Get Found With Inbound Marketing.
A New Hero Ebook.
January 27th, 2012
“Seach Engines, blogging & other Internet trends have fundamentally transformed the way people & businesses purchase products, but most small businesses still use outdated & inefficient marketing methods—like print advertising, telemarketing & trade shows—that people increasingly find intrusive & screen out.”
-Brian Halligan, Co-Founder & CEO Hubspot
With the increasingly and overwhelming amount of marketing messages that we’re bombarded with each day, we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the messages, even from our favorite companies. The impact of digital technology, social media and always on, real-time access means the power in the marketplace has shifted from the advertiser to the audience. That said, your marketing can no longer just be something that talks about you. It must be something searchable, useful and sharable. It must serve the needs of real people with real problems to solve. Or, it will be nothing but noise to be blocked out.
If your marketing is based on the old metrics of impressions, click-through and open-rates, if it relies on interruption to gain your audience’s attention, it is a losing strategy. Today, traditional outbound marketing is more expensive and less effective than ever. To succeed today, you must re-align your marketing to strategies that pull customers to you, instead of pushing messages out. With this in mind, we’ve created a new Ebook, “Get Found With Inbound Marketing” that lays out the six most prominent facets in structuring your inbound marketing campaign. The six steps include:
- Know Your Customer: Building buyer personas.
- Optimize Your Website: Applying SEO best practices.
- Create Value Content: Connect with value-driven content.
- Be Social: Use social media for business.
- Measure Your Results: The power of analytics.
- Feel Your Way: Use empathy to find what works.
It’s clear that marketing is changing on a fundamental level as the Internet continues to revolutionize how we find, buy, sell and interact with brands and products. The days of annoying people with intrusive advertising and marketing tactics are fading and the shift from Outbound to Inbound Marketing methods is underway. The new age of Inbound Marketing is about providing added value and earning customer loyalty instead of simple pounding a message into consumers heads and hoping it will stick. You can read more about the Inbound Strategy in our full-length Ebook that breaks down the above steps. Click the link below to get your copy. Did we mention that it’s free?
In 2012, Inbound Marketing
Will Surpass Outbound Strategies
January 26th, 2012
By now you’re probably sick of us talking about the benefits of inbound marketing, but really, inbound marketing is where you should be focusing your 2012 ad and marketing budget. Why? Statistics have proven that the ROI on inbound has well surpassed that of outbound, and more and more companies are finally taking hold of the digital space. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Landing Pages are Crucial
In a Website Redesign
January 24th, 2012
If there’s one thing you should be doing to dramatically improve your online marketing ROI today, it would be to use landing pages on your website. If your website isn’t already focused on lead generation, then it’s likely that your site has no true landing pages. If it does, bonus points for you. Regardless, we’ll show you how to make them better. Read the rest of this entry »
Attracting Your Next “Best” Customer:
A Workshop On the How and Why
January 18th, 2012
The age-old question of “How can I attract more clients?” never seems to tire. Everyone is curious– no matter what their business size–and everyone wants to find an answer for their specific industry. Next month, Hero’s principal, Jeff Mason, will join our friend and Denver business coach Bob Marro of The Alternative Board (TAB) and Joanne Underhill of Underhill & Underhill P.C. for a private workshop surrounding this question as well as the importance of not only the what and how, but the why that drives your business plan. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Creating Original Content
is Crucial in Your Website Redesign
January 17th, 2012
“If you build it, they will come.”
Unfortunately, this statement doesn’t apply to websites the same way it does to baseball fields. In order to redesign your website to truly work for your business, it needs to actively reach out to potential customers by appearing in their Google searches and showing up in their social media networks. To do this, your site needs continuously updated and original content that connects with your customers’ interests as well as the keywords they are already using for web searches.
If your current website doesn’t include a blog or other pages to incorporate on-going content publishing, then this need has to be addressed in your redesign planning. Read the rest of this entry »
Design Studios and Marketing Agencies Should Use Their Empathy.
January 13th, 2012
Jules et Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut)
A great post from Jim Carroll, Chairman of BBH London, reminded me of one of my core beliefs—a designer’s most powerful tool is their empathy. In Jim’s post, I Feel For You, he reminded me that empathy also applies to the whole sphere of marketing and communications.
We, Hero Design, are an Inbound Marketing Agency. We work very hard to measure and qualify the results we produce for our clients. Everything we do has some type of analytic attached. We use those analytics to make decisions on what’s working, what needs improvement and what tactics should be killed. Even with all of this data-based clarity, I sometimes feel, in my gut, that we need to zig, even though the data shows a zag is the next logical step. My designerly self just can’t shake what my empathy is telling me.
I always rely on my empathy when concepting, designing and writing. If something doesn’t feel right, I try a different approach. Jim’s post reminds me not to leave my empathy, my feelings, out of the on-going marketing choices we make throughout a campaign. Even though the creative is done, empathy is still needed. We often try to analyze our way to success, but maybe we should feel our way instead.
Read Jim Carroll’s post here: I Feel For You.
Create Every Page as a
Homepage In a Website Redesign
January 10th, 2012
When you create a marketing-focused, lead generating website you need to understand that any page may act as a home page. Visitors will find you through searches that might bring them to a blog post, a landing page, a services page or sometimes even your actual home page. Is your site fully optimized? Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, So Responsive Design.
January 6th, 2012
If it’s not responsive, it’s crap!
(Say it with a Scottish accent)
A great site put together by James Mellers of THISMANSLIFE.COM solves a problem we’ve already run into, how to explain responsive design to your client.
“Resize your browser to reveal just a handful of the kind of devices you should expect web pages to be viewed on. Each device illustration is rendered using the same basic HTML which adapts its appearance to the changing viewport size, representing different devices accordingly. This is achieved using media queries to apply different CSS rules for different sizes. This experiment is intended to illustrate the basic premise of responsive web design and the power of CSS to tackle it.” Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t Push Messages Out, Pull Customers In With Inbound Marketing
January 5th, 2012
As small business owners, we should all focus each day on how we can make our marketing strategy better. The Internet has entirely repositioned traditional marketing, making print advertising essentially obsolete. We’re constantly faced with bettering our online presence and, to be frank, there exists no better way to do so than to optimize business through the return that can come from inbound marketing.
Read the rest of this entry »
2012 is Expected to Be the
Year of Quality Content Creation
January 4th, 2012
The idea of quality control in online content shouldn’t be intimidating. Think of it as a challenge to write better, make better graphics and better weave your keywords into each of your blog posts, social media posts and image tags. Think of it as a way to test your skills and, hey, you may even learn something new. Hard work and organization will pay off, especially if you’re a small business competing against the marketing and advertising budgets of the big guys. Content creation is a great way to build a place for yourself on the web as you create a unique voice for your small business. Read the rest of this entry »
