Inbound Marketing Blog

This weekend, my girlfriend and I went on a little camping trip to the Nordhouse dunes, located on the beautiful shore of Lake Michigan. The drive was about two hours long, and despite the "no work, relaxing weekend" rule that was put into place, my thoughts soon drifted to, well, my work. I promptly began having a passionate conversation with my significant other on the ins and outs of SEO and the collaborative effort that is needed to create a truly riveting content offer. After about twenty minutes of overly enthusiastic speech and gesticulation, I asked some nearly rhetorical question. Something like, "Isn't that just amazing?" Only to hear the same dull "mmhmm" I had been receiving for the duration of the trip. I turned to the love of my life in outright horror! How could she not be as ardent as I on the topic of digital marketing?! The interaction set my head spinning. I fell silent. I contemplated the repugnant reality I was living in. That's when it hit me! It wasn't that my girlfriend loathed digital marketing! It wasn't even that she found it dull! I had just been talking about it in the completely wrong way. I was using words she wasn't familiar with; I was over explaining simple concepts and under explaining complex ones; I was stomping through the conversation like a barbaric oaf, instead of dancing through it like a truly skilled conversationalist. I needed to make a change in the way I was talking about my industry. If your having trouble gaining traction with your blog or other website content, maybe you do to. Below are four tips I wrote down after my car ride so that I could more effectively talk to my clients, readers, and even my girlfriend about digital marketing. Take a look, apply them to your industry, and see what improvements you can make to your content.more

I have a co-worker who is known to say "work smarter, not harder." He's always looking for ways to make the work we do quicker and more efficient. If there is an app, website or other tool out there meant to help with digital marketing processes, I can almost guarantee he's tried it.more

The question of how to create an office-culture that Millennials will love has always struck me as odd. Because, well, I am a Millennial, and I'll tell you right now, I don't look for anything unusual or outlandish in a company culture. I'm not searching for an office that has a pool table or a basketball hoop. I don't need a pizza Friday or Bagel Tuesday. And I don't think there is anything I could care less about than bean bag chairs (seriously, where did that misconception even come from?).more

Lead generation. It's one of the greatest areas of concerns when it comes to digital marketing. The prospect of bringing in new customers for your business is super exciting. They are your lifeblood after all. So it's no surprise that when you have an awesome email campaign or content offer, you want to let every “lead” you have know about it. However, as great as your content might be, it probably has a different level of value for each of your leads.more

Let's say you have an email list of exactly one thousand contacts. You have worked hard to collect these contacts, creating valuable content offers, engaging your social media followers, and blogging twice a week to provide visitors with useful information. You're proud of your list, and you've been nurturing your contacts consistently to turn them into loyal customers. But lately, you've realized that almost one-fourth of your contacts are no longer opening your emails.more

Yesterday I had a Monday morning from hell. You know, one of those Mondays where you have about a million things to do, but for some reason, every ounce of determination, self-discipline, and creative energy you've ever had has abandoned you? Yeah, it was that kind of Monday. I got to work early, sat down with a freshly brewed cup of coffee, opened my laptop aaaaaaaaannnnd nothing. Nothing at all. For about four hours I stared at my screen, writing and re-writing sentence after sentence and paragraph after paragraph until I looked up at the clock and called it. Lunch Break. I felt like I hadn't made any progress on only the first of about 20 tasks I needed to complete. And my impending stress seemed to be a further source of derision between the part of my brain responsible for issuing commands and the part of my brain following them. It was a rough morning. But it taught me something valuable. After downing a double shot of espresso and returning to my computer, I started to realize why I had been having so much trouble. I had not "flipped my switch." No matter what kind of writer you are, you almost certainly have some sort of voice. It may not be the most obvious of voices, in fact, it may not be evident at all, but trust me, it's there. My perception of my own voice lives somewhere between, fast-talking con artist and talk show host who laughs at his own jokes.more

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever left a web page with in minutes of arriving, because it wasn't easy to find the information you were looking for and quickly navigate to it? I'm sure that all of us have done is once or twice. In marketing, we like to refer to this quick exit after visiting only one page as "bouncing".more

This is what the internet feels like with a CDN. Sort of. The other day, a client gave us the green light to move their site. They’d been on a cheapo shared hosting plan that might be great for hosting a blog that no-one reads, but wasn't a match for an up-and-coming e-commerce business. After wrestling with some stubborn plugins, we had the site up. And shortly after that, it went from “up” to “flying.” Page load speed skyrocketed, and generously-sized product images popped up instantly. It wasn’t voodoo magic (though it kind of felt like it.) The real power behind this significant speed boost was that we’d turned on our CDN. Which raises the important question:more

I want you to think back to elementary school. What do you remember most? A favorite game you played at recess? A favorite lunch that your mom used to pack for you? How about a favorite school subject? One of the things that I remember most about elementary school is my favorite subject, Reading & Writing.more

You walk into your office with a sinking feeling in your stomach. At best, it can be described as uncomfortable, at worst, a crippling dread. Following the scent of coffee, you sleepwalk into the office breakroom. Empty greetings of "morning" accompanied by blank stares greet you; you take little notice, murmuring a hollow reply of your own. You grip the handle of the pot containing your saving grace and splash the liquid gold into a mug —you don't remember how it got in your hand. You wander aimlessly around the office until you find your desk. Plopping into your charcoal chair, you turn on your computer and attempt to start the day. It is Monday morning. You have a weeks work ahead of you. And you are a zombie. No determination, no inspiration, no MOTIVATION . Let's ge t you into working human condition, shall we? Below are five ways you can fight your Garfield-like tendency of hating Mondays so you can start your work week off right. 1. Identify the problem Monday mornings are a struggle for most people. In fact, one of my favorite quotes alludes to the idea that even those who adore their jobs hate Mondays. It is this: "Even art gets up at 8:00 am on Monday." Regardless of if you are a rockstar or a corporate accountant, we can all relate to the struggle of getting out of bed and putting ourselves to work. However, we all have different reasons for WHY this is a struggle. For some of us, it may be leaving our spouse and children behind for the day. For others, it may be that we find no enjoyment in our jobs. Still, others may simply hate leaving the cozy comfort of their beds. If you want to conquer Monday mornings, you need to identify what it is that you hate so much about getting up and going to work. Then, you need to make a change or come to terms with this problem. 2. Early to Bed Early to Rise If you are having trouble getting motivated, the issue may not be with your job; it may be that you don't sleep enough or that you sleep too much. As recommended by the National Sleep Foundation, most working age adults (adults 18-64 years old) should get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. Any more or any less and you may find yourself groggy and slow to start in the morning. If you want to start your week off right, get to bed early Sunday night, get 7-9 hours of sleep, and wake up early enough to give your brain a little start up time. EXPERIMENT: If you have a job that allows for a flexible start time each morning, go to bed early and see when you naturally wake up. This is a good way to find out how much sleep you need each night and waking up naturally (instead of to the jolting screeches of an alarm) can be incredibly pleasant. 3. It is the weekend, relax One reason you may not be feeling motivated at the beginning of your work week is that you haven't actually given yourself a break - you are rundown from the last work week which somehow extended into your weekend. Sometimes working over the weekend is inevitable, but giving yourself time to recharge is absolutely essential to maintaining your motivation and quality of work. Unplug for the weekend when you can. Avoid taking any work-related calls or checking in on any projects. Give yourself a break from the constant stream of emails that come your way and enjoy your weekend. This is not shirking your duties, and while you may feel like this will put you behind, you will be more prepared for Monday morning which is when you'll really need your energy and focus. 4. Plan Ahead What does your Monday morning look like? If your first hour of work involves repeatedly "checking" your email, logging onto your social media accounts, or staring at a random list of tasks—you're doing Monday wrong. Instead of coming into the office with no game plan, and really no direction, give Zombie-Monday you a break! Before you leave the office on Friday, make a list of what you want to accomplish on Monday. Revisit your list Sunday night before bed, so it will be fresh when you wake up in the morning. If you do this, you'll be able to walk into the office confident about what you need to get done. You won't get bogged down with the usual mundane Monday tasks you perform while trying to figure out what to do with your day. 5. Get Creative, Get Analytical, Get Monotonous All of us are motivated by different things, and all of us receive little bursts of motivation at different times throughout the day. If you plan according to your usual Monday morning disposition, you may be able to motivate yourself right when you walk into the office, or you may not NEED any motivation at all. If you know that you are going to be brain dead Monday morning no matter what you do, then plan to tackle your tedious weekly tasks right when you walk in the office. Send out all necessary emails, check in on any current projects, plan all of your meetings, schedule all of your time, etc. In contrast, maybe all you need to get yourself going is a creative project. Maybe you just need something to get excited about, something that will spark that passionate energy. If this is the case, plan something like a brainstorming session for Monday morning. Sit down with a few of your coworkers and pound out a few hundred ideas for your current project. Planning to your disposition will allow you to utilize your time in the most effective way possible and you may not have to make a single change to your routine. You gave one (or all)of these tips a shot, now what? Well, now the Monday morning scenario plays out a bit differently. Now you walk into your office with a strange light feeling in your stomach. The smell of coffee fills your nostrils, but you pass by the office break room, already feeling awake as can be. You pass a coworker and let out a "good morning" that tumbles around the office like a too-loud laugh. Numerous sets of unfocused eyes meet yours and became alight with something akin to wonder and surprise. You make your way purposefully to your desk. Sitting down in your charcoal chair, you turn on your computer and start the day. With this new-found energy, you have the motivation to more effectively get your day to day work done. If you are looking to inject this same energy into your digital marketing efforts, consider contacting us. After all, MINDSCAPE is a digital marketing agency that helps companies in multiple industries improve traffic, improve conversions and get better results. We are waiting to hear from you!more

There you are, just sitting at your desk on a fine Friday afternoon. The weather is lovely, work is relaxed, and you are ready to enjoy your well deserved weekend. You are making your rounds through Google Analytics, a common end-of-week practice when suddenly your day goes to down hill. You realize that one of your most visited pages has an astronomical bounce rate.more

When you are first starting out, the word of digital marketing can be incredibly overwhelming. Between website design, social media accounts, email campaigns, SEO, analytics, and content creation, a lot of company's decide to outsource components of their digital strategy. And one of the first things to go is writing (specifically blog writing).more

In recent years, it seems like Facebook has been tweaking their algorithms every few months. Many of these changes have made it more difficult for marketers to share content with their full audiences because of a decline in organic reach. One way around this is creating paid Facebook campaigns that are specifically targeted to certain segments of your audience.more

The days where your college website could skate by on pure information and a design comparable to that of a hotel lobby brochure are long gone. You need a little more to make your website unique and appealing to the wide variety of people who visit it (alumni, current students, parents and especially prospective students). There are a plethora of website designs and content trends that you can experiment with to set your school’s website apart.more

By now, we're all probably aware of the extreme results video content can produce. Including video content in an email leads to a 200-300% increase in click-through rate, including a video on a landing page can lead to an 80% increase in conversion rate, after watching a video 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online (Hubspot). I mean, with one trip to the search engines, you can turn up a plethora of positive video content statistics - seriously, I just did it and found all of these:more

A few weeks ago, MINDSCAPE decided to have a party at our office in honor of National Margarita Day. We laid out the snacks, mixed up the drinks, and invited the other tenants of our building to mix and mingle. Our building is home to a staffing agency, a construction company and a few non-profits (so businesses and organizations that don't have much in common other than sharing a geographic location). But everyone had a great time and we all had the opportunity to meet some people we might not have otherwise . Yes, we could have just invited other marketing professionals; but we wanted to expand our horizons, branch out, meet new people and build a little good will in the community. The MINDSCAPE margarita party got me thinking about how interacting with new people for the benefit of your organization and networking can take many shapes and forms. The idea of branching out can be applied to your organization's social media efforts. Follow people and organizations in your community and interact with them.more

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The other day I was reading a particularly inspiring post, The Surprising Benefits of Failure, from Think with Google (Sidebar: Think with Google is awesome. If you aren’t subscribing already, you should.) It’s a great post because it talks about the importance of learning from failure, but more importantly, it hits on several ideas which are essential to the way that our shop operates. I realized that we have a few things in common with Google, even if we don’t have 70 thousand employees and $89 billion in revenue. (We’re working on it.)more

Throw away your laundry list. How a good story can make your content more compelling. The other day I was perusing Netflix, trying to decide what to watch. In its infinite wisdom, Netflix suggested one of my favorite shows, Mad Men. For those of you who aren't familiar, Mad Men is a period drama set in the 1960's at a New York advertising agency. The plot is full of drama, intrigue, and — marketing wisdom? Let me explain. On Mad Men, the advertising agencies focus on creating elaborate campaigns to sell products to consumers, we're talking storyboards, characters, themes and in-depth narratives, almost like they were creating mini-movies. Things usually culminate with the suave leading man, Don Draper, giving a grand client presentation telling an amazing story. It happens that the same imaginative thought process and crafting of storytelling narratives used by Mad Men can be — and should — be applied to creating content for your B2B website.more

Did you know that 6 billion text messages are sent in the U.S. every day? Crazy, right? Or maybe it isn't so crazy anymore. You probably text a fair amount. I text a fair amount. Everyone I know texts a fair amount. In fact, it seems that texting is a much more preferred method of communication when it comes to the younger generations. Which got me thinking...more