I saw this interesting flowchart over on our partner, HubSpot’s site this morning and wanted to share it with you. It will help you decide whether or not it is a good idea to outsource your marketing.
Enjoy and have a great weekend!
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Wharton Internet Marketing Blog
Internet Marketing, SEO, E-Commerce and Social Media
I saw this interesting flowchart over on our partner, HubSpot’s site this morning and wanted to share it with you. It will help you decide whether or not it is a good idea to outsource your marketing.
Enjoy and have a great weekend!
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I have enjoyed watching the Olympics this past weekend. It is fun to see sports that you otherwise don’t really see much. One of those is the synchronized diving. I liked what one of the commentators said as the American divers were taking their last dive. She said, “What do you do when the pressure is on? You make your last dive your best dive.” I think that is true in business as well, we need to make every interaction with our customers and potential customers our very best.
It is never too late to start filling your sales funnel with lots of highly qualified leads that can become your customers by leveraging the power of Inbound Marketing. If you aren’t focused on using the internet properly, you’re missing valuable opportunities to get more business.
Join me this Wednesday, August 1st at 2 p.m. central time as I show you the steps you need to take to make your web presence a marketing machine that delivers high quality, leads (potential customers) for your business.
Here is the agenda, give me 45 minutes and I’ll show you:
Marketing has changed and if you are still marketing the way you did even 5 years ago, you are missing out on a ton of leads and customers that you could have for your business.
Register now, because this event will fill up fast.
And, don’t forget to share this webinar with your friends and colleagues so they can learn more about inbound marketing too!
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Ever wonder why some businesses succeed at internet marketing and some don’t? To succeed at internet marketing, you must follow a process.
Set goals – decide where you want to be. If you have no destination, you won’t be able to devise a strategy to get anywhere. Setting goals is very important to successful internet marketing.
Define your target market – who is your target market? What needs are you meeting? What problems are you solving for them?
Now that you have goals and have defined your target market, you can devise a strategy to meet your goals. Successful internet marketing involves three steps:
Successful internet marketing isn’t magic, it isn’t something that just happens. It is something that takes planning and work.
Coming soon, we will be offering a series of free webinars focused on internet marketing/inbound marketing. Be looking for details coming this week!
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When people land on your website/Facebook page/Pinterest page, etc., what will they find? What is on your site that converts visitors into leads and customers? On every part of your web presence, you should be giving people an opportunity to become a lead or a customer. This is where CTAs (Calls to Action) come in.
There are different types of CTAs depending on where your visitor is in the sales process. For an ecommerce site, the CTA is easy- Buy Now. For other businesses, you may need a little more creativity. You may need to create offers that inform and nurture your visitors.
When you are creating CTAs, remember to always keep your visitors’ needs and desires in mind. Offer CTAs that inform and educate. Often, visitors are looking for information that will help them in their buying decision. You can create whitepapers and eBooks that are informative about your product or service that will educate your visitors. Perhaps, your visitors are looking for special offers. That is another great CTA. Offer a special deal for your visitors that they can’t get anywhere else. Not only is this effective for turning visitors into customers, it’s also a great way to track the effectiveness of your CTA.
What CTA can you create today that will convert your visitors into leads and customers for your business? Creating CTAs is an important part of inbound marketing that you cannot ignore if you want to be successful at internet marketing.
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Many websites have bad navigation (menu) systems. How many times have you found a site on google, clicked on the link and been taken to a beautiful website, only to discover that you can’t find anything on it? Some websites look like their menu system was an afterthought with no rhyme or reason. A beautiful website with good SEO is wasted if visitors to the website can’t find what they are looking for.
Website navigation has become so important that it is now an area of specialization called “Information Architecture”. While many small businesses don’t have either a website or budget large enough to warrant the hiring of one of these specialist, their website designer should be aware of the navigation system’s importance. At the very least, you should ask a few people to look at your website and try to find something. If they have trouble, you should probably rethink your navigation system.
Your website’s ease of navigation is extremely important. If visitors to your website can’t easily find what they are looking for, they will go to your competitor. So don’t let your navigation system be an afterthought.
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1&1 Internet recently reported that up to 40% of small and medium size businesses still don’t have a website. That is shocking news. Social media has, in many cases, taken the place of the business website; but business owners need to understand that social media, while very important, is a tool in an overall marketing strategy. A business website is also a very important tool, but it must be a website that performs.
In the past, a business could just put up a static site and call it a day. Today, your website must attract visitors, educate them and convert them into customers. That is a lot to ask of a website, but when done right, it can bring a significant return on your investment. Businesses must integrate social media, content, blogging and more to meet the demands of today’s consumers.
Consumers now want to be educated, they want to be informed more than “sold.” This is a fundamental shift in consumer behavior.
What are you doing to inform consumers about your products and services? When a visitor comes to your site, are they getting information that will help them make a buying decision? Can they find it easily? Realizing the power of information is a great first step in making your website an inbound marketing machine that performs like a champion.
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Monday is a great day to start improving your internet marketing to help your business. Here are three things you can do this week to help you attract more visitors, and convert them into leads and customers for your business.
Okay, those are 3 easy steps that you can take this week to get started improving your internet marketing. Get started this week and then repeat these three steps each week and see what happens. What ideas do you have for improving your internet marketing this week?
Want some more ideas? Download the free eBook, Essential Guide to Internet Marketing today.
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Are you protected against the “Internet Doomsday” virus? According to Reuters, “About a quarter-million computer users around the world are at risk of losing Internet access on Monday because of malicious software at the heart of a hacking scam that U.S. authorities shut down last November.”
Make sure you are protected. You can find out how to identify and clean up this virus at dcwg.org. So many businesses rely on the internet for sales and leads. It is well-worth taking the time to make sure you are safe!
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“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That rule is not only golden for our personal lives, but it is golden for our businesses as well. People remember where they get good service. They remember where someone gave them a little bit more than expected- a lagniappe in our neck of the woods. They remember, they return and they also refer others.
You may be wondering how this transfers to online marketing. Think about your presence online. You can offer a little bit more information with a blog. You can provide information and discussion through social media. When you are online looking for information, don’t you appreciate the businesses that take the time to provide just a little more information and keep that information up to date? What about businesses that respond to your comments and questions on social media? Doesn’t that make a better impression than those that ignore you and your questions, and offer only the bare essentials of information?
We offer lots of information about online marketing on this blog. Some have told us we should keep some of these things secret because our competitors may see what we are doing and try to steal it. That is absurd. If we are doing something that is helpful to businesses, we hope that anyone who does internet marketing would do the same, go the extra mile. It helps everyone in the long run.
Do unto others . . . it’s golden.
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Marketing isn’t rocket science . . . it’s harder – that chapter title in Rules of the Hunt by Michael Dalton Johnson really caught my attention. Johnson contends:
Marketing is not a do-it-yourself job. The talent and creativity needed to do it well are rare. There are no easy-to-follow formulas. Marketing is no place for amateurs.
He continues:
It’s remarkable how many people think that, by starting a business, they have somehow become marketing experts.
The basic concepts are simple and easy to understand, but, like many things, the devil is in the details. The old adage about poker comes to mind: It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.
While marketing doesn’t take a lifetime to master, unless you have a few years of successful marketing experience, you don’t know much about marketing.
I suspect that businesses lose millions, perhaps billions, each year both from the cost of paying for marketing that doesn’t work and sales lost by amateurish marketing.
Does that sound harsh? It is actually true. Many say that marketing is just common sense, but for many it is common sense after the fact. People see something that is working and they say, “that makes sense.”
With the growth of the internet and social media, marketing is becoming more and more competitive. The average person is bombarded by around 3,000 marketing messages a day. The challenge is in making your message stand out. The world of internet marketing can be very dangerous for do-it-yourselfers.
Some businesses try to save money by opting to hire:
While there is nothing wrong with being young, related and nice, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to know your way around the internet, none of these are actual qualifications of a true internet marketer. By hiring someone who does not have measurable, successful marketing experience, a business risks losing precious time and money.
Entrepreneurs often think they have to do everything on their own and build their business all by themselves. That simply isn’t the case. By working with experienced marketing professionals, business owners can often build their business faster, more efficiently and more economically than they can when they try to go it alone.
Need help with your marketing? Contact us!
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