More than 20 million individuals visit Amazon every month, making the platform the top e-commerce website in the U.S. Today's consumers don't use Amazon solely to make purchases -- they use the marketplace to check prices, discover new products, and research items they might want to buy. Amazon continues to dominate the shopping journey, and a reported 66 percent of consumers turn to Amazon first.

Does your customer relationship management strategy have what it takes to reach Generation Y? It's estimated that by 2021, an additional $394 billion in revenue could be gained from artificial intelligence adoption in CRM activities in the U.S. As companies grow and technology evolves at a faster-than-ever pace, collecting, storing and providing data is becoming a bigger and bigger task.

The sky starts to dump the first snow of the year. Looking down at your dress shoes, you make a mental note to order some sturdier winter boots. Later that day, you're comparing two boot brands on your laptop and get distracted -- no more online shopping at work. When you get home, you grab your tablet to continue browsing boots. Maybe you can find a recommendation on Twitter?

People have been giving presentations for thousands of years, from Moses with his stone tablets to Elon Musk revealing his grand plans to colonize Mars. While the elements of a great pitchman generally have remained the same over the past 5,000 years -- conviction, charisma, credibility -- today's successful presenters do more than just get in front of an audience and talk.

Several conferences I was scheduled to attend have been canceled in the past week. All of the sponsors cited an abundance of caution in the face of the unknown consequences of coronavirus transmission and outright COVID-19 pneumonia. That's all to the good, but we need to get business done even in the face of the virus, because business has to propel itself forward or individual companies wither.

Product vendors are facing a growing negative reaction from consumers concerned about product quality and fake or misleading product reviews posted online, according to new research. A large majority of consumers polled said they would flee a brand if the manufacturer sold them poor quality products, ran dishonest or misleading ads, or was associated with fake or fraudulent reviews.

Perhaps you're a direct-to-consumer brand trying to build brand awareness and tell your story. Perhaps you're looking to increase branded search volume across search engines like Amazon, Google, Bing and others. Maybe your brand is focused on new customer acquisition in your sales funnel and you have dedicated marketing resources and asset creation.

Social selling has changed how online consumers are interacting with and buying from e-commerce businesses. Why? Because it's had a huge impact on the buyer's journey as a whole. Today, we live in a digital world, and this means the consumer has the upper hand, thanks to the growth in e-commerce and the Internet of Things. The modern buyer does more research up front and online.

There were 4,521,480,071 Internet users as of Dec. 1, 2019. A month later it was closer to 5 billion users. A decade ago there were fewer than a billion social network users. That's worldwide. That user growth has been a leading indicator of the rise of alternative social networking platforms. Marketers -- and consumers -- are always on the lookout for the newest thing with which to engage.

The business-to-business buyer's journey is often difficult and long. The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers, each of them bringing information they independently gathered to share with the group before making a decision. This information often opens the door for new suggestions, creating an even longer buying process.

The prison workforce development program run by Televerde delivers significant economic and cultural value, concludes a study recently conducted at Arizona State University's Seidman Research Institute. Televerde trains and employs incarcerated women, and it offers many of them employment when they leave prison. Televerde CSRO Michelle Cirocco spoke about the study and about the long-term benefits of Televerde's program.

Marketing automation isn't a thing of the future -- it's very much a part of the here and now for small and midsized businesses across the world. However, many are unaware of a variety of marketing automation tools that can help SMBs reach customers in a timely and effective way. To compete with larger firms on customer reach, SMBs need to approach their marketing plan with a strategic mindset.

Research indicates that 66 percent of online shoppers start their product searches on Amazon, and Amazon shoppers behave differently than buyers on other online platforms and at brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon has set up its listings so that it is simple to "window shop" and compare competitive products. A brand must make sure to position its products in a way that shows how it is different from competitors in the marketplace.

Today's consumers live in a digital world, which means they can retrieve all the information they desire at the touch of a button, putting them in control. Added to this, they have become immune to traditional outbound marketing methods -- such as billboards and television advertisements -- and they expect brands and businesses to tailor their messages based on customers' individual preferences.

The world of paid digital advertising is changing fast. Over the last year alone, marketers have had to adapt to big changes on Facebook's platform. They now have to reckon with the continued growth of Amazon, which is taking an ever-larger bite out of online advertising budgets. Even Google, long the alpha dog in digital marketing, is altering its approach with the changing times.

More shoppers. Increased sales. Larger orders. This year's five-day stretch between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday left echoing "cha-chings" ringing through the retail atmosphere. A record 190 million Americans shopped during Thanksgiving weekend, and they're not done yet. This will be the first year that every day in November and December will surpass $1 billion in online sales.

B2B marketing is evolving -- and it's not just the industry itself. Vendor marketing efforts with customers can and should evolve as well. When you see a vendor selected repeatedly, or it officially earns a designation as a preferred vendor, it's a sign of marketing evolution. Most B2B marketing efforts begin from a cold start. Either a vendor is new or it is entering a new market.

If Black Friday is the biggest sales day of the year, is it necessarily the best? For many small merchants, it seemed Black Friday was more beige than black. Black Friday is the biggest sales day of the year, but it's often dominated by massive merchants. For smaller businesses, there are other peak sales days that might be better suited to their unique positioning.

There were more than 170,000 people at Dreamforce a couple of weeks ago, and many more watching from afar. Also, there were well over 2,000 sessions. Numerous announcements sprang from the big Salesforce event. Some announcements and sessions, like the Tim Cook fireside chat, stand out. Of the top six, I reckon that five were more about integration and working across vendor boundaries than CRM.

Now is the time when growth-minded organizations and their sales leaders begin to evaluate this year while looking ahead to the next. It's a time to identify opportunities for improvement, anticipate industry changes, and solidify a sales strategy that will align with the evolving expectations of business-to-business buyers, emerging technologies, and the company's business goals.

In today's highly competitive B2B software industry, it's not enough to staff a call center and sit back and wait for customers to reach out when they need you -- it's imperative that you take the initiative. When customers have so many solution vendors to choose from, service becomes a strategic differentiator to set your company apart from the crowd.

Direct-to-consumer commerce, or D2C, is on the rise. Increasingly, consumers are expecting to interact directly with the companies that market and manufacture products. "Direct-to-consumer commerce has been enhanced by the explosion of the Internet. E-commerce provides a more convenient and frictionless buying experience," said Peter Edlund, chief solutions evangelist at DiCentral.

With Dreamforce approaching, it's no surprise that Salesforce is making a flurry of announcements. What is surprising are two big ones involving partnering with other vendors, mostly on infrastructure -- announcements that I believe make the idea of an information utility more real with each passing day. I see evidence of an information utility forming.

The amount of data we create each day is astronomical. The digital universe likely will reach 44 zettabytes in 2020 -- 40 times more bytes than there are stars existing in the observable universe. To say that's a lot of data is a colossal understatement -- but is this truly surprising? After all, we can take phone calls from watches and stream music from refrigerators.

Consumers increasingly are shopping by voice rather than typing on a keyboard or searching on a phone. People are growing more comfortable with voice assistants, as the tech becomes smarter and more conversational every day. "Consumers appreciate the simplicity of using voice to shop," said Shilp Agarwal, CEO of Blutag. "Users can express their purchasing intent much more quickly over voice."

Each person interprets an image in countless subjective ways, based on individual biases. However, when searching for a product on the Internet, most people prefer accuracy over multiple interpretations of a single object. Putting the appropriate tags on images ensures better searchability for users. Doing this manually, though, can be inefficient and prone to errors.

The FTC announced settlements of a series of fraudulent marketing charges against two high-profile firms. The actions taken make it clear that anyone who engages in similar illegal behavior will face enforcement action, the FTC said. In the first case, Devumi agreed to settle the FTC's first-ever complaint challenging the sale of fake indicators of social media influence.

Mobile phones have come a long way since Zack Morris lugged his brick of a cellphone around the halls of Bayside High School in Saved by the Bell. If Zack had one of today's smartphones, he'd be texting Kelly on WhatsApp, posting pictures of himself and A.C. on Instagram, and trolling Screech on Twitter. Today's smartphones have become essential to human communication.

Not so long ago, marketing usually meant gathering some demographic data, placing ads in selected print and broadcast media, stuffing mailboxes with direct mail, plastering the countryside with billboards, and more recently, bombarding the universe with spam. Marketers no longer can focus on delivering static messages, regardless of how "targeted" or "multichannel" they may be.

I'll admit it, it was love at first sight when I purchased my first MacBook. It was my iPhone that prompted my decision to give up years of PC efficiencies and dive head first into learning a new operating system, but familiarity had kept me complacent for too long. Still, I remember the excitement of unpacking my new laptop. It struck me then that Apple knew me better than I knew myself.