An AB test can be a great tool for nonprofit or small business marketing. Whether you're doing the marketing yourself or overseeing a team, it's important to understand how AB testing works — when to do it, how to do it, and what kind of effort you can expect to put into it.

Having worked in the nonprofit world for many years, I know the feeling of being ashamed of your nonprofit's website. The organization is doing great work, but the site just doesn't do it justice. Or the site seems to somehow draw more attention to the organization's shortcomings than to its strengths. The design may be outdated, traffic may be low, there may be no engagement, donations, or e-mail subscriptions coming in through the site—all of these are symptoms that there's a problem.

Fortunately, you can turn your nonprofit website around—even if you don't have a budget for a totally new site.

Nothing compares to spending 4 days with 22,000 marketers, a handful of inspiring celebrities and hundreds of educational sessions on all things marketing, sales and the human experience.

Inbound17 was everything I’ve grown to expect from HubSpot's yearly conference: totally moving keynotes (Michelle Obama), entertainment that makes my spouse increasingly jealous every year (Judd Apatow), free massages and head shots and a stunning variety of food trucks everyday at lunch (vegan!) and of course leading thought in the sales and marketing industry.

HubSpot's INBOUND conference, held every fall in Boston, is the one conference Yodelpop has attended every year since we were founded. Not only do we tap into an incredible amount of marketing information that we bring back to our work, we always make great connections with clients, marketers, and HubSpot team members. Watching the video recap reminds me of the impressive range of the stories HubSpot brought before 21,000 people this year: keynoters included Michelle Obama, Roxanne Gay, Billie Jean King, Issa Rae, Piera Gelardi, Brene Brown, and so many more people I admire. 

When looking for SEO help, small business owners can get some pretty complicated advice, because SEO is constantly changing. Search engine algorithms change, and social media and other advertising platforms continue to challenge our ability to attract traffic from organic search. 

But the fundamentals of good SEO haven't really changed: attracting traffic is about publishing content that's valuable to your ideal customers, and SEO is about showing that value to them when they're doing online research. (This was all true back in 2014, when we published this SEO blog.) Finding the language your ideal customers are using, and employing it effectively, is still a great method of not just getting traffic but improving your understanding of your business. 

Researching long-tail keywords and building them naturally into your content will help you better optimize your site for search, which will result in more organic traffic, leads and, eventually, customers. 

In this blog I'm going to share some foundations of researching and using longtail keywords. 

Email marketing for small business is either (a) the tool that will rescue your marketing plan from certain disaster, or (b) a relic of marketing strategies past, as obsolete as a 1980s "portable phone." It depends on who you ask. 

If you ask me, based the evidence I've seen, email is a small business marketing tactic that's worth its word count in gold. Here's why:

I happened to pick up the Wall Street Journal while traveling last week, and this story caught my eye: PetMed Asks Google to Remove Tramadol Ads From Search Results. In it, an executive blames Google's algorithm for displaying the company's ads with certain problematic search terms.

The PetMed story raises important questions for current and potential PPC advertisers: What if any risks do you face in engaging in PPC? Who bears responsibility when it plays a role in illegal or harmful activities? And what can you do to minimize the risk of that happening?

By now, most of us appreciate the unique and powerful pull of stories, but when it comes to small business digital marketing, it’s a crucial tool that we often forget.

Your small business marketing strategies provide the roadmap for your tactics, such as your marketing collateral, and give the framework for great stories told through compelling content online and beyond.

Even as the rules continue to evolve, small business digital marketing is one area of your overall marketing strategy in which content is still king.

A key goal of the marketing collateral you create for your small business is to share your brand’s story with the world. Before you begin broadcasting that story, it’s important to take several behind-the-scenes steps.

Everyone on your team – not just the marketing department –should understand what your brand means and what it stands for. A clear articulation of your mission and reason for being will drive everything about your small business marketing, including the traditional elements of collateral.

Before you create your collateral, here are some internal tools to help you understand and define your brand.

Updated March 2019

Even social media-savvy marketers in the nonprofit sector ask this question, and there's no shame in it. Most nonprofits are active on Facebook, but in many organizations there's internal debate about what's the best format: a Facebook group or a Facebook page.