I have a close friend who, although highly qualified and universally liked during the interview process, didn’t get the job she wanted because the employer was looking for a “purple squirrel.” While it may seem odd to be seeking out a festively colored rodent to do important work, there’s actually a real, Wikipedia-certified definition for this.  The purple squirrel is the person with exactly the right experience, the ideal knowledge, skills, and abilities to fit an open ready to do everything perfectly from the get-go, with no ramp-up, no guidance, and no training.

In the world of marketing, content is king.  Because of this, everyone is creating content and a lot of it.  According to Content Marketing Institute's annual survey, 88% of B2B marketers are using content creation as part of their marketing strategy.  With so much being produced, it's difficult to create content that will catch the eye of potential customers.  Hubspot's Neil Patel has written an article that gives us four tactical ways to create content that stands out and explains why these work.

Data-driven marketing is a method of extracting inferences and trends in populations.  Using data in order to better understand the customer and what they want creates opportunities that increase marketing effectiveness.  In this way, a more personalized customer experience can be achieved.  ZoomInfo and Ascend2 have released a new report, "Data-Driven Marketing Benchmarks For Success".  In this report, through the use of charts and commentary, we learn why data lives at the heart of the customer lifecycle as well as ways to improve data curation and management.

If you missed our Toolkit of the Month: The Budget Toolkit, you can still access it.  With our partner, Demand Metric, we have put together the budget templates needed in digital marketing.  You'll learn what templates you need, and how to format and track your budget.

Creating content that is engaging, relevant, and informative can be challenging.  Associations need good content that will keep their current members engaged and attract new members to their organization.  Finding the inspiration to create that content is often a struggle.  An article, written by Jennifer Barrell at Aptify, lists five ways to find new inspiration for content creation.