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How Much of Your Marketing Should Be Digital?

Before you decide on a budget, you should consider what you're trying to achieve. Remember: 70% of a purchase decision is made before someone talks to a sales representative. Because of this, a heavy online marketing presence plays a big part in the overall sales process. 

Whether you're looking for a way to spend marketing budget left for this fiscal year or you're organizing the next full year's marketing plan, we have six recommendations for you that will help you bring in more leads.  These are meant to help you meet your goals of growing leads, and ultimately, sales. But with limited resources, you've got to pick those that can have the biggest impact.  

Maybe you can't afford to incorporate all of these, but try to get bring in a few over the next 6 months and share your successes. That's a sure-fire way to get more budget in the future for things you recommend! Here we go...

There is a misperception out there that building a new website will automatically draw in more leads. The first step, before you get more leads, is getting your website to appear at the top of the organic search results. Although the term is "organic results," it's not as simple as planting a seeding and walking away. Just like a plant, you have to do things to your website make sure it grows and stays strong. 

That means that the websites you see at the top of the  search engine results page (SERP) didn't show up by accident. They most likely spent time and energy figuring out what they can do to be the most relevant search result for their potential visitors. So what do you need to do to get up there at the top of the SERP?

Countless members of senior management across companies both large and small, find themselves asking the same question: why do we need to hire a marketing agency when we have dedicated marketing staff?

Ever wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea that you're sure will change the course of the company? Or maybe your latest stroke of genius hits you while you're doing dishes or at some other quiet moment. No matter where you're at and how brilliant we think we are when we dream up a new marketing plan, there are a few things to take a look at before you spend time and money trying to make it work. If your plan passes through each of these tests that means you're likely to be ready to get to work!

The idea of inbound marketing is easy to fall in love with. It makes so much sense:

1. Create content that draws visitors to your website. 
2. Share your expertise with those who are interested in your products or services.
3. Convert them to leads and then (hopefully) customers with your educational marketing approach. 

The inbound marketing process sounds great... but then you have to get it all done. And that starts largely with creating content.

I've attended a few conferences lately and one of the questions I heard asked by those who are new to to inbound marketing was related to the usefulness of an inbound stategy for business-to-consumer (B2C) products and services versus inbound for business-to-business (B2B) products and services.

This got me thinking. Regardless of whether it's for personal use or for company use, a human is making the decision. Shouldn't it be more about the time it takes to make the decision? 

A marketer’s dream: a subscriber opens, reads, clicks and shares your email. They love your content at first sight and want to tell everyone about it! We’ve pulled together some of the top email marketing best practices to help your readers fall in love with your content.

Email continues to be a powerful tool for marketers around the world. In fact it’s growing because it's one of the few marketing tactics that can prove a return on investment in marketing. According to the 2014 Email Marketing Industry Census, “email marketing was ranked as the best channel in terms of return on investment, with 68% of companies rating the channel as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.”

This means it’s not likely to go away in the near future, no matter what the naysayers think. But all email campaigns are not created equally. 

Here are four tips to help you improve your email marketing in 2015:

What is the purpose of your website? To sell, right? Some things are easy to sell because it’s not a long decision process. But there are other products and services that buyers are going to research and think about. What can you do to increase sales in these long processes? Why not be the one who provides the research information potential customers are looking for? Give them something that will make them trust your expertise. And do it for free. This can be accomplished through several types of content including: