certainly don’t apologize. But why? Businesses have feelings, too! Seeing negative reviews online can be a terrifying experience for a company — and why shouldn’t they be? Imagine the anxiety you’d have if someone left your business a one-star review for other potential customers to see. No matter how fair the review is,…

While I’ve been working on search engine optimization (SEO)  and search engine marketing (SEM) for various clients for almost a year now, heading to my first SEO-specific conference made me feel like a new greenhorn with sea legs. Would I be perplexed by the all of the jargon? Or would this be a conference for beginners, where I would already understand most of the topics? After my quarterly review in March, I added “going to an SEO/SEM conference” to my list of quarterly professional goals. I had been hoping to find the perfect conference to help me improve my SEO skills. I’d been to a…

“Can you hear me now?” More like, “Can you understand me now?” If you’re like me, it’s much easier to put your thoughts into writing than speak them out loud. I always either say more words than I should or don’t say enough of them. There’s no happy medium. For a project manager like me, efficient and effective communication with clients is key for a successful relationship. Writing an email helps me review and edit my own thoughts to help me get to the point faster. But how do you know when not to email and when to pick up the phone to have…

You’re frustrated. You’re not getting the numbers you want for your car sales, and you think your sales funnel might be more backed up than a clogged drain. So what’s wrong with your data? In automotive marketing, it’s easy to assume that the problem lies in your contacts. Am I getting the type of leads I need? What can I do to increase the number of people who are coming to my website?

The three hottest months of the year are about to begin. While the trees are blooming and the butterflies are flying, we can dust off our sandals and wiggle our toes under the warmth of the blazing sun. Now is the ideal time to frolic on the beach, eat watermelon, and capture as much vitamin D as you can. . . . Or, if you’re anything like me, you don’t mind hibernating indoors, enjoying recommended beach reads with the AC on full blast. (I’m a bit of a summer hater.) Summer may get mixed reviews. But we’re sure you’ll love…

For a scrawny nine-year-old kid, nothing will challenge your confidence like coming boot-to-hoof with a filthy 600-pound hog. It was a late South Dakotan spring, and it was time to clean out the pen and put down fresh bedding for the herd. My dad entrusted me with the duty of guarding the open gate to the hog pen while he tediously scooped the hog yard with a big green tractor. After a few minutes of watching the tractor go back and forth through the gate, an enormous, filthy sow swayed up to me.