Pete Brand

In our video blog series, Minds of MINDSCAPE, a member of our team will share a few words of wisdom about their particular area of expertise. In this clip, our CEO and Co-Founder, Pete Brand, shares 5 steps you can do to build a consistent stream of new website visitors.more

Last year, I attended an event where the speaker told a story that really just stuck with me. He shared the highlights of a conversation he recently had with a “fifty something” male executive. The exec shared his frustration over the rapid rate of change that was happening in his business, "the market" and basically every aspect of the world. He finished his rant by saying, “I HATE CHANGE!”more

It’s no mystery that it’s critical to intimately understand the personas you serve if you want your marketing to be successful. Once you identify where your personas congregate online, you can observe their conversations and identify the problems they’re struggling with. More importantly, you can see the exact words they use as they search for solutions to their challenges.more

Do you have plenty of people going to your website, but leaving before doing anything? Has this led to you believe that your website is a useless marketing tool for your business? Before you tell your IT team to hit the “DELETE” button on your website file server, let’s walk through a couple things to determine if a there may be a simple fix for getting your website heading in the right direction.more

Are you struggling to gain traction with your digital efforts because you’re not receiving enough traffic? Do you receive constant complaints from your sales team about the lack of (or quality of) the leads you receive with the anemic level of traffic you are receiving? If these challenges sound familiar, you’re not alone and will definitely want to read on. Follow these 5 steps and I'm confident that your website will start to generate more quality leads.more

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We've all seen them -- the infamous "Self Promoters." These are people and companies who use social media as a platform to pound their own chest, and talk about how great they are. In fact, you may be one of them! (Don't worry -- we're not here to judge, we're here to help!). It's very tempting to use such an open platform to try to get your own message across to as many people as possible. We get it.more

Inbound marketing makes perfect sense for companies that sell large volumes of products directly to consumers. Prospects click on an advertisement or social media mention and head straight to the virtual check-out line. However, don't discount inbound marketing if you operate in a super-specialized niche. You can still generate revenue and increase market reach.more

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My last post was a bit different than the majority of the content we share on the MINDSCAPE blog as it related more to personal positioning than it did to marketing. The interesting thing about personal positioning is how closely it’s actually related to your marketing and the positioning of your company and the products and services you offer. This post will showcase the similarities, as well as the pitfalls to avoid with your marketing.more

This post was orginally published on August 22, 2013, but is still relevant. Enjoy! Average is a word used to describe mathematical statistics or to show a comparative value to others. The words common, typical or ordinary could be used to replace the word average.more

Hopefully you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve accepted the fact that blogging is critical to your digital strategy, and most importantly, to attracting strangers to your website. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed how difficult it is to determine which blog posts will be a “hit” and which posts will attract little to no attention. There have been many times where I’ve excitedly published a blog post and sat by my computer anxiously awaiting the views to start rolling in, and I’ve heard nothing but crickets. This can be very frustrating considering how much energy and excitement I invested into the post, and yet it just didn’t seem to be enough. If you’ve found yourself in a similar position, I’d like to encourage you to take a deep breath and not take it personally. It’s important to remember the main strategic initiative of your blogging efforts is to position yourself, and your organization, as a thought leader to the personas you serve so they begin to view your website as a valuable resource they can turn to in times of need. Keeping this in mind, there are a few things you can do to help position your blog posts so they are more likely to gain the level of exposure you’d like them to.more

I first became involved in website and application development 17 years ago, when it was a fledgling concept with very few rules or established best practices. Back then, the only thing marketers felt they needed was an “online brochure” that covered who they were, what products and services they offered, and provided contact information just in case someone was interested in calling or emailing.more

On February 20, 2016 Kalamazoo, Michigan experienced one of the worst tragedies to ever occur in the city. Residents were terrified as the news began to spread that there was a killer on the loose. The authorities finally detained the gunman and details started to leak out through the media that the gunman was an Uber driver, and he committed 6 murders in between picking up people who had arranged for a rides through the Uber app. Which probably sent Uber reeling.more

Do you feel like you know who your customers are and what’s most important to them? I don’t believe a marketing professional or business owner has ever admitted to me that they don’t know their customers or understand their most pressing problems, and I don’t blame them. Of course you have a solid understanding of who you serve, and how you solve their issues. If you didn’t you’d probably either be out of business or looking for a new job. The more specific questions I’m asking are … Do you know your customers intimately and understand the complexities they face in life outside of the areas in which you can provide support? Do you fully understand their motivations, desires, concerns, or any resistance they might have in choosing the solution you provide? Most importantly, when it comes to connecting with them online, do you understand the specific language they use? If you can answer the questions above in the affirmative … CONGRATULATIONS! I’m sure your business is growing and you’re creating a bunch of rabid promotors of your Brand. Customers love it when they can tell a company has invested the time and effort to truly understand what is most important to them. They typically reward this effort by opening their checkbooks and telling others about the phenomenal experience they had with your organization. On the other hand, if the questions above give you an uneasy feeling in your stomach, don’t worry. I’ll give you some ideas that you can utilize to efficiently get inside your customer’s head, and use the insights you gain to provide an experience that makes them want to tell everyone they know about your company and how well you’ve taken care of them. It is never a waste of time to invest in gaining a deeper understanding of your buyers, it’s a requirement!more

I went out for a nice long hike yesterday to take advantage of the “warm” (42 degree) Michigan “winter weather” and started to reflect on some of the recent conversations I’ve had with business owners and marketing professionals regarding Inbound Marketing.more

Are you held accountable for increasing the number of visitors to your website and you’ve turned to PPC as the answer? Have you found it challenging to prove an ROI on your PPC advertising campaign? Did you hire a media agency to come in and “save the day” but have had a less than satisfying experience?more

If you’re like the majority of the marketing professionals in the world where your stomach gets tight the moment you read, or are told of the importance of blogging, it might be due to the fact you already have too much on your plate, you don’t consider yourself a writer, or you’re stumped as to what you’d write about anyhow.more