Inbound Marketing Blog

I’ll finally get the chance to meet up with one of my marketing heroes, Marcus Sheridan (for the first time) at HubSpot’s Inbound 2014 Conference in Boston in September - and it’ll be a treat. Periodically, I’ll exchange emails with him, usually regarding something he’s blogged about.

I had an email exchange with Marcus a couple days ago and it prompted me to give a listen to one of Marcus’ old talks - on being transparent to your prospective customers with your content.

It’s really something that isn’t done. Content marketing is generally poorly done or not done at all. Personally, I’m starting to use the term “content marketing” less and less (forgive me when I use it later in this post) in favour of “education”. Because that’s what this is all about - educating your website visitors and your prospects about what you do and what you offer. This brings them closer to your brand and starts a positive relationship.

This is how it all works - but what I’ll talk about in this blog post is the importance of being honest and transparent in your content (blog posts, e-books, videos) - so that your prospects will be more comfortable doing business with you. Believe me - this is a post that you have to read because it’s vitally important to building your web presence online!

5 of our staff members are at MozCon 2014 this week and while they'll be learning and hearing from the biggest names in Inbound Marketing, it also presents an opportunity to shake hands and meet some new people. This is something that all of us are well versed in, right here in Vancouver - meeting the best and brightest in the city.

Needless to say, networking is important for growing a business, building up your database of contacts and learning from those senior to you. All of us at LocalTrifecta have done networking events here in Surrey and throughout the Greater Vancouver area and I thought this would be a great opportunity for all of us to share our best tips for maximizing time at networking events.

Too many business blogs out there are done poorly - in a number of ways. Some are content braindumps while others are just sales promotion vehicles. While good content will get you found in search engines, a lot of business blogs aren’t optimized for some of the basic SEO factors that should increase your business’ online visibility. This post will show and explain 6 tips to optimize your blog posts so you can be found in search engines and bring in sales through the lucrative organic channel.

Dental Marketing: It’s the one thing that every dentist knows they need to do for their dental practice. Every dental practice wants more patients. But how do you go about getting them? Many like to toss an advertisement in the local newspaper or put a 30-second spot on the radio. It’s how things WERE done and still are to a certain extent with dental practices.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to marketing. There’s the conventional/ traditional school of marketing. And there’s the new school of marketing.

The conventional school of marketing would have you believe that the only real way to get your business in front of people is to place ads, buy email lists and make phone calls. The new (and cool) school of marketing would tell you that to get yourself in front of your target audience, you need to be in the business of producing content that solves your ideal buyers’ problems and answers their questions.

I’m not here to tell you what is right or what is wrong. Both have a place in marketing budgets in companies all over the world.

But what this post will do is give you a fair, honest comparison - I want this blog post to give you an idea of what each is so that you’ll be ready to assess what you ought to include in your own marketing budget.

Most writers get writer’s block. It’s near inevitable. Whether it’s a blog post or ebook, writer’s block happens - and sometimes at the worst possible time. If you haven’t gotten it before, then you’re a lucky person.

But for the rest of us that have, you know the feeling. You stare at your screen or your notepad. The hope of accomplishing your task at hand feels increasingly difficult. You reach deep into your brain for something to get your creative juices going. Nothing’s there.

Now what? What can you possibly do to get your mind back on track? Here are 5 ways to fight the evil that is writer’s block:

So you’re ready to invest in your business’ online presence but you’ve got at least one of two problems:

• No time to do Internet Marketing yourself

• Not sure how Internet Marketing really works (and works effectively)

That means you’ll need some professionals to manage this for you - an Internet Marketing agency. You’ll need the best agency to run your business’ digital marketing. I’d suggest a real thorough search of agencies because the last thing you want is to bounce around from agency to agency because of poor results and poor service.

Here are some tips to avoid that mess so you can pick the right Internet Marketing agency for your business:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about building a content strategy and actually doing content marketing, it’s that it takes time. If you’ve been sold on content marketing, you probably know that it’s an investment - of your time and creativity.

Last week, head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts went off on the practise of guest blogging:

“Okay, I'm calling it: if you're using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it's become a more and more spammy practice, and if you're doing a lot of guest blogging then you're hanging out with really bad company.”

This received plenty of backlash from SEO’s and Digital Marketers alike. Most surprising was his word choice - “Stick a fork in it, guest blogging is done”.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re a business owner or manager considering your Internet marketing agency options. There are plenty of Internet marketing agencies in Vancouver and all have their own ways of setting up and pricing the packages they sell.

We’ve heard from a number of business owners - some already frustrated, and some who were unaware of the untruthful actions taken by their Internet marketing agency. This blog post will show you what’s happening to other businesses all over the Lower Mainland and how you can avoid getting burned the same way.