This Week in Marketing Strategy: Top Online MBAs, Enhancing Creativity, Snapchat Automates Ads

Welcome to the October 9, 2016 edition of This Week in Marketing Strategy. Here I’ll highlight a few articles, blog posts or interesting pieces from around the web that are newsworthy or trending over the last one to two weeks. My goal is to provide you with the latest news and thinking that is worthy of your attention.

First up: Top 25 Online MBA Programs, courtesy of www.princetonreview.com. In late September, Princeton Review released its latest rankings. These online MBA programs continue to rise in demand and quality, and the most recent list features a number of very notable and reputable schools, topped by UNC-Chapel Hill and IU-Bloomington.

In addition to the flexibility of these programs, here are some other benefits to consider versus traditional programs:

• ability to continue concurrent full-time employment
• flexibility to travel or even move to a new city while obtaining the degree
• team projects completed in a realistic global setting with diverse and dispersed team members
• 39% reported receiving a promotion while still earning their degree

If you’re considering getting your MBA, check out the list as part of your research.

“The programs in the Top 25 Online MBA list present promising opportunities for entrepreneurs who wish to pursue or continue their education while growing their business at the same time,” says Jason Feifer, executive editor of Entrepreneur magazine. read more at princetonreview.com

Second up: Three Ways to Make Your Entire Team More Creative, courtesy of www.fastcompany.com. While this article doesn’t actually spell out how to train your team members, it does offer a few suggestions for creating an environment that is conducive to creativity. The three tips mentioned:

• Create Constraints
• Encourage Debate
• Foster Positivity

I especially appreciate the last tip (foster positivity). The team must feel as if they aren’t being judged. Otherwise, they won’t open up and offer their best ideas.

Research shows that positive moods make us more open to learning new things and considering a broader set of options. They make us more receptive to both criticism and opposing points of view. In contrast, negative moods narrow our mind-set, focusing on problems rather than possibilities. read more at fastcompany.com

Our third and final article this week: Snapchat’s Automated Ad Sales Have Arrived, courtesy of www.recode.net. Snapchat recently launched an ads API, allowing it to automate advertising sales. The update also allows for more specific targeting and makes Snapchat much more competitive with companies like Facebook and Twitter for advertising dollars.

For those who are less familiar with Snapchat, there’s a video included that does a nice job showing how and where ads appear while using the app. I’m sure many brands will be experimenting on Snapchat in the coming months. Will your brand be one of them?

Essentially, the technology will let Snapchat fill more ad inventory more quickly than selling it via a sales team, which is one of the reasons Facebook and Twitter and Instagram all offer similar APIs. read more at recode.net

Those are a few of the popular and trending pieces in the news related to marketing strategy. They caught my attention and hopefully they are useful to you.

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Images from princetonreview.com, fastcompany.com, recode.net.