Marketing; it’s a discipline that’s been around for more than a hundred years yet is constantly evolving on a day-to-day basis. Every company’s short- and long-term goals involve growth, expanding the realm of their reach to more and more customers. How do they do this? By marketing to customers in a way that satisfies their needs, and keeps them coming back.

Outbound Marketing
Just like today’s marketer: the traditional marketer’s goal was to sell and they did so through one-way communication. They reached out to customers through print mediums, television, radio, outdoor advertising and cold calls. The marketer would post a message and say, “hey, here’s the information I have but you can get.” 

 The amount of time spent building and designing a quality inbound marketing website can take up to several weeks or even several months, depending on the size of the site. Unfortunately, the time it takes for a potential lead to decide whether your website is worth their attention is three to five seconds. Their mouse will be practically hovering over their web browser’s back button! When building your company home page, it is important to consider what your audience will encounter in that very small window of time before making the decision to stick around or bail.  

Here are three essential web elements that will determine your audience behavior in those first three seconds:

• Page loading time
• Headline
• Navigation  

When it comes to email marketing, the first three seconds a potential customer views your email are crucial. The process of marketing your brand’s product or service via email starts the minute your message hits the customer’s inbox. In as little as three seconds, the customer will decide whether they will open, save, or send your email to the deepest depths of their trash bin. The fate of your email depends on three important factors:

• The From Name
• Subject Line
• Preheader Text

Emails are the little black dress – or even tuxedo – of the marketing world. It’s a sales technique that never goes out of style. But just as the fashion industry is constantly changing and evolving, so should your email marketing campaign. 

Providing relevant and personalized content is the key to your campaign’s success, and will keep emails in the customer’s inbox, and away from the dark, scary trenches of their spam folder.

If you’re like us, your inbox receives about ten to twenty new promotional emails per day. There are probably brands sending you offers you don’t even remember subscribing to. In that long list of emails, the ones that stand out aren’t just promoting semi-annual sales or by-one-get-one-free deals, they are providing you with services and reminders based on your interests and previous buying behavior.

When Instagram was first launched as a mobile, social networking app in 2010, its main function was editing mundane camera phone pictures into visually stunning photography and sharing them with friends and family. After several updates to the app’s tools and functionality, people have discovered there is more to the app than meets the eye.    

As of September 2013, more than 150 million users have joined Instagram. Since its popularity has skyrocketed in the past four years, users have found a new use for the mobile app: visual marketing. Major brands such as Levis, General Electric, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and several others, have already found massive success by marketing on Instagram. Why? Because marketing your brand through Instagram is not only free, it’s also very easy.  

Many companies have begun using Instagram for business purposes. The social media realm is expanding rapidly with dozens of sites to choose from to share your content. You’re probably utilizing networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but are you overlooking the fastest growing site globally? The Global Web Index reported over the last six months, Instagram increased its active user base by a sizeable 23%; compared to Twitter at 2% and Facebook at -3%. 

Businesses can use Instagram to promote their brand through posts that balance both work and customer interests. You can now visually share your company’s story through photos and videos that engage potential customers, generate traffic, and spark conversations among users with similar interests. 

HubSpot, the world’s leading service provider of marketing software, just launched an integrated Customer Relations Management (CRM) suite. Yes, you heard that right, a free CRM suite! (Cue clapping and whistling.)  While it is currently launched for HubSpot customers only, there is a rollout scheduled that will offer the new CRM program as a standalone tool to sales teams who are not using HubSpot (yet).  

So what does a new free CRM mean for businesses in Lansing, Michigan?

It means a smooth and efficient transition into digitally managing your customer relationships.  If your small sales team isn’t quite ready for a sophisticated system such as Salesforce.com, or you are looking into just dipping a toe into CRM systems (as opposed to, say, a sticky-note-on-a-folder method of managing prospects), this product is definitely one you should adopt.

The internet has changed the way customers purchase products, and the decision-making process they undergo to get there. There are hundreds – if not thousands – of search engines available to customers worldwide. How do we know that? We typed it in a search engine of course.

So what does this mean for the modern marketing manager or sales rep?

It means their job is no longer closing leads, it’s helping them on much more long term basis. At some point, the customer needs more reason, insight, and perspective than a bunch of URLS popping up on their computer screen.  They need someone who is able to assist them with their marketing strategy at personal level, while still able to provide them with information at lightning speed.