Business Growth Blog

Inbound marketing can get costly. So how can you afford it, especially if you’re a small business? Here are 2 ways to reduce your inbound marketing costs:

A landing page is a lead capture web page. It has a form that a website visitor has to fill out in order to get a special offer, like a coupon, discount, ebook, video, or some other type of valuable content.

The landing page conversion rate is the percentage of people that fill out the form.

Here's the most important part: Once a website visitor fills out the form, they get entered into your database and can be followed up on by a salesperson or furthered nurtured until they're ready for a sales call.

Landing pages are the lifeblood of online lead generation.

Here's an example of what a landing page looks like:

Many people have doubts about whether or not social media can help drive sales. They think that “their prospects” aren’t using it, that people don’t pay attention to things being posted there, or that it’s all about “what someone had for lunch.” The truth is that the Internet is full - almost too full - of awesome information. My daughter says that if it’s not on the Internet, it must not exist! She truly believes that.

One of the most critical elements that can impact the effectiveness of your ebook is its visual representation. If it's formatted poorly and looks unprofessionally prepared, it makes you look poor and unprofessional.

The old saying "you can't judge a book by it's cover" may be true, but the reality is that great covers and titles capture people's attention and makes them want to download your ebook.

Investing time and resources in creating in a good graphical representation of your content is critical.

It may seem like a simple question, but there’s a lot more to blogging (good blogging that is!) than you might think. People read blogs all the time, but when it comes time to actually create one, the questions start popping up!

What is a blog? “A personal website or web page on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc. on a regular basis.”

Read on to get 8 tips for writing good blog articles.

A lot of people balk when they think about having to hire people to do jobs that they can do themselves. One of the biggest lessons I learned over the past couple years is that it costs too much money NOT to hire people to do specific jobs.

Everyone knows you need to proofread. Spelling and grammatical errors make you look sloppy and unprofessional. The problem is, when you've spent so much brain power trying to write and format good content, and you go over and over it to make it just right, proofreading becomes almost impossible. Your brain automatically fixes mistakes.

Y've seen ths thgs bfro – where the wrods dn't haev to be spleled correctly in oder to know wht is bing siad.

Spell check is just one small part of a clean document though. With one click of a button you can find misspelled words – that part is easy. It's the words that shouldn't be there or are spelled correctly, but used wrong, that can get us into trouble.

Read on to find out 9 proofreading strategies, typical error rates, and what you can expect to pay for the service.

Determining what should be on your website, let alone how it should look and function, is not a task for the faint of heart. It's one of those projects that takes a lot of hard thinking and seems never to end (which it shouldn't - you should be continually working to drive better results from your site). However, there is one thing you can do to make it easier, save time, and ensure you're keeping up with - or surpassing - industry trends: a competitor analysis.

Here are 5 ways a competitor analysis can help you create a better website:

Back in the day, it wasn't such a challenge to figure out what to do for marketing. Phonebook, a mailer, maybe a trade show or two - oh, and don't forget - dial for dollars! But everything is different now that "Google has the answers to life," as I tell my kids (especially my 12-year-old son who always asks, "Why?" - "I have no idea, look it up!" I say).

Your prospects and customers are doing the same thing when they have questions - looking it up. This explosion of information on the Internet has opened up opportunities for businesses to get in front of their target buyers and gain market share, but it's also making sales and marketing increasingly complex. The most important thing business owners, CEO's, and other executives in charge of driving growth can do is to constantly stay in the know about the growing number of marketing strategies available. Otherwise, they may get left in the dust as their competition passes them by.

If you're not currently doing inbound marketing, take a moment to watch this short video and see if it's something you should consider as part of your upcoming growth initiatives.

One of the age old questions companies ask people is "how did you hear about us?"

That is one of the most important pieces of information you can gather. Unfortunately, many companies I talk to don't have a clear process for how to collect or leverage that data to drive important business decisions.

By effectively tracking lead source, you can fully evaluate where you get your best customers and how that impacts your business growth. Here's an example of how it can work: