This post originally appeared on Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.
There are two women who can cause websites to crash, phones to ring incessantly, and bidding wars to begin.
Think of a really good print advertisement you’ve seen lately. What did you like about it? Chances are that while the content of that ad was important, the design played a big role in drawing you in.
It’s important to think of your resume like an advertisement to job recruiters. Writing a standout resume goes beyond the content you put in there — the format plays an important role, too.
I’ve been interested in data and analytics for a long, long time. As a ten-year-old, I remember creating Excel spreadsheets with my dad for his annual Fantasy Football pool. By the time I was 16, I was building Pivot Tables with my cell phone bill to figure out who I texted the most. (I promise I had other hobbies.)
Since then, I’ve learned how much more there is to data analysis besides Pivot Tables and Excel. There’s a whole world of analytics out there — and I’ve barely scratched the surface.
So it’s finally time. You’ve decided your business needs a new website. There are probably a variety of reasons why (it’s outdated, it’s not mobile friendly, it doesn’t represent your brand, etc.)—but where to start? Well, many businesses will write a website RFP (request for proposal) and then send that RFP out to multiple agencies hoping they’ll respond.
But here’s the thing, some of the best agencies out there hate responding to RFPs because they’re time consuming and creatively constraining. That’s a problem because as a business, you want the best agencies to respond to your RFP so you can get the best website possible.
Finding the perfect free stock photo … what a feeling!
It’s like finding a black pearl in an oyster, or like finding a golden Chachapoyan fertility idol in a booby-trapped Peruvian temple (hat tip, Indiana Jones).
Why is it so rare to find a free stock photo that’s the perfect fit for your blog post, email, or other piece of content?
If you hang on to anything long enough, it eventually comes back in style, right? Many might argue that this is because there are no new ideas, and that fashion designers have to “steal” from the past in order to create fresh new looks. In reality, this phenomenon probably has less to do with a lack of originality and more to do with nostalgia.
It wasn’t until late afternoon on April Fool’s Day when I came up with the idea for an epic prank.
No, not covering a colleague’s desk with Post-It notes or planting staplers in Jell-O. I’m talking something a little more … client-facing.
Let me quickly give you some context here. My marketing consulting company, Brand Builder Solutions, is a very strong advocate of all things inbound marketing.
If you’re serious about improving more conversions, you need to start thinking of conversion rate optimization (CRO) differently. CRO isn’t just about making small adjustments to a landing page to get 5% more conversions. But if you’ve tried moving page elements around, tested variations of your copy, and optimized your form, but still aren’t seeing meaningful conversion gains, don’t worry — all is not lost.
Optimizing your web pages shouldn’t just be a task on your to-do list. It should be an overarching strategy — something you think about and test and tweak every single day.
Why? Because your website is how people get to know your brand, and having optimized web pages will make for a more engaging and delightful experience. Plus, you’ll see greater returns on the content you publish across your marketing channels.
This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Sales Blog. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
If you haven’t started incorporating social media into your sales process, you’re not alone. According to a survey from PeopleLinx, only 31% of sellers currently use social to sell.
Advertising used to be about smoke and mirrors. The smoke was sometimes literal (“Sophisticated women smoke Virginia Slims!”) and the mirrors reflected who we were and/or wanted to be (“True Americans buy Ford”).
But today, “BEST IN THE WEST” billboards are no longer effective because consumers’ expectations have changed. Every purchase is mere clicks away; there are increasingly few strangleholds on distribution, proprietary sales territories, patented common goods, price or quality differentials.
Social media is no longer a marketing afterthought for companies and organizations. Every major brand is present across the major social media platforms, and they are actively planning strategic campaigns around social activity. Companies from every industry have made the leap into social media, but healthcare has lagged behind. Why is this?
Part of it is a lack of understanding about what social media is and how it integrates with current healthcare marketing efforts. Part of it is a fear of how it affects patient privacy and compliance with regulations such as HIPAA. What many healthcare organizations don’t realize is that these obstacles are all easily overcome and shouldn’t stand in the way of building up social media strategies.
How many of you use your smartphone and/or tablet to check email, scroll through Twitter, and even read blog posts like this one?
Most of you, I’ll bet. While we’re not quite ready to do away with our laptops and desktop computers, people are spending more time using their mobile devices to access the internet — especially social media sites.
Your leads are the driver of your business. To grow and to gain customers you need to have quality leads that are actively engaged in your organization’s offerings—leads that are a fit for organizations strategy.
While every organization has a unique approach to categorizing its leads, there are several myths associated with lead quality many organizations fall to. Lets take a look at 10 lead quality myths and debunk them using facts derived from industry data.
