INBOUND MARKETING BLOG

Having Clear Desired Outcomes Makes Blogging Easy

• By Donny Kemick

Blogging and writing educational content for a website is often looked at as a dreaded task. It's on par with many people's excitement to go for a run after work! The problem is, much like the run, you know you should be doing it, but you still don't. If there's one thing that will truly help you start and continue blogging on a regular basis, it's having clear outcomes you are trying to achieve from blogging. I don't mean the general outcome of more website traffic. I mean specific outcomes. Notice I said outcomeS, plural. Increasing website traffic might be one of your outcomes, but you should be more specific than that. When it comes to website traffic, your outcome should be more along the lines of increasing organic search traffic from Google, for a specific list of keywords, by a specific percentage, over a specific period of time. If your outcome is to get more website traffic, you've succeeded if you get 1 more visitor than you did last month. That's not success. Defining ...

Small Business SEO and the Impact of SSL Encryption

• By Josh Curcio

Some of our clients have had some questions about the recent news of SSL affecting SEO. Keep in mind, for a small business SEO strategy, any impact can help. Given that, it is important that we clarify a few things regarding this topic using the least amount of tech talk that I can. Hopefully this will help some SMBs have a general understanding and get the process rolling if they haven't already.

Generate, Then Guide Leads Down Our Sales Funnel

• By Donny Kemick

On the web, we have a unique opportunity that doesn't exist with traditional, interruption marketing. We can not only generate, but also guide leads down our sales funnel and score them into a qualified lead that sales can work to close. This aspect is often overlooked with small businesses looking to generate leads online. It's just as important to help guide newly generated soft leads down your sales funnel based on where they are in the buyer's journey for your industry. Let's briefly talk about this notion of a buyer's journey and how it impacts the sales funnel. Every consumer, whether B2B or B2C has a common set of steps that they take from the time they identify that there's a problem or desire that they have to the time that they make an actual purchase. Inbound marketing allows us to market to our leads based on where they're at in the buyer's journey. I plan to write more detail on the buyer's journey in the future, but for now this simple explanation will suffice. We can ...

4 Inbound Marketing Articles You Should Have Read This Week

• By Donny Kemick

Holy smokes! It's Friday already! Here're some inbound marketing articles you should have read this week: The 5 Biggest Content Marketing Lies - Inc. This is a quick read and well worth the time. John Hall hits on 5 very common misconceptions about content marketing and does a good job of clearing things up. As a teaser, my favorites are "Content marketing is just a buzzword" and "If you create it, they will come". Author: John Hall 8 Blogging Rules You Should Probably Ditch - Search Engine Watch Still not blogging for your company? That's a shame. You're missing a huge opportunity... Maybe this list of don'ts will help you get started on the right foot. They actually take blogging and make it easier. Already a blogger? Great! You're probably already following what Salma Jafri lists, but it's worth a double-check. Author: Salma Jafri 3 Components Every Value Proposition Must Have - JillKonrath.com With content marketing being such a useful tactic in your inbound marketing strategy, ...

How To Find Out Who Is Using Content Marketing In Your Industry

• By Donny Kemick

I bet you've said it... yep, you. You've made the dreadful mistake of saying no one in your industry (competitors, vendors, etc...) use content marketing yet. No one baits in high quality prospects with valuable content they've written in hopes of generating leads... OH REALLY!?!?!?!? I'd be willing to bet with a little Googling we can prove you wrong. You just need to know how to start looking. Here's a quick way to do some competitive research on who is using content marketing in your industry.

Are Bad Inbound Links Killing Your Website?

• By Josh Curcio

Does your website have bad inbound links that are killing your SEO?

Sales Down? Start Generating Qualified Leads With Marketing!

• By Donny Kemick

The first step to solving a problem is recognizing you have one. The second step is identifying the exact problem you have. If your sales are off, inconsistent or non-existent you may think you have a sales problem. This is often not the case at all. Most likely, you have a marketing problem. By most definitions of marketing, your efforts should generate leads for your sales process. Could the same person at your small business be in charge of both processes? Yes. Especially for a small business. If your sales are struggling or you are simply looking to increase your market share, you need to refine your sales process, but you absolutely MUST focus your efforts on generating qualified leads through your marketing efforts. You may have the best closer in the business working for you, but if this salesperson gets garbage leads sent to them, they won't be the closer they could be. Some Signs You Have A Marketing Problem It Seems Like No One Is Buying Right Now Someone is buying. They ...

What is Ongoing SEO and Why is it So Important?

• By Sara

SEO (search engine optimization) optimizes your website to rank well in the major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo! SEO is imperative to online success because of the following statistics (courtesy of Search Engine Journal): 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, focusing on the organic results. 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. SEO is not a one-time endeavor that your business can check off a list and never have to worry about again. Instead, it demands continuous attention to reach its maximum potential and to remain an effective tool for your business. This is where ongoing SEO comes into play. Ongoing SEO analyzes the results of the services initially provided to make sure they are working. Many firms use tools like Google Analytics, MySEOTool, Moz tools, and more to review their activities and then use them to provide ...

The 5 Best Inbound Marketing Articles From This Week

• By Donny Kemick

My oh my was it a good week for getting some inbound marketing education! Here are the 5 best inbound marketing articles from this week: How To Repurpose Marketing Content The incorrect assumption by many small businesses that are just getting started with content marketing, that all of their content has to be unique keeps many SMBs from getting started. While you certainly need a good volume of unique content, you should also have an ongoing effort to repurpose the content you create. For example, you write a series of posts on your blog surrounding a certain topic. Could you combine those posts into a longer form piece of content like an ebook? Could you take an ebook that you've created and do a youtube video or infographic on the topic? Additionally, you have the option of updating a piece of content you've previously written to account for industry changes. The bottom line here is that you can re-use your content assets online and offline. Article By WH & Associates in Los ...

Model The Best LinkedIN Company Pages

• By Donny Kemick