Inbound and
Digital Marketing Insights

Every business wants to be an industry leader, to be the first name on customers’ minds—but how exactly does one do that when faced with stiff competition and discerning customers with ready access to information?

The pursuit of thought leadership—positioning a company as a leader in its field—is built on establishing credibility. And one of the most effective ways to do that is by regularly publishing articles, videos, research, and all kinds of original content. Emphasis on “regularly” and “original.”

In a lifetime, an average person spends five years and four months on social media. While Facebook is the leading social media platform in terms of active users, it’s actually YouTube where people tend to spend more time. This begs the question: which social media platform is best for business and marketing?

Every so often we have clients requesting an update to their website based on some website grader or another. Now, this isn’t a problem in itself—such tools make it easier to improve websites. It does become a problem when you pursue a perfect score on these sites as an end in itself.

What I’d like to assert is that site evaluation tools, even and perhaps especially when combined, cannot recommend a perfect website. We could spend days, even weeks, implementing their recommendations—and racking up higher costs than you’d need to build a website from scratch—but it wouldn't guarantee traffic, conversions, or satisfied users. Instead, you should focus on users' experience of the website.

The start of June welcomes another set of updates for digital marketers.Facebook and Snapchat roll out new features for marketing, even as LinkedIn cuts back on some. Meanwhile, Google unveils its new service catering to SMEs looking for websites of their own.

If you’re overwhelmed by the prospect of having a website built—let alone building it yourself—then don’t worry: this article’s for you. I’m not going to talk about anything too technical, which would only have you furrowing your brows. Rather, I’ll try to explain, as a web developer, some of the basic considerations for anyone looking to outsource web development or build one in-house.

There are several categories of web development technology, and for any project, web developers could recommend a few from each of these. Without solid foundations, it’d be easy for someone new to it to get lost.

Having a hard time finding qualified leads? Or attracting the wrong prospects, and having trouble qualifying them manually? With an effective email marketing campaign, you can attract a steady number of leads and qualify them without taking too much of your time.

Email marketing generally refers to sending emails to current or past customers to build relationships, encourage loyalty and repeat business, or persuade them to new purchases. To get the best results, emails should be sent within the framework of a carefully considered campaign with a specific audience and specific objectives.

Handling a project is like juggling balls— it’s only one activity, but there are plenty of factors involved. It requires extreme focus to do, a lot of careful coordination, and heaven help you if you’re juggling something fragile. So how do you head off potential disasters? A project checklist template is a good place to start.

Email send time is often treated as a kind of mystical, fifth-element type secret to winning the email marketing game. Get it right and everything—from open rates to engagements—will follow.

While a lot of research has been conducted on when best to send emails, there is no universal answer except “It depends.” However, that doesn’t mean you’re on your own. The research provides a lot of information to use for guidelines and benchmarks.

While a lot of businesses have gotten into social media, few really understand it—the best times to post, the best ways to write copy or format images, and how to manage posting schedules on multiple platforms efficiently.

The question is no longer whether your brand needs social media—it has become a virtual necessity—the question is how to do it best. So we’re running down a list of social media best practices to set you on the course to the best results.

Last May saw Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest making changes to their platforms. Meanwhile, Google introduced a new update, by the name of Fred, that’s had some websites changing tack.

Here’s our rundown of last month’s major technical updates in the digital marketing world: