Inbound Web Design

Rapid-Fire TOFU Creation

If there is any single factor that unites small business owners worldwide, it’s that they want scaleable growth, profit and more leads from their website. While fabulous web design and easy navigation can keep your future clients from hitting the dreaded “back” button and heading to a competitor’s website, you’ve got to capture their interest while it’s still fresh. Your website needs TOFU, which is a silly acronym used by marketers to refer to “Top of the Funnel Offers.” We’re talking free eBooks, eCourses, checklists and templates. You need to trade something of value for your website visitors’ phone number and email address.

But really, who has the time?

This Week on the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• The Death of SEO: The Rise of Social, PR, AND Real Content - Forbes
• How to Predict the Profitability of Keywords
• Marketing in the Wild. International Marketing Strategy a la Bear Grylls.
• Is it Time to Kill Lead Nurturing as We Know it?
• How to Write the Best PPC Ad Copy & Beat your Competitors
• [Infographic] Sensible Social Media Checklist for Business 2.0
• How to Create Good Infographics Quicly & Cheaply

If you would like to grab even more Inbound Marketing and #HubSpot links that we find useful ourselves during our web travels, join @MagneticMarCom on Twitter.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Nothing in life is certain except for death and…"

C.O.P. C.A.R. Content Marketing is a little acronym that we have been tossing around the Magnetic MarCom office for awhile now.

It spells out (pun intended) a framework of steps that clients must wrap their heads around, and universally adopt throughout their respective organizations, in order for their newly devised inbound/content marketing plan to be given the necessary time and attention for it to begin showing results.

Let’s take a closer look into what exactly makes up the C.O.P. C.A.R. acronym and a solid starting point for any content marketing strategy…

This Week on the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• Seth Godin’s How to Live Happily with a Great Designer
• Facebook Working on New Features for Huge Social Commerce Push
• The 7 Pillars of Personalized Marketing
• 7 Surprising Waysto use Pinterest to Grow your Business
• The Sin of Originality (and the Truth about Building a Popular Blog)
• Why Posting Every Day is a Silly Strategy (And What to Do Instead)
• How Even Boring Industries can Create Interesting Content

If you would like to grab even more Inbound Marketing and #HubSpot links that we find useful ourselves during our web travels, join @MagneticMarCom on Twitter.

Get tucked in…

At each year’s mid-way point, we (at Magnetic MarCom) construct a simple one-page document that reminds the “troops” what we are working towards, and ratchets-up our goals and expectations for the following year…Sort of our yearly Declaration of Independence.

Don’t believe that you can plan your business for the next year using a single document? I would suggest that you take a moment and read the actual Declaration of Independence, a single-paged document that launched a powerful, free nation and inspired the world.

Most companies, usually by force of habit or procrastination, will begin forecasting and planning their “grand plans” for the following year somewhere between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. I, on the other hand, have become quite fond of making my grand business statements in line with when our forefathers did the same with the United States Declaration of Independence.

A common thread found in comments from our fellow Inbound Marketers is “I know what tools I have at my disposal and how they are used…but, I just don’t have enough time in the day to do it all. What channels should I focus on?

Well, Twitter may be one of the greatest all-time innovations in content sharing, LinkedIn is a wonderful place for making B2B connections, and Facebook is the single place where everyone on the web naturally congregates…but I would suggest that the space you should be putting most of your time and effort into is “none of the above.”

Many times CTA’s are written a bit too much like a wedding invitation. As soon as your guests open the envelope and see the velum and calligraphed “You are cordially invited…” they know exactly what they are looking at, and are free to begin creating preconceived notions of what may be in store.

But what if instead, you had slipped a scrap of paper under their door, a ransom note, giving strict direction, a command, on what they must do? Something like:

We have all been there: Staring at the blank screen, the blinking cursor…taunting us.

It can become a daunting task to continuously create timely, fresh, topical and useful blog content on a day-to-day or even week-to-week basis. Sometimes inspiration strikes and you effortlessly create a topical masterpiece, almost unconsciously. But on other occasions, frustration sets in as you struggle to even develop a topic…let alone a useful and sharable post.

Again, we’ve all been there.

The good news is, as inbound marketers and bloggers, we have at our disposal the greatest tool EVER created for collecting blog topics, researching ideas deeper, even connecting with other authors on a one-on-one basis…

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. 

This Week on the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• Don’t forget your long-tail search terms
• Free business book summaries save time
• 10 blog post ideas that are so quick and easy you could finish them on a bar napkin
• Create never-ending content ideas with “mind-mapping”
• 20 Revealing charts & graphs every marketer should know
• 55 Brands rocking social media with visual content
• Give your customers the best online reading experience…free!

If you would like to grab even more links that we find useful ourselves during our web travels, join @MagneticMarCom on Twitter. 

And they're off...