Regardless of which mass media routes you're using to market your business, it is vital that you take the time to have a comprehensive plan in place. Without a thoughtful plan, you risk wasting valuable time and money on unfruitful marketing efforts.
In the Elements of an Inbound Marketing Campaign, we covered:
With all of those basics laid out, we wanted to delve deeper into the email marketing portion. Although many businesses (maybe even yours) may dismiss email as simple one-on-one digital communication that doesn't require strategy, it is actually a powerful tool that too many businesses miss out on because they don't understand how it can be used for so much more.
There is no single business that doesn't require a bit of understanding of technology in this day and age. Even the least technical professionals are sporting smartphones or alternate mobile devices to check email, talk to staff and connect with clients.
The challenge is that technology can be a bit unnerving for some business owners. It’s not unnerving because it’s technology, per se. It’s unnerving because of the need to understand, yet again, something new.
When there is so much technology to keep up with, how do we keep it all straight?
Think of it this way- Technology helps us solve problems and improve our processes the same way any other tool would. Until we understand that the technology we use is meant to solve problems, we’ll continue to focus on how hard it is to integrate technology into our business and marketing efforts.
A trending term right now in the business world is "martech." Maybe you've heard of it, but for the sake of those who haven't, martech is the blending of marketing and technology. Every company has at least a smidge of this happening within their walls, whether they realize it or not. It's a thing of beauty. Let's explore a few examples of martech to give you a clearer idea of it in action.
We get questions from people all of the time looking for the best way to market themselves. They want to know the right strategy and tactics to developing great sales and marketing funnels, going viral, getting a higher ROI... the list goes on. Well, there is, in fact, a root ideology that we believe strongly impacts all of these things:
Be uniquely YOU and the rest will follow.
Mobile commerce is an important aspect of sales, and consumers utilize it constantly (peep the rise of Amazon and other big online retailers).
Let’s talk reputation management. Did you know that:
Let that information all sink in. Reread it if you have to. Those are real stats from BrightLocal’s 2018 Local Consumer Review Survey. These statistics were specifically compiled to help local businesses develop their online reputation management strategy for 2019.
If you’re a small business, negative reviews on Google can be especially devastating, and you can’t afford to ignore a bad Google review. If you haven’t been paying attention to your Google reviews, it’s time to wake up and take the wheel. If you don’t have time for reputation management, well, that’s what we are here for. But assuming you do, here are some tips to ensure your Google reviews are a more accurate representation of your business.
We'll give it to you straight- the success of a website development strategy meeting depends mostly on YOU. How you respond to and work alongside teams will greatly affect the tone, efficiency, productivity and overall results that come from the meeting. However, there are some other aspects to take into account as well, which we'll cover in this blog.
There has been a dramatic uptick in turmoil at Facebook in 2018 and the couple years previous, thanks to coordinated misinformation campaigns by foreign and domestic players alike, misuse of improperly collected information through Facebook’s third-party apps, and now the mass data breach that has affected over 50 million users.
You would think that Facebook accounts would be closing left and right, but that’s not the case.
There have been many companies that have expanded their online presence to include social media sites (in fact, the vast majority have). Of these social media sites, Facebook is by far the most well known and the most prominently featured on company collateral and websites. However, there are many companies that create a Facebook page and don’t necessarily know how to properly implement their social media strategy.
Socializing with your followers on social media should be a key component of your social media marketing strategy (and a small part of your overall SEO strategy). It may seem like an obvious statement but after looking at numerous companies’ social media sites it appears that some people still don’t understand how important this is to social media marketing success.
The people on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram giving your page love are on there to be social, to be entertained and to read or see something worth interacting with or sharing. Having a page that is interesting to your audience is what will get them to like, comment on, and share your stuff. The number one mistake companies make is using their social sites solely to promote their products and not providing value to their followers.