17 Must-Read Marketing Posts from 2017

The marketing industry reached a tipping point in 2017.

New, artificially intelligent tools are working to make our campaigns smarter than ever before. Increased access to consumer data enables more contextual, relevant content. And, more and more manual tasks are being left to automation.

But, we are just scraping the surface of disruption to come.

In the words of ChiefMartec.com’s Scott Brinker (@chiefmartec), “...the truth is that AI is already having a significant impact on marketing. And over the next several years, it will dramatically reshape the nature of business and marketing — no hype.”

Before we push on into 2018, we’d like to take this time to reflect on the best of 2017—PR 20/20 style.

Below, we’ve curated our top 17 blog posts from 2017. We ranked posts in order of pageviews, and excluded any with an average time on page that fell below two minutes.

Cheers to our blog readers in 2017. Enjoy a bit of marketing know-how over a hot cocoa!

The Most Viewed Blog Posts of 2017

1. 4 Tips to Ace Your Next Marketing Agency Job Interview. Let’s face it; interviews make (almost) everyone squirm. In our most-viewed post of 2017, Tracy Lewis (@Tracy_J_Lewis) featured four tried and true tips to land your dream job. An oldie but goodie, this post was originally published in 2012 and was updated for comprehensiveness in 2015.
2. 15 Steps to Build Your 2017 Marketing Plan. December and January are crucial months for marketing and business planning. Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) laid out 15 steps to simplify and optimize the planning process.
3. 15 Tips to Improve Your Marketing Performance. Setting aggressive growth goals for 2018? See what you can be doing differently with Paul’s 15 tips to accelerate performance. Some are based on foundational strategy (e.g. figure out the metrics that matter) and others are more abstract (e.g. Stop making, and accepting, excuses!).
4. The Campaign Flowchart: How to Create a Granular Marketing Dashboard. You can easily visualize your performance data with something as simple as a flowchart. Not sure where to start? Keith Moehring (@keithmoehring) breaks down fives steps to building a marketing dashboard flowchart.
5. How to Use Buzzsumo for Content Marketing. When it comes to content curation and discovery, we are huge advocates of Buzzsumo. In this post, Mike Kaput (@mikekaput) explains exactly how we leverage the tool to improve our content marketing efforts. Beyond curation, Buzzsumo ranks influencers by page and domain authority and also gives you the ability to do a direct competitor comparison.
6. Marketing Strategy v. Sales Strategy. How do marketing and sales approach similar scenarios? To break down the inevitable barrier, it’s critical for marketers to understand the sales dichotomy. See how you can build a high-growth campaign that’s aligned with sales strategy.  
7. The Basics of Coding: How to Get Started. Coding is a coveted skill, especially for modern marketers. Even a basic understanding of coding languages gives marketers a competitive advantage to guide website development, manipulate web pages, integrate tracking and reporting technologies, and more. Check out the full post to dive in.
8. Point Pricing: The Story of How We (Finally) Eliminated Hours from Marketing Agency Pricing. This post recaps the full origin story of PR 20/20’s value-based pricing model, point pricing. It includes a recap of its full evolution, dating back to PR 20/20’s original pricing model in 2006. If you’re interested in learning more about point pricing, check out the upcoming educational series, Point Pricing for Agencies. Presented by HubSpot, the three-course, on-demand series will kickoff on January 11.
9. Students: How to Land Your Dream Marketing Internship. Marketing employers are on the hunt for candidates with hybrid experience. Securing a worthwhile internship with a brand that will cultivate a valuable experience is more critical than ever. One of our previous interns, Raquel Richards (@RaquelMRichards), offers six steps to land your dream internship.
10. How Marketing Can Support the Sales Process. Obviously a popular topic, this post tackles a deeper integration between sales and marketing. Co-authors Jessica Miller (@Jessica_Joellen) and Tracy feature three steps for marketers to better support their sales cohorts.
11. Schema.org SEO Markup: What Non-Coder Marketers Need to Know. This is most definitely among the most technical posts ever published on PR 20/20. Keith walks you through what you need to know when integrating Schema.org, including types and properties, marketing up your pages, and more.
12. My Online Journey into Married Life: Changing My Name on Social Profiles. If you’re going through (or about to go through) the name-change experience, this read is for you. After taking the plunge in 2012, Tracy documented a step-by-step process for changing your name on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest—while preserving her personal brand.
13. Maiden to Married: A Channel-by-Channel Guide to Changing Your Name on Social Media. Similar to number 12, this post is more recent (published in 2016) and up-to-date with social network processes. It also features bonus tips to applying for jobs with a new name.
14. How to Build Your Inbound Marketing GamePlan. This post gets back to the basics, introducing the inbound marketing gameplan. Authored by Paul, this is a good read if you’re just getting started with digital transformation and the inbound methodology.
15. The Marketing Growth Hackathon: Spend Less Time Planning, More Time Doing. Looking for new ideas to growth hack your 2018 approach? The Marketing Growth Hackathon is a strategic planning model that Paul first unveiled at INBOUND 2015. This post explains how the process works. Plus, watch the related webinar for 25+ lead generation campaigns and quick win ideas.
16. Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Writers and Content Marketers? This is a question that Mike hears a lot from readers of the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute (MAII), a new community for modern marketers created and powered by PR 20/20. This post breaks down content automation in layman’s terms, plus questions to ask if you’re considering content automation.
17. Passing the Google Analytics IQ Exam (2015). For marketers, being Google Analytics savvy is no longer an option. It’s mandatory. So, if you’re prepping for the exam certification, check out this guide to for test prep materials and tips.

We hope these posts inspired your new and improved marketing strategy. Best of luck to you and your team in 2018!