Inbound Web Design

Nurturing leads might not be as glamorous as social media, or as thrilling as writing an eBook, but it’s dang important, and it works. Nurtured leads produce, on average, 20% more sales opportunities than non-nurtured opportunities. 35-50% of sales opportunities go to the vendor who responds first. Honestly, you can’t expect to keep your company afloat on revenue from the 4% of your first-time website visitors who are ready to buy. You need a strategy in place to draw the other 96% through your sales funnel.

I have a confession to make.

I am a bit of a “quote collector.” I have files upon files of quotes tucked away on my hard drive, post-its on my computer monitor, and littering my desk. Most are one-liners, each summing up a particular area of life and sharing a “pearl of wisdom” from the lives of great marketers, business people, or those who have a knack for motivating us mere mortals.

Each week I share some of these quotes via Twitter in a series called “1001 Marketing Messages in a Bottle,” and I thought I would share some of my favorite design quotes with you here today... 

While the challenges involved with building a site on HubSpot have been widely documented, we thought it was “high-time” that a simple post was put together to explain how designing within the HubSpot CMS, may actually allow for far more flexibility than it has been previously given it credit for.

What resulted was a simple graphic that outlines the various HubSpot template classes and ID’s made available for you to make “all your own.” Our hope is that through better understanding of the typical HubSpot CMS page hierarchy and naming, you might be encouraged to roll up your sleeves and try your hand at making those small tweaks to your website that have been bugging you for months.

The simple fact is, on-page optimization doesn't necessarily rank first in the journey for top-10 rankings (#3 on our list). According to many SEO experts across the web, the process you may want to adopt for getting that coveted first position probably should look something more like:

#1. “Crawl-ability” – Super-optimized, carefully crafted, otherwise amazing content that the search engines can't see, cannot be indexed properly. The Google “Gods” have passed down the following (and fairly straight forward) tip for making sure your site’s pages are “crawl-able”:

What’s Your Favorite Color? Your Answer May Change Once You Better Understand How Color Theory Can Boost Your Conversion Rates.

Easily dismissed by some, color theory (color psychology) is often viewed as marketing “black magic.” In reality the very best color theory is the result of countless studies and the compellation of real-world data over decades of research.

As with many disciplines in this same vein, when these metrics are viewed from a distance, often times, some very clear conclusions can begin to be drawn. It is no mistake that some of the worlds most distinguishable brands have adopted, and stayed with, a single color scheme deeply rooted in this type of study. 

The way people have interacted with brands has been (and will probably always be) in an ever-changing state of flux. The times, as they say, "are a changin'."

Marketing messages have been showcased via rock carvings and smoke-signals to iPads and iPhones. Not to mention the store aisle displays, newspaper and magazine ads, direct mail, radio, television, banner ads and spam that came somewhere in-between.

Of course, some of the marketing techniques used across these channels proved ineffective over time, and have (thankfully) fallen out of favor. But some “old-school” tactics have stood the test of time, and for good reason…they work. These techniques deserve a closer inspection, and possibly a spot within your inbound marketing efforts. 

Even in today's changing marketing landscape, we could stand to learn a thing or two from those who came before us.

Modern-day marketing...meet timeless design.

Many of you may already be familiar with the Mad Men television series and its protagonist, Donald Draper, the prototypical, charming (and troubled) 1960’s ad man.

If you haven’t yet seen the program, imagine back to the days where a hunch and a catchy tagline could shape the way America made its purchasing decisions for decades to come. Our preconceived opinions on virtually everything from vodka to Volkswagens were shaped during these “golden years” of advertising.

Ahh…the good old days.

While the traditional ad-shop will probably always have a place in how we conduct business, there is absolutely no denying that the divide between Madison Avenue and Main Street USA is atrophying with each day that we better understand the true power behind the internet. Namely, the web’s amazing knack for speeding up the process of creating meaningful relationships.

However, we can still learn from the traditional advertising greats...

A marketing “revolution” is upon us. How Inbound Web Design will help you keep pace with those leading the charge.

The way people wish to be communicated with by businesses (and what they will bother to pay attention to) is changing right before our eyes. It is no longer enough to push your positioning-based message through what we now would consider “traditional” advertising media. Rather, consumers expect to be taught, entertained and, at the very least, informed on your topic, on your area of expertise.

Only then will they begin to open-up to “knowing” what you stand for, genuinely “liking” what you offer, “trusting” your word, “trying” your product or service and “buying” into your brand. It’s an exciting time; One that is trading the traditional marketing “barriers of entry” (i.e. bags and bags of money) for interesting and creative ways of gaining customers attention, respect, loyalty and ultimately their business.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and get busy…