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There are a lot of reasons to avoid display ads. In recent years search, social, and video ads have cruised past display as the go-to ad format for digital marketers looking to give their campaigns a boost — and for good reason. There’s not much to love when you look at display ad performance in aggregate. People don’t generally click on them or trust them, and many are actively blocking them.

However, good marketers know better than to trust data in the aggregate. There’s evidence that display is undergoing a bit of a renaissance. Display networks have been infusing data and machine learning into display to create more effective targeting such as Google’s Dynamic Remarketing, and smarter automated bidding strategies. These changes are making it possible for some marketers to effectively use display campaigns to build awareness and drive leads.

So should you use display ads? The short answer is probably not, but the flowchart below is a quick way to find out for sure.

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Now that you have a foundation to decide whether or not you should use display ads, let’s break down the questions marketers should ask themselves before diving in.

7 Questions to Ask Before Launching Display Ads

1) Have you used ads before?

If you are new to ads, don’t start with display — even though they’re generally the type of ad that most readily comes to mind. Banner ads were one of the very first ways the internet monetized traffic, but there are now many, many more ad options. While display ads are evolving into a more effective awareness and acquisition tool, I wouldn’t recommend any first-time online advertiser start with them considering they’re often more complicated to set up and measure than other ad types.

2) Do you have time to educate yourself on display targeting?

If you are short on time, avoid display. While it’s easy to launch a shoddy display campaign in a pinch, if you want your ad to be maximally effective, you need to take the time to understand all the different alternatives display offers — which include a myriad targeting and creative options. If you’re pressed for time, try-self service social ads like Sponsored Updates or Facebook Lead ads instead.

3) Is your company bought into ads?

If your boss doesn’t like ads, she’ll hate display. Make sure management is bought into the idea of using ads as a way to grow business in the first place before exploring display ads. Display ads can drive relevant traffic to your site, but more often than not, they represent one touchpoint in a long customer journey. Unless you’ve got a sophisticated attribution model built out, it will be hard to calculate accurate ROI from display ad spend. If you need to demonstrate immediate value to your boss, start with a bottom-of-the-funnel ad campaign, which will more directly drive leads.

4) What display network are you considering?

Do you plan to use a third-party ad network that hasn’t established itself yet? Proceed with caution. Some of these companies promise lots of impressions, but bear in mind that impressions don’t grow your business. To move the needle, you need qualified leads, and those only come from a relevant audience. To ensure your ads drive relevant traffic, go with proven partners with great ad technology, such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

5) Are you in ecommerce or have a long sales cycle?

Display ad technology is more valuable for some industries than others, most notably ecommerce and B2B companies with long, complicated sales cycles. Here’s why:

• Ecommerce: Remarketing is a type of display targeting that advertises a specific product or message to a user who has already expressed interest in that product. If you’ve ever put a pair of sneakers in an online shopping cart but ultimately didn’t buy, you may have seen ads like these. Display ads that use remarketing targeting give ecommerce marketers a second chance with a customer they know is interested, and have a much higher CTR than display ads that use more generic targeting. Get an in-depth introduction to remarketing here.
• B2B companies with long sales cycles: With more product information online than ever before, your prospects are doing copious amounts of research before they ever talk to your sales team. Use display and social ads to target prospects who you think are in the market to buy your product. Although it can be hard to measure the impact of these ads, they will ensure your company stays top of mind throughout the buyer’s journey.

6) What’s your goal?

Display ads may or may not be the right choice for your campaign depending on your goal. Are you aiming for awareness, nurturing, or lead generation?

• Awareness: Display ads can be a wonderful way to grow awareness and create demand for your product. While it’s always a best practice to get as specific as possible with targeting, display can provide massive reach. Consumer brands or companies that want to drum up awareness fast can benefit from display ads.
• Nurturing: As long as you are using smart targeting, display can also help nurture leads and prospects down your funnel. Use strategic targeting like retargeting, similar audiences, custom audiences, or topic targeting if nurturing is your goal, and make sure your display ads support a larger marketing campaign.
• Lead generation: Generally, display is a bad way to capture leads or drive a specific action from a customer, like filling out a form. If lead generation is your goal, target only the most relevant audience, and use CPC bidding instead of CPM.

7) Are you running Google search campaigns?

If you’re already running Google search campaigns, bottom-of-the-funnel display ads can be a good complement. First, ensure you feel comfortable with the performance and profitability of your existing search campaigns, and then add bottom of the funnel display solutions like Remarketing Lists for Search Ads.

Display ads aren’t right for every B2B advertiser, but they can add significant value in the right situations. Still not sure if display ads are a smart idea for your business? A test never hurts.

Marketing tactics create different results for different companies, so just because something does (or doesn’t) work for one organization doesn’t mean it will (or won’t) for you. When it comes to ads, always trust your own data.

When you’ve got an important email to write, it can seemingly take hours. You write, revise, delete, and agonize over every word, link, and even your email signature. 

And if you are selling your staff’s time in the form of the billable hour, this can be a huge waste of resources. 

While we’re talking about one-on-one communication, it’s a worthwhile pursuit to create a library of canned email responses or templates that your team can use for specific activities or in response to clients. It ensures that the communication from your team is clear and consistent, makes it easier to respond to requests more quickly, and removes the uncertainty that junior staffers feel when dealing with a difficult situation.

Below you’ll find a starting point for building out your library of email templates that can be customized. Use these to make your client communication more efficient.

6 Email Templates for Communicating With Clients

1) When a Prospect Requests a Proposal

2) When a Client Requests Out-of-Scope Work

3) To Send Over a Project for Approval

4) To Follow Up With a Client

5) When You Need to Push a Deadline

6) To Ask for a Testimonial

Do you have what it takes to succeed in today’s modern marketing world?

As the marketing landscape continues to shift, the requirements and expectations surrounding content marketing roles are evolving. Even if you’ve got the strongest writing chops in the game, you’ll need to find other ways to expand your skills if you want to differentiate yourself.

While more and more businesses are seeking talent to fill communication and marketing roles that require constant adaptation to the latest trends, they often struggle to recruit and retain qualified professionals.

Thanks to outdated university programs, there’s a talent gap, and the next generation of modern marketers’ skills and knowledge must go beyond traditional curricula to remain competitive. So in this high-demand, low-supply content marketing economy, where are the jobs and what are recruiters searching for in the ideal applicant?

By examining over 3,300 job listings specific to content marketing on Indeed.com, Fractl’s latest research reveals the state of our industry’s job market and supports the notion that today’s competitive candidate must be a hybrid marketer — part technician, part artist.

3 Key Takeaways From Today’s Content Marketing Landscape

1) Experience is often valued over academic credentials.

There’s been a long-standing debate on whether experience or education is more important — some argue experience is more valuable than a degree, while others say a formal education is the foundation for a successful career.

By looking at the minimum level of experience required, as well as the highest level of education preferred, the data show degrees beyond a bachelor’s aren’t usually needed, even for senior-level positions. The findings support a Chronicle of Higher Education survey, which reveals the media and communication industry values experience over academic credentials.

2) Location makes all the difference.

Not surprisingly, states well known for their plethora of media giants and tech startups like New York and California had the highest number of content marketing jobs posted per capita, with Massachusetts being the highest at 37 jobs per 1,000 residents.

At the same time, states with growing creative economies like Washington and North Carolina also ranked high (18 and 12 respectively). Meanwhile, 12 states throughout the Great Plains and Mississippi Valley are essentially dead zones with zero postings for content marketers.

3) Hybrid skill sets are becoming more important.

Most importantly, the data found a recurring set of key skills recruiters are searching for in the ideal content marketing applicant. Individually, these skills are widespread in various marketing roles but together, these skills create the ideal hybrid content marketer that drives innovation and engagement.

9 Technical & Creative Skills Every Content Marketer Should Master

Technical Skills

As marketing becomes increasingly more dependent on online platforms and digital tools, technical skills are essential. Familiarity and proficiency of these skills and tools help once-siloed departments collaborate more efficiently, and courses and certifications allow marketers to easily demonstrate their commitment and competence.

1) SEO

At the very least, content marketers must have a basic understanding of SEO tactics like keyword analysis, link building, and on-site and off-site optimization in order to create and execute successful campaigns and strategies.

The complex world of technical SEO can seem intimidating, but Moz offers an in-depth Beginner’s Guide to SEO outlining everything from how search engines operate to common myths and misconceptions. For professionals looking to gain practical experience in technical optimization strategies, Coursera partnered with UC Davis to design a six-course specialization.

2) Google Analytics

Given that the final phase of a content marketing campaign is measuring and reporting performance, proficiency with one of the best and most commonly used data analysis tools is a necessity. Google provides free training, support, and even certification for their analytics tools, including online courses ranging from platform principles to mobile app fundamentals.

3) HTML & CSS

While most content marketers won’t need to build an entire website from scratch, knowing just a bit of the most common and basic coding languages — HTML and CSS — can help immensely, particularly when working with content management systems for everyday tasks like blog posts and landing pages. For quick reference guides, HubSpot offers a free guide to HTML hacks plus a FAQ on CSS.

4) Programming

Not understanding programming basics puts marketers at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating fair budgets, setting realistic timeframes, and knowing the possibilities and limitations of potential projects when collaborating.

Codecademy has been a go-to authority for learning to code due to its interactive and, more importantly, free tutorials. Udemy also offers low-cost courses in programming languages. And both offer lessons for the basics, as well as more advanced languages like Ruby and Python.

Creative Skills

While most technical skills reflect specific, concrete, and practical expertise, creative skills are more conceptual. Though usually learned best through firsthand experience, seeking out advice from industry leaders is another useful way to build these in-demand talents.

5) Writing

Content marketers must consistently produce quality content in order to tell their brand’s story while engaging a target audience and influencing the customer experience. Regardless of the format, channel, or vehicle, writing will always be the core of content marketing.

The industry raves about Ann Handley’s bestseller Everybody Writes, an exemplary writing guide and content marketing handbook. HubSpot also put together a list of resources and tools to help improve writing … because sometimes words are hard.

6) Marketing Strategy

Depending on your organization’s goals, there are a lot of different ways to approach your marketing strategy. However, generally speaking, all marketing strategies aim to unite various marketing and sales efforts to achieve a competitive advantage. Content marketers must understand not only how their role impacts the overall marketing strategy, but also the bigger picture — the strategy itself.

Want to sharpen your skills? Harvard Business Review complied their top 10 reads on strategic marketing, and HubSpot created a strategy guide specific to content marketers.

7) Content Strategy

While content marketing and content strategy are often used interchangeably, both are very different practices. Ultimately, content strategy is the planning and management of content, while content marketing is a marketing approach that uses content to establish customer relationships and position the brand as a credible expert. Still, one can’t exist without the other, so content marketers should be well versed in strategy to avoid creating content with no long-term vision or plan.

To improve your content strategy approach, check out Erin Kissane’s The Elements of Content Strategy for insight on its roots and basic principles.

8) Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is commonly referred to as the end goal while content marketing is the means. Establishing yourself or your brand as an industry expert or authority leader through demonstration is an essential skill in a competitive landscape.

Recognizing the term’s various definitions, LinkedIn’s detailed three-part e-book specific to marketers helps demystify thought leadership and its applications throughout each stage of the buying cycle.

Dorie Clark’s Stand Out interviews industry thought leaders to teach readers how to develop ideas that go beyond self-promotion and perspectives that will inspire others to create an organic following.

9) Brand Development

Brand development entails everything from defining and positioning the brand to distinguishing its value. Taking into consideration the overall business strategy, brand development maintains an organization’s image to build brand equity and ensure brand integrity.

HubSpot offers two great resources for content marketers in regards to branding, an essential guide as well as a free ebook explaining online branding’s role in inbound marketing.

Ready to Improve Your Content Marketing Skills?

Regardless of years of experience or level of education, the most vital takeaway for any content marketer is the importance of continuing education and staying up to date on the latest industry news and trends.

Beyond the specific books, digital guides, and courses mentioned above, there are a whole host of podcasts, webinars, newsletters, and articles readily available. Sites like HubSpot, Moz, MarketingProfs, and Contently are just a handful of resources curated by industry leaders that you should reference regularly for continuous improvement and education.