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 ...

5 Interruption Marketing Tactics to Forget in 2015

• By Josh Curcio

Because the behaviors of consumers has changed so drastically in recent years, it becomes more difficult to find a place for interruption marketing. I'm not going to say that you should abandon all interruption marketing efforts because they can have a place for some businesses, but even those businesses should consider a shift in their marketing budgets to more inbound marketing strategies. There are however some interruption marketing tactics that should be forgotten as they are a waste of effort, money, and they flat out annoy the consumers you're trying to attract.

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

Don't Disappear From Search Engines After a New Website Launch

• By Josh Curcio

Getting a new website is an exciting thing! But what happens to your rankings in Google, Bing, and other search engines after you launch that new website?

Good Business Reads From Around The Web

• By Donny Kemick

Content Is The Most Important Phase Of A Website Redesign

• By Donny Kemick

Use Quora for Blog Post Ideas

• By Josh Curcio

We've been doing our best in trying to motivate you blog and blog frequently. Not creating junk content just to have more content, but content that your readers or potential readers will find useful. For any industry, any service type, any business, and so on, there are endless things to blog about that useful. Yes, I'll repeat that. There are endless things for you to blog about and they don't have to be fluff. If you need a push to help get those creative juices flowing, try Quora to help think of blog post topics that will be useful to someone.

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 ...