Posted by Patrick Murphy on Fri, Mar 05, 2010
Asking the question ‘what part does Inbound Marketing play in your business?' or even one step back ‘what part does your website play in your business?' is like asking the question ‘what comes first, the chicken or the egg?' I can say majority of the business owners I speak to respond that their website is their business. The website is the only form of marketing and the only way for them to generate new clients. However somewhere along the conversation the value of the website starts to decrease. I don't know if it's the thought of investing any more money into the fancy site with lots of pictures that took months to build or it has to do with the lack of knowledge on what inbound marketing is and how much potential the website can hold by optimizing the site in all the right ways in order to make it a revenue generating machine.
So let's just lay all the cards on the table. If you can say yes to the following:
1. Your website is your shop front door
2. You have no budget to be doing any type of marketing or you have found various marketing methods in the past extremely ineffective.
3. You are not meeting your revenue goals as a business
4. You are not found on Google when searching for your products or services
Then...Unfortunately you need to hold your website at the highest caliber possible. The fact of the matter is, if you can't get found on Google, you are more likely not getting traffic to your site. And if you are not getting traffic to your site, then you are most definitely not getting any sort of tangible leads. And if you aren't getting tangible leads then you aren't generating a source of revenue for your business.
So if you are the business who's website is a billboard in the desert, then I recommend you seriously reconsider what status your website holds for your business, what potential you could leverage, and how you could put an end to the question - ‘what comes first, the chicken or the egg?'. Inbound Marketing is the key to your business if you have a website that was built to draw in visitors, generate leads, and obtain new customers.
Find out why you need to invest more time and money on your website and Inbound Marketing why Inbound Marketing could be the key to your business' success. Join us on Wednesday, March 10 to Learn from Google on How to Grow your Business.
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Wed, Mar 03, 2010
As we are aware Inbound Marketing is changing the way people are marketing their company online and in social media. I worked for Yahoo! for a number of years and during that time I would regularly look into how people would search online. I do not mean what they searched for but how they would search. In the last few years I noticed a trend happening in how people were searching. This change in how people search has an effect on how companies should market themselves online.
What I noticed that no matter what people were looking for, it all started with a search engine. And this by the way is Inbound Marketing. It is true that over the last five years people are more informed in how the internet works. They are aware of how URL's work but they simple do not use them. A great example of a top search term that came up every month was Ryanair. Most people are aware that their website is www.ryanair.com but they do not enter in the URL bar but guess where? Yes in the search bar of Google.
So what does that mean for Inbound Marketing and Ryanair. For Inbound Marketing it gives companies that engage in HubSpot's principles of Inbound Marketing a chance to drive attention away from Ryanair and on to their own site. And for Ryanair it takes away the guarantee that while people may know their website it does not guarantee their traffic. Let's look to see what people see when they do a Google search for Ryanair.com.
While Ryanair do have the top positions, you can see by the fourth result they have lost their presence to other websites. So what can we learn from this? If you are not using Inbound Marketing then you are leaving yourself open to your competition.
The number one website that wins at Inbound Marketing is Google. So next week we are running a webinar next week on "What can you Learn from Google to Grow your Business"
You can register at "Learn from Google on How to Grow your Business"
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Mon, Jan 18, 2010
According to Google trends it appears that "Inbound Marketing" only began as a term in mid 2007. Since then it has gone from strength to strength.
Is it no surprise that it all began in Cambridge, MA the home of HubSpot and it appears the home of "Inbound Marketing", when you look at break down by cities?
Also if you follow that with a look at the trend for the term "HubSpot" they both appear to start in mid 2007. So what else can Google trends tell us?
If I look at Ireland in terms of Inbound Marketing and Social Media, it is a very interesting story. I took the term "twitter" as an example. There is nothing new in the in the fact that it began to increase in volume last year.
But when you look at the region break down, Ireland is second next to Brazil in terms of volume.
What does that say about Ireland, can they not type in www.twitter.com or is the potential greater of an Irish company to engage in Inbound Marketing?