INBOUND MARKETING BLOG

Just Say No To Brochureware Websites In 2015

• By Donny Kemick

A new year is approaching fast. We've all gained 10 lbs while giving thanks at Thanksgiving and in a few weeks we'll add 10 lbs more at Christmas. While we spend time fattening up our waistlines, we need to be preparing to fatten up our bottom lines. Whether you're a B2B business, a nonprofit or anything in between, it's time to evaluate your website and just say NO to brochureware websites in 2015. If you're going to say no to brochureware sites, it might help to have a definition of them: A brochureware website is a business website that has very infrequently updated content. Often the site has been developed as a direct translation of existing printed promotional materials, hence the name. - Wikipedia I would like to add a bit to this definition because many small businesses don't even have printed promotional materials to carry over to a website: A brochureware website is also one that has stale, infrequently to never updated content with no focus on lead generation or business ...

The Basics Of Generating Website Leads

• By Donny Kemick

I've said repeatedly that you can't have a website "because". Not because everyone has one. Not because your competition has one. Not because your customers ask about it. You have to have a website to help achieve your business objectives. If you can't sell directly online but one of your objectives is increasing revenues or profits (and you know it is), you need to be focused on generating leads that your sales and marketing people can nurture into sales. To be effective at generating website leads, you need to understand the basic Inbound Marketing lead generation model. It's fairly simple and we've discussed the various aspects before, but here's a simple rundown. Offer Your offer is something perceived as high in value such as a piece of content or another item that a website visitor will want from you. When it comes to content, you may be offering an ebook, a whitepaper, a video, or catalog. Other offers may include coupons, product samples or product demos. Your offer needs to ...

Email Marketing and Your Buyer's Journey

• By Donny Kemick

We had a great meeting this week with a prospective client where we were focused primarily on SEO. As an Inbound Marketing agency, we obviously took a step back from the SEO discussion to evaluate more of the overall goal of the site and what desired actions are when a visitor arrives. As we talked through the scenarios and got into email marketing directly to some of their leads, a great question was asked that I think is worth exploring in a bit more detail. The question was around frequency and follow up and was basically: Won't this visitor feel like we're spamming them? The general answer here is... it depends. First, Is Your List Segmented? I wrote a post a couple weeks back on the importance of segmenting your email marketing list so I won't go deep on it here. As a quick refresher, it's one thing to have a list of 100,000 email addresses with their names. It something completely different to know the interests and further segmenting details of those 100K people. That last word ...

Business Growth Requires Marketing - Inbound Makes It More Efficient

• By Donny Kemick

Good Business Reads From Around The Web

• By Donny Kemick

Content Is The Most Important Phase Of A Website Redesign

• By Donny Kemick

3 Quick Tips To Improve Email Open Rates

• By Donny Kemick

If you are growing your email marketing list (and you are, right?), you have to make sure you're monitoring and adjusting your efforts to maximize open and click-through rates. If not, you're wasting sends. You're falling on deaf ears. You can't nurture a lead that doesn't read what you send them for one of many reasons. If you want to improve email open rates keep reading... 1 - Who is the "Sender" of your emails? Question. When you receive an email from someone you know or another human being, are you likely to at least open it? I'm going to bet you said yes, with varying degrees of importance. Someone you know or recognize may yield a quicker open than a stranger. How about when you receive an email from a brand? Are you likely to open that? What level of urgency? I'm not talking about order update emails or responses to a request for information. I'm talking about emails from brands that you are expecting to receive. All of that being said, what name comes through when you send ...

How To Use HootSuite To Schedule Social Media Updates

• By Donny Kemick

There's a common misconception with many small businesses that social media marketing is this huge undertaking that will consume tons of time. That's simply not the case. Social media, if done correctly, is managed and focused on at levels that are convenient and effective for you. Sure, you'll have comments that come in (hopefully) that you need to respond to. You may want to jump on some of your clients' or leads' pages to interact a bit, but overall social media marketing is not the time sink everyone NOT already involved thinks it is.

4 Ways To Reuse Your Blog Posts

• By Donny Kemick

We preach and preach that you should be blogging regularly. We share stats about how much better companies with an ongoing blogging effort do at generating leads. We practically beg you to write regular blog posts! While blogging is excellent for your Search Engine Optimization efforts, it can also be a huge driver of other tactics you employ online. Here're some ways to reuse your blog posts. 1 - Blog Posts Make Great, Share-able Social Media Content If you've held the position that your company doesn't have anything to share in social media, you're wrong. One great "side affect" of blogging regularly is that it will feed your social media efforts. In fact, a single blog post can yield several social posts. How's that you ask? Simple, after writing a blog post, you can take several facts from the post and turn them into short social media updates with links to your blog post. Using HootSuite or Buffer you can then schedule the social posts to be sent on different days in the future. ...

You Have To Segment Your Email Marketing List

• By Donny Kemick

Small Business Inbound Marketing Lead Nurturing