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Stop what you're doing right now. Close your eyes, and picture your idea of success. What do you see?

A high-paying job? A fancy car? A business idea that took off? A happy relationship?

Now ponder this: in any of those images of success, do you see the risks that were taken and even the failures that happened alongside the success? Or do you only see the bright and shiny 'success,' packaged up in a pretty bow?

Chances are, you're in the latter camp—like most people. And because people believe success is often devoid of failure and struggle, it stops people from even trying. It's too big of a risk to try and possibly fail, they think, so why even begin? The same holds true for potentially challenging, time-consuming or risky marketing activities or campaigns. 

If you want to take your marketing campaigns to the next level, you've got to test them. How do you do that? With A/B testing. It's sometimes called split testing. What is A/B testing? It's basically comparing two versions of a web page, email or banner to see which one performs better.

You can compare these by showing the two variants, calling them A and B, to similar visitors simultaneously. See which one gives the best conversion rate and then use that one moving forward! It's simple, but also necessary.

It's the beginning of 2017 and if you still haven't gotten on board the video marketing train, there's still time.

You may have already used some form of video in your marketing strategy at some point. As the new year begins, it's clear that 2016 was a year of revolution in video marketing and that you cannot survive without video marketing any longer.

Wyzowl released statistics for last year that reported 61% of businesses have used video as a marketing tool and 66% of these same companies never used video a mere year earlier. It's a trend that's progressed rapidly, and keeps growing faster than we think because:

• 75 million people in U.S. watch videos online everyday
• Embedded videos on web sites can increase traffic up to 55%
• Simply having the word "video" in the subject line of an email can increase open rates by 13%
• Nearly 40% of all videos today are watched on mobile devices

If you can make them laugh, well then you've won half the battle, and probably you've won them over too.

One of the best times to witness big companies using their funny bones to their advantage is in January/February. The most sought-after and highly awaited commercials are played during the NFL's championship final: the Super Bowl, and without disappointing, year after year they deliver cutting-edge humorous content that speaks to millions of consumers in a way that only humor can.

Out are the professional, serious and stiff images that were de riguer when marketing first became an acknowledged activity for mainstream businesses to do. Since then, due the nature of the online world, where 'going viral' is the holy grail for marketers, humor has been one way in which they have achieved their legend status. There are commercials and campaigns from years past that still get talked about today and are the benchmark for marketers right now.                                                      

Ever hear the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words"?

Well, in today's ever-changing and evolving world of online media and inbound marketing, a video is worth a million—if not more. Videos have become an integral part of our daily experience on our computers, smart phones, Smart TVs and other devices. This essential form of communication is becoming the main currency of online communication.

Text-based sites are outdated, Currently Google's search engine gives higher priority to video, meaning if you use video, you have over 50x more chances of appearing on the first search page than if you used text. Businesses have to be prepared for this video boom, since trend-watchers like Cisco’s trends analysis predict that by 2018 video will make up 79% of all Internet traffic, going up from today's 66%. So with video being so popular what's the best way to integrate video content onto your site?

Are you a small business owner or web manager? If so, how is your business doing?