In a recent company meeting we devoted some time to revisit and discuss our core values and the application of those values in all things AdVision. As we sorted through our different values that we believe differentiate our company, some qualities (good qualities) didn't make the list. That's not that they weren't a reflection of our ideology, but simply that they were too elemental and we deemed them "permission to play." The idea here was if we don't embody the most simple values (i.e. "work hard") then a more unique quality (i.e. "be ahead of the curve) would essentially become irrelevant.
In this thinking, we also put together a short list of our "Inbound Marketing Permission to Play” elements. Here they are:
Last week we wrote about how to use Instagram for business marketing. This week we're going to dive into some great ways you can target ads on Facebook.
Over the past several months, Google has gotten far more strict about where your backlinks come from. Paid links are poison and Google's webspam director Matt Cutts flat-out declared guest posting dead. But, while mass guest blogging schemes and link buying will get you smacked down by the search engines, you can still get legitimate links. Some characteristics of quality links in 2014:
I grew up in Omaha, and by default, am therefore genetically predisposed to reading more by, and about Warren Buffet than I would otherwise be inclined. From my armchair quarterback vantage, there has been one recurring tenet of Mr. Buffett’s approach, which I always admired – his focus on uncomplicated, measured progress.
Our Inbound Director Jon, shared with me a Fortune article which I won’t summarize but will encourage you to read, in which Buffett describes how minimally macro-economic factors, outsider speculation, or changes in the breeze affect his investment process.
The sales funnel has been a dominant discussion in the world of sales even before online marketing became prominent. The sales funnel is the process that companies use to first attract the attention of potential customers, help them see the value in the business, and then convert them into paying customers. Most businesses understand how to use this process when it comes to traditional marketing, but lose focus when working online. To be successful, companies have to be just as serious about their sales funnel online.
As with many projects, marketing initiatives can easily get the cart in front of the horse, by running straight to the “how” of the effort, rather than starting with the “why.” Not understanding “why” a project is being undertaken (not too mention devoting time/money/resources towards) isn’t necessarily ensuring it won’t be successful, but it is ensuring that you’ll never truly know if it actually was successful… because you didn’t define success.
Most of us marketers use a variety of tools to support our efforts, most of which have their own reporting and analytics components (what good is marketing, if you can’t measure it?). While the level of granular data provided by each platform is great, it has two unfortunate bi-products:
In our humble opinion, there are few free tools out there (excluding maybe email & some social media outlets), which provide more value to a business than Google Analytics. There is phenomenal amount of data available in GA, which is often times overwhelming, and not instantly actionable.
