Inbound Marketing Blog

Advice for measuring website performance for people who think they're too busy to measure website performance. The blessing of a website is that everything is measurable. The curse of a website … is that everything is measurable. Do people click red buttons more than blue buttons? Which verb works best for a Call-to-Action? What percentage of people visiting my site are coming from the Ukraine? Knowing what, when, and how to measure can be overwhelming. However, it doesn’t have to be. Our Chief Operating Officer is an incredibly intelligent guy, and when he’s considering site metrics, he focuses on just five numbers. Five isn’t so bad. You have five senses; five pockets in your Levi's, and five days in your work week — okay, five days in your *average* work week. Anyway, if you want a snapshot of performance, here are the five numbers that are most important to your website.more

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I'm sure you've all heard the saying “everyone's a critic.” Well in 2017, everyone's a photographer — or so they think. Many marketers believe that because their Instagram feed looks great, they're photographers. Well, that is until they are asked to create visual content (aka pictures and videos) for their organization's website or social media accounts. When people start talking about shot lists, camera angles, and editing software, it can be a confidence killer.more

Now, I don't want to brag or anything, but back in my college days I was quite the actor. Got the lead in the school play in fact. John Barrymore; I Hate Hamlet. You should look it up. I had dreams of becoming a famous movie star. I wanted to sing and dance on Broadway. But, sometime during my senior year, I realized that a lifetime of auditioning wasn't for me. Instead I became an Inbound Marketer.more

A website redesign is like any big project: it gets put off until it becomes absolutely necessary. Here are a few (light-hearted) ways to tell that it's time.more

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Have you ever played the word association game? You know the one: where someone rattles off a list of words and you say the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that word. For example, kittens = cuddly, rain = cloud, spiders = creepy.more

It’s the start of a fresh, new year. You know what that means? The "best trends of 2016 " and "things to look for in 2017" lists are here! No matter your area of interest, there is a list for it: food, travel, or web design (which is of course is one of our favorite topics here at MINDSCAPE).more

So you've written the perfect email. It has everything. The design is glorious, the content is nothing less than brilliant, and the CTA you threw at the bottom is so clickable it hurts. But you have a problem...lately your email open rates have been abysmally low. You don't want to send out your masterpiece only to have it waste away in the dusty inboxes of your list members.more

Maps are one of the most valuable tools that humans have at their disposal. For thousands and thousands of years, they have helped us navigate unfamiliar places and prevented us from getting hopelessly lost. If you are a marketer or content creator, you've probably wondered if there was some type of map (be it a literal or figurative one) to help guide you through the rather confusing land of blogging and content creation. I have good news: that tool exists in Google Analytics. To a newcomer, Google Analytics can seem overwhelming because of all the statistics and data that it provides. But there are a few things you can look at (no matter how much or little background you have in statistical interpretation) to help you understand your visitors and improve your efforts in content creation.more

Join Us Thursday, January 19th Lunch & Learn How to Think Like Your Buyers We are happy to announce our first Lunch & Learn Workshop of 2017! We will be discussing how to build your buyer personas by thinking about who they are, their pain points and what motivates them. Class Starts Tuesday, January 24th CREATE & EXECUTE: CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY Our Create & Execute courses have been selling out fast! Why? Because with this course, we open our playbook and provide you with all the processes, tools and thinking you need to get started with your OWN content marketing strategy. Old Product Line Gets New Life What do you do when one of your old product lines doesn't perform quite as well as you might like online? This is a dilemma that one of our clients has been facing. So in December, we've been executing a rather aggressive plan based around pricing, traffic, and conversions. Here are the initial results. December 1st - 8th Spend as % of revenue: 63.3% Average Order Value: $47.69 Through December 8th, clearly our initial plan wasn't working as well as we needed it to. We reviewed the data, gained insights, made adjustments, and started to see better results: December 9th - 18th Spend as % of revenue: 14.4% Average Order Value: $169.87 While we are still working to improve the numbers, we're on target to achieve the lofty revenue goal we set for December that nearly matches what the product line has generated over the last 12 months. This focus has brought new life into this old product line that we expect will generate significant ROI for many months and years to come. To learn more about the results we've produced for our clients, head over to our website! 'Tis the Season for Giving We can get so caught up during the holiday season with rushing around shopping and attending holiday parties, we often forget that for a lot of people, the holidays are a hard time of year. This year MINDSCAPE, had the privilege to take part in the United Way's Adopt-A-Family program.The program matches sponsors with a local family in need this Christmas. We had a great time shopping for our adopted family, who are Burmese refugees with 2 small daughters. To keep up with the latest happeings at MINDSCAPE, like us on Facebook.more

I was watching — okay, mostly listening — to a YouTube video from Dave McClure and four words jumped out at me: "Don't be too smart." Hence the title of this blog post. Dave was talking about Metrics and what he actually said was, "Don't be too smart; do lots of A/B tests." Dave went on to talk about a whole bunch of other stuff, but for this post, we're going to focus on that one bit of sound advice. Here at Mindscape, we use A/B testing all the time, so Dave's comment resonated.more

Here at Mindscape, we have a philosophy that scares a lot of people: if you think something might work, try it. I know, horrifying, right? Well, to a lot of people it actually is. There is this idea floating around that any possible change you make in your digital marketing strategy could be devastating; any subtle copy alteration, navigation change, or shift in social tone could be the destruction of your company. Honestly, I have no idea where this fear came from and why it has any bearing on anyone's decisions. If we never tried anything new, how would we learn and grow? Every single marketing norm that we embrace today, was once just an idea in the back of some go-getters head. It's as simple as that. If you want to make your business the best it can be, you have to be willing to test things out and try new things. Below are a few things to keep in mind when trying to break away from the norm.more

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MINDSCAPE Matters On October 28th, the MINDSCAPE team spent a beautiful fall morning planting trees in downtown Grand Rapids as a part the Mayor's Greening Initiative Planting. It was great to see so many members of the community coming together to make a difference. To see more pictures from our tree planting adventure, visit our Facebook page! Our Holiday Gift to You: "How to Think Like Your Buyers" Join us for a special holiday Lunch & Learn Workshop. We will be discussing how to build your buyer personas by thinking about who they are, their pain points and what motivates them. Join us Thursday, December 15th! Class starts Tuesday, January 24th! Create & Execute: Content Marketing Strategy Our Create & Execute courses have been selling out fast! Why? Because with this course, we open our playbook and provide you with all the processes, tools and thinking you need to get started with your OWN content marketing strategy. Case Study How to Spend Less, While Increasing Revenue For one of our e-commerce clients, we decided to focus on the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of spend as a % of revenue near the end of July 2016. As a result of our various efforts, overall year-over-year (YoY) performance was great, but we really wanted to step up our game. So we set a target of achieving 10% spend-to-revenue % while maintaining our top line revenue. Here's what the client has experienced so far: August 2016: 8.7% spend-to-revenue %, YoY revenue increased 23% September 2016: 8.4% spend-to-revenue %, YoY revenue increased 24.6% And then came October 2016... To find out what happened in October, visit our blog! Piece of Mind: An inbound marketing blog The Importance of Quality Over Quantity Less is more. Quality over quantity. These old adages can hold true when it comes to gifts, interior decorating and ... digital marketing. Yes, you read that right. There are many instances in the world of digital and Inbound marketing, where quality is much more important than quality. To find out where this rule can be applied to your digital marketing efforts, click here.more

I was recently walking through the mall, doing some early scouting for the upcoming Christmas season. As I was turned a corner, I saw two employees tea shop employees standing in the entry way to their store, calling to oncoming customers. "Care to try some of our tea?" "Free samples." Being a tea lover myself and seeing that the shop may be able to offer me a few quick and easy gifts for stockings, I walked over to one of the employees and opted in on the tea tasting. This was a mistake.more

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Recently I listened to a great speaker on the topic of blogging. Many examples were given to help explain how providing audiences with valuable content (in the form of blogs) would ultimately help generate leads. Filled with inspiration I hurried back to my office ready to work.more

Less is more. Quality over quantity. These old adages can hold true when it comes to gifts, interior decorating and ... digital marketing. Yes, you read that right. There are many instances in the world of digital and Inbound marketing, where quality is much more important than quality. For instance:more