Inbound is one of the most innovative and creative marketing strategies in practice, but it can be complex, especially when it comes to the creation and execution of an effective plan. Implementing an inbound marketing strategy can be a big learning curve for marketing departments that are new to inbound marketing or already stretched too thin with regular business functions.

Case studies have shown that hiring an inbound marketing agency can deliver results and achieve ROI faster than internal marketing efforts. They have the experience, training, certifications, and manpower to take on the methodology components. Inbound is a practice that includes content creation, search engine optimization, lead generation, and social media monitoring.

Building an effective website strategy is a critical step to redesigning or building a business website and must precede all else. Too much focus on the aesthetics of your website can make it easy to overlook the functionality. Before you start building a strategy for your website, understand it is an ongoing process. Content needs to be updated periodically so that it stays fresh and remains relevant. These constantly moving parts might be overwhelming but keep in mind your web development shop is there for support.

A website strategy is a long-term strategic plan that details a company’s online presence with reference to business goals. Because your website is your best marketing tool, a well-thought out marketing strategy serves as a great basis. Understanding your marketing goals will help you identify steps that need to be taken in the web development process. Planning an effective strategy will answer a variety of questions. Below are seven ideas you should include in your website strategy:

Your website should act as your best marketing tool, so why not hire a marketing firm to build and maintain your site? Marketing is a working project, constantly developing, changing, and progressing. Websites are the same way, which is why marketing firms understand the big picture. They envision website development as a process rather than a project.

By following best practices, your website can act as your main marketing mechanism. Start by defining the purpose of your website in terms of marketing goals. Are you looking to gain market share? Support customers? Increase sales? Drive traffic? Your development company will be able to build you a website that works toward achieving your well-defined goals.

Many elements are included in the creation of your corporate identity system: your logo, specific typestyles and configurations, additional graphic elements, a specific photographic or illustrative style, a company slogan (or tag line), a corporate voice (writing style), and a corporate color palette.

Of all of these elements, one of the most difficult (and subjective) choices your will make is your color palette.

If you’re working with a professional graphic design firm or creative agency, they will guide you in the right direction by asking you questions about your business and goals and present you with color palette choices based on a variety of factors. Among those to be considered are:

While equally essential to the social media marketing process, social media monitoring and social media measurement are two completely different social media practices. Social media monitoring focuses on social “buzz” conversations and the emotional side of social media. Social media measurement, on the other hand, focuses on actual customer experience, the rational side of social media. Knowing the difference between these two practices will help you plan and execute your social media campaigns accordingly.

In order to clear up any confusion, let’s take a closer look at each approach: 

Well designed websites for businesses are built with the customer in mind. When you visit a website, you don’t have all the time in the world; you’re looking to find the information you need in a reasonable amount of time. Best-case scenario? The page is formatted so that the most important information is near the top; if you want to scroll and read more, you can. A great website should be functional, visually appealing, and communicate targeted content.

A few of the things that make a website appealing to customers are navigation, images, reviews, blogs, and security. Navigation helps you find information quickly and easily. Images appeal to those with more visual capacities while reviews and blogs provide helpful information. Security features let your visitors know their information is protected.

Drupal is an open source software that is developed and maintained by more than 100,000 individual contributors. This software is a great choice for building a wide variety of websites, including company sites, community portal sites, campaign sites, news publishing, aficionado sites, intranet/corporate websites, resource directories, international sites, educational sites, and personal sites.

The benefits of using Drupal to build the website for your business are extensive. Not only is it open source, it uses standards-compliant methods to improve search engine ranking. Drupal is stable, supported, and here to stay. Key features of the software include:

Is your new company ready to build a brand identity? Do you want to give your existing brand a new image? Most people think think this means you just need a new logo.

And, while a logo is one of the key elements that you will invest in when building your  company’s overall identity system, it is not your entire brand.

But where did the idea of a logo as a brand come from?