Ideas, insights and inspirations.

Pendulum is swinging away from paid marketing towards inbound marketing. Elliance, a firm believer in the power of AND-thinking and not EITHER-OR-thinking, recommends that marketers embrace both. In fact, we see the relationship between inbound marketing and paid marketing as follows: i.e. they are good alone, but better together. While paid marketing gives a short-term boost, inbound marketing creates an enduring foundation. In reality, with inbound marketing as part of the mix, marketers can reduce their paid marketing spend over time.

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Like my wife and I and a lot of other people, our friends Lindsay and Ryan have a dog. Their dog is an ancient Japanese Chin named Mikoto. Mikoto weighs maybe five pounds, yet lumbers when he moves, is completely deaf, and lives a monk-silent life. Because Mikoto is for so many reasons portable, he gets to go places. A couple of weekends ago, Lindsay and Ryan went to a spa/hotel place tucked away somewhere deep in the recesses of Appalachia. The place was known to be pet-friendly and their website confirmed as much, so Lindsay and Ryan took Mikoto. Upon check in, the hotel staff informed Lindsay and Ryan that they were indeed pro-pet, but that guests were, under no circumstances, allowed to leave an animal companion in the room unattended, ever. It’s a reasonable policy for such an upscale destination, but springing it on guests at check in is somewhat problematic. “We came here for the spa, for … Continue reading

Traditional outbound marketing relies heavily on interrupting prospective customers with advertising, direct mail, etc. Inbound marketing takes a much different approach: earning attention and trust by providing valuable content and embracing personal interaction. Inbound marketers help clients “get found” via search engines, word-of-mouth and the sharing of content. These tactics also tend to engage prospects who already have an interest or inclination toward a particular offering, resulting in a pool of high quality leads who are more likely to convert. Inbound marketing involves the continuous creation of relevant and high quality content, such as PR2.0 assets, articles, social posts, blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers and thought leadership events, and igniting that content through promotion and conversation-starters to encourage peer-to-peer sharing. Carefully curated content is distributed through channels you control (your “owned” media, such as your website and social networks) and the channels you don’t control (the social media of people/organizations in your network), where our content strategists spark conversations … Continue reading

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Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! Anyone who remembers watching the Super Bowl 29 years ago this week may recognize that speech from the now iconic “1984” TV spot that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. Apple officially aired the original commercial just once, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, about the time that Los Angeles Raiders running back Marcus Allen broke the hearts of every Washington Redskins fan with a 74-yard-long touchdown run. Apple and its agency, Chiat/Day, created … Continue reading

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During these times when consumers tend to ignore billboard ads, block telemarketing calls, and fast forward through television commercials, inbound marketing is a hot topic. Tactics typically categorized as inbound marketing are ones that encourage interested prospective customers to come to you, as opposed to simply purchasing their attention through advertising and other methods of pushing out marketing and sales communication.  Inbound marketing tactics include activities like blogging, search marketing, social media, and content marketing (producing videos, creating infographics, writing articles, etc.).  While both inbound and outbound marketing certainly have their merits, the benefits of incorporating inbound marketing strategies into your long-term plan are unmistakable. According to a 2012 Hubspot report, “inbound marketing-dominated organizations experience a 61% lower cost per lead than outbound marketing-dominated organizations.”  While a lower-cost outcome might not be surprising for organizations that don’t spend as much on traditional, costly tactics like advertising and direct mail, what is interesting is how strong the leads turn out to … Continue reading

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The New York Times wrote a great and fun story about a nut company that just spent a fortune for the domain nuts.com, despite having a wonderful brand to itself and a thriving online business at nutsonline.com. We had a nice debate internally about all the search and brand impact of this decision. Read Abu’s response and all the other fun responses. I can’t help but be struck by the amazing social opportunities that have been created here for Newark Nuts. If the age of corporate social media has taught us anything, it’s that customers value businesses that are honest, forthright and show their human side. We want to join in this story of their heroic rise, fall, rise — and we wanted to save these nutty nut lovers from falling again. The world is already coming to their aid in the NYT article with tons of free, some good, advice. Newark Nuts now has a tremendous opportunity to connect … Continue reading

If you don’t know the answer to this simple question, you might as well postpone the web redesign project. Answers could range from increased sales of key product lines, growth of right-fit clients, expand geographic reach, define a distinctive position, align with new business strategy, relaunch the brand, to widen the sales funnel. If you are interested in redesigning a new website that is a conversion machine, contact us.

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