From a Marketing 101 class to the boardroom of a multi-billion dollar organization, business-minded individuals at every level know a value proposition can make or break a company's digital success.

If that sounds dramatic, remember that this simple message is your single best bet for convincing your audience to take the next step. Done well, a value proposition can help retain loyal customers; done poorly, it can stifle growth.

Many companies fail to display any values at all online. Peep Laja, founder of CXL, noted that a poor (or missing) value statement is one of the most common shortcomings of business websites.

If you have yet to share yours, you're not alone. This article will explore how to create and test your value proposition.

Attracting new customers is always important when growing a business, but customer retention is no less important. For most companies, it's four- to six-times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one, according to Relationship Building Strategist Ian Kingwill. If you aren't able to keep your churn rate low, then new client acquisitions can't grow business — they will only serve to replace the customers you've lost.

When it comes to retaining customers, brand loyalty is one of the best resources in your marketing toolkit. This loyalty is valuable and can only exist if there's a strong relationship between the customer and the company. Fortunately, this is entirely in your hands.

Digital ad creative is changing mostly because the devices on which we are consuming it are changing. A decade ago it was all about go big or go home. It was all desktop — all the time. In this era, the IAB introduced their Rising Stars. Big and in your face was the mantra. We didn't have to worry about the experience on a mobile device because frankly you couldn't experience much on mobile. Flash wouldn't work on most phones and mobile rich media wasn't very prolific, so static ads it was. They were small and easy to ignore. It didn't really matter anyway — after all that wasn't where our audience was, they were on their desktops and laptops. Now, as predicted by countless industry experts — that has reversed.

It's estimated that about 200 million people use ad blockers and nearly everyone with internet access will press "skip ad" as soon as they have the chance. This is why telling your story is more important than ever. You should be what consumers want — don't get in the way of it.

Logos, slogans, and images are all effective at connecting with a target audience and leaving a lasting impression. But these assets all gain value when they are fully integrated with the brand's larger narrative.

Because of its reach, digital marketing has been especially helpful to the rise of brand storytelling. With ads and marketing content taking many forms across many channels, marketers face an ever-growing need to unify this content under the banner of a larger, consistent theme/brand. The brand's story serves as a natural solution, providing a direction for ad and campaign creation while laying the foundation for a branded experience that can grow and evolve over time.

Calculating a return on investment (ROI) for some businesses is much easier than others. For instance, if a retail store has onsite ecommerce set up to track revenue then you can apply a simple calculation to derive at your ROI. You'd take the revenue gained over the cost spent for your marketing effort as your ROI calculation. Having access to true monetary revenue makes it pretty straightforward for marketers to understand their campaign ROI performance. But what about those marketers that are not tracking ecommerce or a monetary value that enables them to track ROI? How can they measure ROI with metrics outside of dollars to convey the story of return for their campaign?

Marketing ROI that is not tied to monetary values can be a bit tougher to quantify — and in some cases much more subjective. You must lean on other telling metrics such as lift, engagement and conversions to prove to the client what our marketing efforts are doing for them. Moreover, marketers need to partner with a trusted and experienced digital team to help them understand what metrics matter for ROI.

Even the best lawyers need to market their firm and its services to build a strong base of clients. But lawyers aren't marketers and running an efficient small business marketing strategy often isn't second nature.

Modern restaurants need more than an appetizing menu, enticing ambiance and welcoming staff to drive diners through their doors. While a positive write-up in the local newspaper may have been enough to fill tables in previous decades, restaurateurs in the digital age must embrace new tech trends in restaurant marketing to drive new business — and keep customers coming back.

Tech Presence Is Critical

If your potential customers are among the 77 percent of Americans who own a smartphone, chances are they've used their device to look up local restaurants, check reviews or even place an order, according to Pew Research Center.

In the broadest sense, the goal of marketing is to connect customers with products and brands that will improve their lives. In the past, marketers have used a variety of media to cast a wide net, hoping that customers who would benefit most from their products would see them. In today's world, marketers have a greater ability than ever before to focus their dollars on specific audiences, thanks to the overwhelming amount of data available. While this is great for spending efficiently and focusing on qualified customers, there's another benefit to aggressive targeting: increasing customer lifetime value.

In general, marketing isn't a "life or death" career. But for healthcare marketing professionals, that's not necessarily the case. Knowing how to successfully connect doctors with patients isn't only important for physicians trying to build their practice — it could save someone's life.

One of the most recent trends in the healthcare industry is multichannel marketing, which is the practice of reaching patients using a combination of indirect and direct communication methods. An example of this type of campaign might be a combination of social media posts, TV commercials and email campaigns that all share similar imagery and messaging. And though this type of marketing is effective across many industries, adoption of multichannel strategies has been slow, according to eMarketer.

For many, the concept of a persona likely conjures up images of false or created identities, often used in fictional stories to help super spies, evil villains or even dashing heroes foil their opponents. And while this concept is fascinating in this context, marketers know there are real-world applications for personas as well.

Known specifically as audience personas, this marketing tool can make your business more efficient, bring in more conversions and even help you make decisions for your business that extend far beyond just marketing. With all this considered, it's no wonder why 63 percent of marketers surveyed in a study by Curata noted that they create content with the use of buyer personas. But first, let's start off with the basics.