Have you ever noticed that brands are like people? In order to attract—and keep—loyal customers, your brand should resemble someone you’d like to grab a beer or coffee with on the weekend, or someone you know you can call anytime just to talk about life. Basically, your brand should be trustworthy. But much like the art of developing lasting friendships, it takes time for customers to feel comfortable enough to refer your brand to their friends. And while referrals are the most effective way to ...

In an amazing twist of karmic justice, Randi Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg’s sister and a former Facebook executive) recently fell victim to Facebook’s confounding privacy settings. Randi had posted a candid family photo for her Facebook friends, only to see it go viral on Twitter.

We're sure you've heard it said that in a tight economy, marketing budgets are the last thing to cut. But, why? Here are a few words from B2B leaders backing that stance, and the facts indicating that digital marketing remains the best place to allocate your budget in 2013.

Close your eyes. No really, close your eyes and let your fingers dance across your keyboard. Open your eyes. Now, break up the jumble of text with a few haphazard bullets, lists, and stats. Then, log in to your dashboard and publish your improvised masterpiece on your company blog. You can blast the email list while you’re at it too. Before you hit send, make sure that there are a few words underlined in blue to give your helpless clients an escape route to the nearest website. Congratulations, ...

If you’ve done any research on successful referral marketing use cases, you’ve probably run into a lot of the same examples over and over again.

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from our most recent eBook, "The Executive's No-Nonsense Guide to Referral Marketing." To read the full eBook, click here.  If you polled a group of marketing leaders and asked them to name their favorite type of lead, one response would stand out: Referrals.