BroadVision Marketing Blog

No matter what product or service you are providing your goal from your website is to generate leads for your business. Lead generation is by no means new, businesses have been devising strategic local inbound marketing plans for years. The main question that we get asked all the time is in regards to the number of leads a business requires. Is there such a thing as the ‘Perfect Number of Leads’ to generate per day, week or month?

There is something magic about turning 50. Those of us in the Generation Jones demographic have reached the age when we aren’t too young to be dismissed and we aren’t too old to be on fixed incomes.  In fact in the US, like in many other countries, Generation Jones has taken over the reins of political and business power. After approximately 20 years of international Boomer leadership, the torch has been passed to Jonesers, who now comprise over two thirds of the current Presidents and Prime Ministers of EU and NATO member countries. America’s Obama, France’s Sarkozy, Germany’s Merkel, Australia’s Gillard, New Zealand’s Key, and Canada’s Harper are some of many GenJones leaders who are redefining global affairs. This array of dignitaries is mirrored in our local political and leadership officials. Local inbound marketers need to take note.

Occasionally we hear from Ann Mullen, team member here at BroadVision Marketing, on her unique perspective concerning local inbound marketing. In this article she gives a local inbound marketing tip that considers all the different ways that a customer interacts with a business before becoming a customer. Ann reminds us that the last online place a person visits before buying a product or service is not the only place that person interacted with the business. Let's hear how Ann puts it.--Jaco

Mark Twain channeled the frustration of many artists when he wrote, “Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” from Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903.  Michael Kahn wrote this line in Photography, Copyright, and “Derivative Works”in November 2009. The quote applies to those who want to control the use of their work as well as to those who think that with the advent of the internet current copyright laws are archaic. As inbound marketers we have learned the inbound marketing tip concerning the "article appeal rule" that states that pictures make a huge difference. Our blogs, our social media, our websites all need big dynamic pictures. So where do we get them and what does Mark Twain have to do with it?

Business owners today are using social media as an inbound marketing outlet with great results. While finding new customers and clients is perfect there is another huge advantage of having a social media presence. That is that social media takes place in real time. You will see messages and comments seconds after they have been posted. This means you can respond quickly and answer these queries or comments, think how that makes your customer service look? This will lead to great inbound marketing opportunities.

If the main idea of inbound marketing is to get your potential customers to become clients, how do you know you have succeeded? You have people hopping on and off your website or your Facebook page and Twitter all day, but that doesn’t mean success. You can look at all the fancy analytics your heart desires, but that doesn’t mean success either.  You know you have succeeded when your potential customers become paying clients. You know that you can get them to do that using outbound marketing methods where you chase them down and yell at them between segments of their favorite shows.

The Press Release is Dead! I wrote last January in one of my favorite articles ever. After looking at what various authorities said, here was my parting remark, “So is the press release dead? Definitely not, but it has come out of its cocoon to become a social media butterfly.” Why did I make such a pronouncement? I’m glad you asked. If you remember we discussed that the press release was a way to announce news of your business or service to more people than just those who make it through the noise to your website. PRWeb says that they use “press release” and “news release” interchangeably to capture relevant search traffic. They also mentioned a newly coined idea “social media release.” So now that we are in agreement that the press release is not dead, we need to look at how to write one. Giving us this information will be guest blogger Fraser D Smith of Pro-Content also of Australia.--Jaco

20 Years. That’s how long it has taken for our entire definition of what the global market is to change completely. 20 years ago, the world was greeted with something that had only existed in science fiction; a means of communicating with anyone in the world through a rich, graphical interface. The internet, while existing since the 1960’s, really came into home use around 1992. Even with this amazing tool at our fingertips, it still took many years for businesses to realize what a powerful medium it was for reaching a huge percentage of the public. And social internet marketing was born.

Colors compose a secret language that only the human subconscious – and savvy inbound marketers – can understand. There's a reason the walls of your local fast food restaurant are orange, red and yellow. These are colors that subconsciously excite you and stimulate your appetite. There is a science behind the calming shade of green of your favorite coffee shop’s cups and why there's so much red in casinos. The language of color is a huge advantage in the world of marketing.

Do you want to add your own infographics as a part of your content creation? I showed you some tools you could try in the article, "9 Inbound Marketing Infographics Tools." I spent a lot of time creating one of my own that I slipped into an article, but please don’t go looking for it. It was a sad little thing I created using Easel.ly. While I was looking for a platform I could understand I came upon the Hubspot package “How to Create Five Fabulous Infographics in PowerPoint.”  When I saw that it used PowerPoint and seemed to call for things I couldn’t figure out, I passed it by. However, I wasn’t satisfied with my poor infographic skills. And then l I found a video by Sharon Sheldon on  “How to Create Graphics Using Smart Art.” After watching this 11-minute long video, I used PowerPoint 2013 (instead of PowerPoint 2010 as Sharyn suggested) and made an infographic that pleased me, made of some content created a long time ago. That’s it below. Now that I am not as intimidated by PowerPoint, I am ready to use the Hubspot package next.