Inbound Web Design

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...

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...

As of April 2012, Facebook has over 900-million users. Needless to say, Facebook is doing just fine. It's time to build your readership.

It never ceases to amaze me how many of the world’s most mammoth corporations can be found “setting up shop” on someone else’s social media property rather than fortifying their own home-base...their website.

The fact is, this line of thinking flies in the face of what inbound marketing experts have consistently campaigned; that the greatest online “asset” your company has is its own website. An asset that is built from your hard-earned visitors, who are (of course) frequently visiting your site in order to consume the amazing, targeted content found there. This is your “captive” audience, your true fans, the life-blood of any growing business.

So, why would these otherwise smart people ever think it a good idea to incorporate a social media marketing strategy that drives that lusted-after traffic away from their websites and to those sites owned by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+?

Let's explore this a bit further.

How, by making social media buttons less prominent on your site, visitors are often more likely to respond to your offers.

We have never been huge fans of prominently displaying social media icons/links on every page of a website, especially the homepage. After all, the idea is to “pull” site visitors to your site through social media (because that is where they are already “hanging out” online), not to drive visitors that are already on your site away to your Facebook page, for instance.  

This is not to say that social media is any less useful as a content distribution platform.  We would simply recommend that you might take some time to first create a strategy for social media, one that uses an old-fashioned common sense approach to placing these social media buttons on your website.

This Week on the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• Infographic: How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success
• 4 Ways to Keep Your Brand Site Relevant
• Secret Tricks for using LinkedIn
• 20 Things Every Graduating Marketing Student Should Know
• 5 Powerful Tools for Turning Employees into Rainmaking Thought Leaders
• What Little League Can Teach about Inbound Marketing
• The Jedi Master Approach to Content Marketing that Converts

“Thou shalt not annoy website visitors” is possibly one of the most important of the inbound marketing tenets.

Yet we all see the same mistakes happening time and again on countless sites, and at the cost of higher abandonment rates and lower conversions…yikes!

Below we have assembled a short list of the worst offenders we have recently seen during our point-and-click “travels.”

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…