Inbound Marketing Blog

Well I certainly got more than I had planned from the Sydney Hills Chamber Annual Sales and Marketing Boot Camp. I expected to leave with a list of action items to help me with lead generation and conversion tactics – but this years event went over and above my imagination.

Digital marketing strategies and tactics seem to be changing weekly – or so it feels. And for marketers trying to stay up to date with technology it can be time consuming and confusing.

SEO has traditionally been an important strategy for marketers to drive more traffic to their website. Tactics associated with SEO are largely driven by Google’s algorithm. And as Google releases changes to their algorithm marketers are quick to respond by changing tactics. What may work one year, will not necessary work the following year, as people try to trick search engines, and Google gets smarter at penalizing them.

There's a consistent view that Inbound Marketing is growing, so I'm curious to learn why and what this means for marketers, and businesses in the future.

@Randfish has made a bold prediction that in 2013 "Inbound Marketing" will be in more titles & job profiles as "SEO" becomes too limiting for many professionals
Source: 10 Predictions for Inbound Marketing in 2013
If we have a look at the State of Inbound Marketing Report for 2013 – his prediction could be right on the mark.

Do you have a sales team hungry for qualified leads? Or possibly a skilled marketer who does an amazing job with branding and advertising but doesn’t have the time to stay up to date with modern marketing tactics and technology?

Knowledge is Power! If you don’t know where your leads and customers are coming from, you can't improve your marketing ROI (return on investment). 

Analyzing your marketing results is a crucial step in effective marketing, one many small business owners don’t spend time on – and as a result they end up investing too much money with a poor marketing ROI.

The purpose of this article is to share my thoughts, as a small business owner - as I know all business owners struggle with, when and how to grow their business and maintain quality of service.

Firstly, I should point out that I decided to change the name a few years ago from Stacie Chalmers Inbound Marketing Solutions (very much a soloprenuer business) to The Inbound Marketing Company. I had decided I was ready to grow the business so I wanted a name that reflected that vision.

As a consumer, how do you feel when you receive emails and phone calls from companies who are trying to sell you something you have no need or desire to buy?

As a marketer does this frustrating experience compel you to get better at targeting your marketing message to the right audience? I hope so. I'm surprised by how many marketers are still using "spam" marketing techniques from a decade ago - buying email lists, sending mass emails, cold calling etc - not only are they costly tactics, they can do your brand and reputation a lot of damage.

I recently read an article that shared some interesting insights into Australian SMEs (the study on SMEs was done by RSMBC and published in NETT Magazine) the study revealed:

As a business owner or marketer, are you overwhelmed with knowing how to best spend your marketing budget, and time?  The internet and social media have in some regards, simplified marketing, and in other ways made it more complicated.

I turned on my iphone this morning to learn that HubSpot just revealed HubSpot3 at Inbound2012. Why is this news so big? And why should business owners and marketers pay attention?

Well it seems marketing just got smarter. The future of marketing, is here thanks to the talented team at HubSpot.