As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact companies, schools, and individuals, it has also changed the summer, work, and school plans of college students throughout the country. Students already had to accept the unfortunate news that they wouldn’t be finishing their spring semesters as planned and that they wouldn’t be having the summer they expected, and now they will need to learn how to face the unique challenges and excel under the new guidelines and restrictions for this upcoming school year.

If you haven’t heard of the term “Zoom Bombing,” consider yourself lucky. If you’ve experienced it yourself, I’m sorry. Either way, consider yourself warned. It’s happening and will likely continue to plague our new virtual meeting world.

Today the business environment is ever-changing, and the use of digital marketing is leaving traditional marketing in its wake, for good reason.  Business operations today are more complex. Companies are challenged to understand and utilize a myriad of channels while attempting to retain existing customers and also connect with potential new customers every single day. 

Google has always seen itself as more than a search bar.  In fact, if you saw the news last week, Google is committing itself to the healthcare space from a variety of angles. 

Google announced last Friday that Geisinger Health CEO David Feinberg has been hired to head up their healthcare initiatives.  Feinberg will work to coordinate Google’s move into the $3 trillion healthcare market across many groups including Google Brain (the artificial intelligence team), Nest home automation group and Google Fit wearables team.

I had a conversation with a recent college graduate last week and I asked him if he used LinkedIn to prep for a meeting. His response surprised me. “I already have a job. I don’t need LinkedIn.” Really? In this time of big-data, constant networking and social media driven everything, LinkedIn still is thought of as just a place to find a job?

LinkedIn is so much more. And if you’re not using it as part of your organizations digital marketing strategy you are missing out.

Plus 5 Free Tools to Get You Started

A marketing technology (or “martech”) stack is no longer optional for mid-sized companies. In fact, for most companies, it’s not a matter of choosing if it’s a good idea to use technology to market your brand. Instead, it’s a matter of choosing which pieces of marketing technology to incorporate in order to get you the best lead generation and business results.

The marketing technology landscape is complicated, period. From ecommerce tools to A/B testing to social media to live chat to heat mapping to ABM software, martech solutions exist today for nearly every facet of marketing that you can imagine.

So, let’s start with the basics and simplify the landscape a bit. Below are five essential elements that make up a basic marketing tech stack, plus five free tools to help you get started leveraging technology for better marketing results.