Inbound Marketing Blog

Save the date! Coming up on October 2nd is a sales and marketing event that you won’t want to miss named HubSpot on Tap! From 3:30 to 6:30pm, we will be serving up some marketing and sales tips and tricks accompanied by craft beer, unique cocktails and delicious food at The Knickerbocker inside New Holland Brewing’s Grand Rapids location.more

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.more

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.more

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.more

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.more

In our new video blog series, Minds of MINDSCAPE, a member of our team will share a few words of wisdom about their particular area of expertise.more

We are excited to announce the launch of our new video blog series, Minds of MINDSCAPE! In each clip, a member of our team will share a few words of wisdom about their particular area of expertise.more

Here at MINDSCAPE, while we primarily work work to drive website traffic using Inbound Marketing tactics, we are actually big fans of PPC. PPC is a fantastic way to bolster your SEO and media efforts. A well executed paid search campaign can give you insight into the keywords your audience is using when they search and what type of content resonates with them.more

In a world where the average shopper can have Amazon deliver anything to their house in under two days, life is rough for a smaller e-commerce site. I mean, how are you supposed to compete with brands like Walmart, Target, and Nike? You're not going to make 12 billion ( Apple's total in e-commerce sales in 2016) in sales revenue by giving your team a good pep talk.more

What tactics are you using to raise awareness for your brand and help move people along in their buying journey? Do you blog? Post on social media? Dabble in paid search? While those are all extremely effective tactics, sometimes one of the best ways of reaching your audience is getting out in the marketplace and interacting with them face-to-face. So if you are looking for another way to reach your audience, consider doing some speaking engagements!more

At somepoint in time, we have all fallen victim to trends that, in hindsight, have been...regrettable. Leg warmers, jeggings, man-buns, Crocs - I think we can all agree that we were blind to their incomprehensible trendiness. Luckily for us, following these trends only led to a few terrible school photos. Getting on board with the latest digital marketing trends, however, could have more...adverse effects. Let's take a look at a few popular digital marketing trends that are now being questioned.more

There are a lot of people out there with a lot of different opinions on what a content strategy is. In fact, many believe that a content strategy is just the "why" in the who, what, where, when, and why of the title of this post. I don't really care to argue semantics with other marketers,more

Awhile back we wrote a blog post about how you can find success in your partnership with an inbound marketing agency . We didn't, however, give any tips on how to actually choose an agency. To give you some advice on this decision-making process, I talked to our CEO (and top salesperson), Pete Brand. Here is the advice he had to offer.more

When you think about creating content for your business, I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind is creating content that will benefit your customers and help move them along in their buying journey; content like blogs, videos, and content offers. You know, all the things that we and other marketing blogs, spend a majority of our time talking about and dispensing advice on creating.more

I don't think I need to say how crucial video content is to a digital marketing strategy. YouTube has over a billion users, and more than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day. Four out of five consumers believe that demo videos are helpful. Including video in a landing page can increase conversion by 80%. Using the word ‘video’ in an email subject line boosts open rate by 19%. Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. The statistics go on and on. The proof is there; video is an essential component to a successful digital marketing strategy. But you already knew that, didn't you? You're problem isn't a lack of knowledge. You're problem is a lack of resources. You know what you should be doing, you just don't have the resources to get the job done. Well, you're in luck. About 10 months ago, MINDSCAPE hired a photographer/videographer, and she shared some of the most helpful video and photography resources she has used to improve upon her skills - all taking the form of Youtube vloggers. Let's take a look at these vlogs so you can begin your journey to becoming a better video marketer (and a better photographer).more

In the digital marketing world there is no shortage of things to measure, analyze, and report on. It is all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of data your site generates. That being said, I've never become more lost in data then when I first began trying to assess the value of blogging. It seemed easy at first - look at visits and CTA clicks and you're done - but I soon learned there are a plethora of ways to grade a blog. Luckily for you, you don't have to stumble through the data like I did. Take a look at the metrics below and decide what is important to you - and perhaps more importantly become aware of the ways certain metrics can mislead you.more

Photo credit : HBOmore

I've always liked puzzles. Crossword, jigsaw, sudoku — the process of bringing all of these separate pieces together to create something whole — has, for me, always been a fulfilling one. This is probably one of the reasons I went into digital marketing. Email, social media, blogging, SEO — bringing all of these moving pieces together to form one cohesive strategy isn't too far from a sodoku or a jigsaw puzzle. But blogging itself isn't a puzzle. It's a recipe. And I absolutely hate cooking. If you're anything like me, you probably think that there is some secret strategy to blogging. That if you just put the words together in the right way, your blog post will suddenly take off, but that's not the case. Creating a successful blog post is more like baking a cake than solving a puzzle. You need to have all of the right ingredients, prepare them in the right way, bake your cake for the proper amount of time, and let it cool for a while. Alright, enough with these analogies. You came to this post to learn how to start a blog, so let's get to it! If you've already started a blog and are just looking for tips on Keyword research and SEO, skip to step 3.more

Exactly 411 days ago, I started work here at MINDSCAPE. I was incredibly excited to begin work as a writer and knew I had the experience and talent to make a difference - or thought I knew. While I was an experienced writer, I didn’t understand the colossal difference between writing content for a digital marketing strategy and writing news articles, reviews, and other non-marketing content. I spent my first two months intensively learning the ins and outs of SEO and keyword research under the tutelage of a strategist. I learned the specific MINDSCAPE blogging process under the senior content writer. And I picked up a few tips from the resident designers and developers. I was overflowing with knowledge and ready to take on the world. But alas, there are some things that training can’t teach you; there some things that you learn on the job. Luckily for you, I have documented some of those things, so you don’t have to spend a year blogging to figure them out. Below are five key things that I have taken away from my past year of blogging. Hopefully, they’ll save you from having to learn a hard lesson or two.more

Stop. Stop what you're doing right now. You are making a HUGE mistake. There is nothing wrong with the landing page copy — you're making it worse. There is nothing wrong with the design, and if you ask your designer to change it again, she will probably break your laptop over your head. Everything about your landing page is perfect. It's your form that's the problem.more