If your paid advertising budget has felt less effective over the past two years, you are not imagining it. The cost of buying attention on the major platforms has been rising steadily — and the trend is not reversing. Meta’s average CPM — the cost to reach 1,000 people — has risen approximately 20% year...Read More

When most people think about influencer marketing, they picture celebrity partnerships — a famous face, a massive following, and a price tag to match. For years, that model dominated the conversation around influencer strategy. The data has moved on. And so have the smart marketers. Micro-influencers — creators with followings typically between 10,000 and 100,000...Read More

There is a quiet crisis happening inside marketing budgets across the country, and it does not show up on any campaign report. Businesses are buying marketing technology they are not using. And the scale of the waste is significant. According to the CMO Survey, only 56.4% of purchased martech tools are actually being used. [1]...Read More

Most businesses choose their marketing channels based on familiarity, not data. They run Facebook ads because they have always run Facebook ads. They go to trade shows because they went last year. They invest in LinkedIn because someone told them it is where B2B buyers are. What they rarely do is look at the actual...Read More

The expectations placed on marketing teams keep climbing. The budgets, largely, do not. That is the central tension revealed in Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey — and it is a tension that marketing leaders across industries are navigating right now. Marketing budgets remain effectively flat at 7.7% of company revenue in 2025, unchanged from the...Read More

Most businesses treat their Google Business Profile like a set-it-and-forget-it checkbox. Fill in the address, add a phone number, upload a photo, and move on. Meanwhile, they are pouring thousands of dollars a month into paid ads. Here is the problem with that approach: the data on local search says organic local visibility is often...Read More

Most businesses know they should be doing more with marketing automation. Few realize just how much money they are leaving on the table by not doing it. Here is the number that should get your attention: marketing automation programs return $5.44 for every dollar spent, across platform, content, and integration costs combined. [1] That is...Read More

Higher education has evolved. What was once a “brick-and-mortar” ticket to a great job, has now become something different. Far different. You see, as the landscape of higher education continues to transform, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for online college learning. Already, online education has become a central pillar of academic...Read More

Just like any thriving business, colleges and universities, especially primarily online institutions catering to adult learners, depend on a steady flow of new customers. Or, in the case of higher ed, new students. Unfortunately, if your pipeline of prospects dries up, enrollments sink and so does your bottom line. And right now, that’s not just...Read More

The statistics don’t lie. Earning a degree fully online has become more popular than ever. Here are the top early stats for 2026 that all primarily online institutions should be paying attention to… Crossing a Quarter: 25% of all college enrollees attend class fully online.[1] Borders Aren’t Boundaries: More than 1.6 million “out of state”...Read More