Inbound Marketing Blog

How to better connect sales and marketing management to impact the bottom line. Sales and marketing management can be complex, often with marketing and sales teams becoming dissatisfied with each other. Why? Many of the areas where the wedge between sales and marketing teams can come from is the feeling of each “owning” the customer, or the customer experience. Yet, no one department owns the customer. Marketing is there to identify who the best target audiences are and pursue them. Then your sales team begins the sales process with qualified prospects.more

On April 10th many of our team members had the chance to attend an American Marketing Association of West Michigan luncheon featuring speaker Jure Klepic. The Web as we know it is undergoing fundamental change as it moves away from its current structure of information and links. The new Web is being built around people not data; a profound change that impacts business strategy, design, marketing, and advertising. Therefore, Jure contends that influence is no longer about numbers - it’s about people.more

Brands Get a Facebook Face-Lift! You've likely noticed a few changes in your Facebook brand page lately. In case you haven’t, you will soon. Facebook announced that the Timeline feature is now available for brand pages. The new pages will mimic user profiles, allowing brands to display their history and provide a rich experience for the user. With the recent upgrades, it's important to make sure that your Facebook page conveys the right message! The new interface changes a variety of commonly used features currently available to page admins. Here is an overview of the most important changes that page admins need to be aware of:more

As the customer service rep for Mindscape, one of my biggest challenges is breaking down the communication barrier that exists between tech-heads, like myself, and clients who may not have a strong background in computers. I often find myself explaining the same few topics over and over to many of our users; so I’ve decided to make a quick reference guide to some of the most common ideas that come up during web development. This should help you wrap your head around some of the more complicated areas of your website and hopefully provide some insight as to how your site and the web in general works. And don’t worry, I’ll leave out all of the technical blabber in an attempt to make it as easy to understand as possible. Enjoy!more

How many times have you found yourself looking at your website statistics and noticed that 90%+ of your visitors were brand new? You may have looked at that statistic and found yourself getting excited that so many new people were finding you each month. Unfortunately, those stats aren't a good thing. These high numbers tell you that visitors are arriving to your site, clicking into it a bit and not finding anything helpful enough to make them want to return. This is a common problem, but doesn’t have to be.more

If you are like me, you are longing for the days when social media was easy. And FUN! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love all the things we can do with social media now days. But lately, being on Facebook has become a chore for me. With all the political nonsense to worry about (both nationally and the internal politics that exist between human relationships), I’ve found myself losing interest quickly and longing for the days of customized (albeit insane) MySpace profiles! Luckily, the latest crazes in social networking are starting to bring the social aspects of media back to the forefront. Their clean, focused designs (and targets) are actually allowing for some FUN in social media again! Below is a breakdown of three of the latest social media platforms, along with main target audiences and some ideas for how you can leverage them for your business:more

There has been a lot of buzz around the office of the new LogMe In service called Join.Me. If you have not heard of it yet, then I would suspect you will within the next year. It is an easy-to-use, no sign up required, screen sharing, mini webinar, Web application. That is a lot of very positive descriptive words for a single product, but they pulled them all off quite elegantly. Last week, I had a perfect situation to test it out, and the following is my quick review of their product. For those unaware of my after-hour endeavours, I am one of the founders of a local cycling team. We call ourselves D2 Racing (self promotion never hurt anyone!) One of the benefits of having such a group is the endless supply of guinea pigs for my learning and testing; unfortunately, they are always the ones to receive the brunt of my “experiments.” With the vast majority of us having very busy schedules, it is almost impossible to have a physical meeting so a virtual meeting appeared to be the right solution for our problem.more

Some people are simply born with great writing skills. For others, it’s an acquired and practiced skill. Whether you want to simply become a better writer or are looking to strengthen your writing skills, these four tips can help.more

The Super Bowl has aired, along with the much anticipated commercials those in our industry - and even those not in advertising - look forward to each and every year. In years past, a few would leak out on the Internet here and there, and buzz would generate prior to their actual air time. This year, we've seen an increase in ads leaked and viewed online before the Super Bowl which has created a lot of buzz on social and traditional media channels. The buzz spurred debate around the office about whether or not this takes away from the excitement of watching the ads during the big game. Our resident advertising junkies Christina Torri and Renee Achterhof debate the pros and cons of ad previews:more

I recently had a client ask me if developing a mobile application would help them with their SEO and search engine ranking. I love the question, so I thought I would write a quick post on it. From an SEO perspective, an app actually COULD influence ranking, but not how you might think initially.more

I just received two emails from Internet marketer Trey Smith. The first email's subject line read: "Update" I didn't read it. But then about 90 minutes later, I received another email with the subject line: "SERVER CRASH! (Woooo hooo!)" I immediately opened it to learn what happened. It's curiosity. The email read:more

In the spirit of the new year, I’d love to see everyone resolve to make sure their website is working. No, I don’t mean I want to make sure you have a website that is functioning. I mean I want to make sure you’re getting value from it. I want to make sure it’s actually performing a function! If you have no idea how to do that or what I’m talking about, keep reading. What’s a goal, you ask? Well, in Google Analytics, a “goal” is the completion of some task on your site. Though goals can get pretty complicated, I’ll just cover the most basic and popular one here. Too often the optional complexity scares people off. I don’t want to scare you off, I want you to start measuring the effectiveness of your site!more

It’s 2012. Is this the year your website will work as hard as you do? A well-planned, thoughtfully designed website that positions your business to grow like crazy using the power of the Web isn’t cheap. For a business owner or manager, it can be difficult to know just when to approve the investment in a new website. Below are some thought starters on when to pony-up.more

People determine the success of a business. They ultimately decide whether a company, business or organization thrives or is driven into the ground headfirst. So wouldn’t you want to do everything you can for your people and provide them an outlet for their needs? Don’t know how? The solution is very simple: people crave compelling content. People love stories.more

It happens so often. A business gets excited about the idea of blogging on their website. Post after post goes up, the bosses gush and everyone is excited. But the charm fizzles after a while, and a blog ends up totally inactive or as a catchall for sporadic self-promotional messages. Readers flee and the whole thing becomes, “Yeah, we tried it but it didn’t really work for us.” As with any business initiative, successful blogging requires a plan. If executed properly, having a blog on your website offers many benefits to enhance your online presence. First, blogs provide current and relevant content to your site visitors. Trends in technology, new government or regulatory policies, discoveries for a new use of a product, etc. – anything that affects your industry is useful information to your readers.more

You may have heard that Facebook officially rolled out the launch of their new Timeline feature today. Timeline features a radical redesign of users profile page; instead of merely listing your interests and personal info, the Timeline shows a detailed overview of your life on Facebook. Plus, it allows users to be a bit more creative in the design of their pages. A few of us in the office activated the feature when it rolled out to developers in September. In honor of today's public launch, we thought it would be fun to share with you some of our Timeline profiles.more

Recently I had the opportunity to look at the analytics for a potential client. I had been informed that their bounce rate was upwards of 66%! SIXTY SIX PERCENT? - Holy smokes! That means of all the visitors that come to the site, two thirds of them don’t find the content relative? As I looked at their site and the keywords driving traffic to it, I noticed that they had many branded keywords and even THOSE had a nearly 66% bounce rate. Something seemed really fishy to me – I mean, it was odd that someone would search for the brand name, land on the site and immediately leave.more

Vlogs are replacing blogs. They’re quick snip-its of information that would otherwise be typed up as copy and posted onto a website. A variety of information can be communicated in an entertaining, easy to understand format, and, when presented in three minutes or less, in a small amount of time. But how can it be that just a year ago – even a few months ago – writing was simply enough? YouTube and Vimeo have been popular video sites for years, but suddenly they seem to have burst with activity. Social media sites now allow sharing of entertaining videos through their platforms, and video content is increasing in views exponentially.more

Both online and traditional press releases do the same job: they spread the word about newsworthy information. Take a look at the similarities and differences, pros and cons of both traditional and online press releases.more

So you've built a groundbreaking mobile app in the "virtual farting" genre or a great mobile website. You're hoping people will check it out. You've built it, but how do you know if they will come? Traditional Web analytics will sometimes work on mobile sites, but they are not always ideal. A more mobile-centric approach to analytics may sometimes be necessary. It really depends on how large your mobile audience is. But how will you ever find that out without mobile analytics? Here are six solutions to mobile analytics for your mobile website or mobile app. Spend some time reviewing each one to make sure it fits your needs. I'm not endorsing them so much as compiling them here in this article as a quick round-up of the major players in mobile analytics. In fact, the descriptions below each one are basically marketing copy pulled from their respective sites.more