Featured

I’ve prattled on about the marketing stack for a few years now, but haven’t really explained each chunk. This 5-post series explains the stack as a whole, then piece-by-piece. I’m not some TV series jerk who will keep you hanging, though, wondering which of your favorite characters will die next (cough HBO cough cough). Instead,… Read More

Random

I’ve done some pretty awful presentations in my career. Here, I’ve pulled them all into a single, truly horrifying ‘ultimate’ slide deck. First, I pull them all together. Then I do the same presentation again, with annotations explaining where I goofed and how to avoid it.

Video

This webinar was given on June 19, 2014 Learn all about Local SEO best practices, including basic on-site SEO for businesses, business profiles, directory and citation providers, duplicate listings, reviews, and more in this free PortentU webinar. Watch the full video: Get the link bundle here. See just the slidedeck here.

Analytics

Marketers: You can no longer ignore mobile. If your team has not regularly addressed mobile, that needs to change. But it’s hard to focus on mobile, right? Starting now, that’s going to change: By using simple reports with basic metrics you can easily grab the attention of your marketing department. And, we have made a… Read More

Internet Marketing

Data tells a story about the past, and helps us understand what we can expect in the future. But just like life, data has no guarantees. Even with all the data points and information in the world, it takes an experienced mind to transform insight into meaningful action. Marketers need to fill the gap between… Read More

Social Media

If you work in social media, you’ve probably heard “Why?” more times than you can count. “Why does this matter?” “Why is social media valuable to my business?” “Why should we be paying you to help us?” I’ve been working in the social media world for three years now, and “why” questions are what I… Read More

Random

Today, Portent is 19 years old. It can now legally drink in Canada. I’ve screwed up a lot of stuff. But we’re still here, so I’ll give myself a small pat on the back. Clearly, we’ve done something right. If I could tell 26-year-old self 10 things to improve Portent’s first 19 years, here’s what… Read More

Random

Earlier this week, a ex-Portent employee-who-remains-a-fan sent me a note: Sure enough, it had happened again: Someone ripped off our site, images, text and all. They didn’t even bother to change the names. Apparently, we now have an office in Sydney: To me, there are three classes of plagiarists: The smart: They steal your copy,… Read More

PPC

Are you using attribution modeling or assisted conversion data in your PPC reports? If you’re not, you’re missing out on some golden opportunities to leverage data to your advantage. We all know the LNDC model (last non-direct click model—the default used by Google Analytics) is not comprehensive enough for us to see the big picture.… Read More

Internet Marketing

Photo Credit to aussiegall via Flickr, image not modified People are often confused about what a Project Manager actually does. Well, here at Portent, we’re the folks who have long guided projects to be timely, efficient, and profitable while making sure that the internal team feels supported and has all the information they need to… Read More

Internet Marketing

TL;DR version: Portent’s just launched RainGage Enterprise and RainGage™ Essentials. RainGage assesses your online marketing and recommends improvements that win you more business. It provides three layers of marketing recommendations: A strategic assessment across your entire marketing mix A tactical assessment showing areas for improvement A page-by-page, post-by-post (on RainGage Enterprise) and image-by-image set of… Read More

Are you looking to bring in more customers to your site and sell more products? One way to do this is by looking at the customer buying cycle (also known as the marketing funnel). This helps meet the needs of your customers at every step of the buying process. Every time a customer makes a… Read More

Internet Marketing

I gave a talk tonight to the SEMPDX crowd. It was an hour of ranting and raving about why digital agencies and in-house marketers are still treated like 1-trick vendors instead of marketing resources. I also went over the process I use when I create marketing strategies. But here’s the fun part: The whole presentation… Read More

I wouldn’t be surprised if some people in the internet marketing industry secretly called me an “old hat” behind my back. I’ve been at Portent for ten years now so maybe I deserve that. The average tenure at a company these days is 4.6 years . Fewer than 10% of people my age stay at… Read More

Internet Marketing

Site speed, site speed, site speed. Everyone around me is sick of hearing me rant about it, probably because I’ve pushed it on every client Portent’s had since, oh, 2008. Well, tough poo, ’cause I’m doing it again. Portent’s analytics genius, Michael Weigand, and his faithful right-hand man, Timothy Gillman, did some math based on… Read More

Internet Marketing

When you begin a new project with a client, it’s essential to hit the ground running at the speed of light. Doing so will go a long way towards earning trust from the client. Still, you can’t begin the heavy lifting without some standard info. So how do you successfully navigate the early contract waters?… Read More