Getting the most out of your online marketing efforts with Inbound Marketing

At Applied Innovations we pride ourselves on being your ‘e-business partners’ and as any good business partner it’s our job to help you succeed with your business by providing guidance, support and recommendations. Because much of our business is based on hosting business and ecommerce based websites we get asked frequently “How do I get to be #1 on Google?”. Unfortunately, I don’t have the secret recipe for that. But I do have a great recommendation.

This month, I’d like to recommend that every business owner, CEO, marketing manager and web professional read a book titled “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs”. If your business provides marketing advice or assistance to your customers, I’d recommend you not only read this book but you buy it for your customers.

Okay, so what’s the big deal Jess? Why should I listen to you and go spend $16.47 (for the hard copy on Amazon or $11.99 for the Kindle version on your iPad) on some marketing book just because you say it’s a good read? Well, two reasons:

• It’s more than just some marketing book and I believe it will change the way you go about marketing your business online. Too frequently businesses are busy ‘screaming’ about themselves and what they do. We’re the best, we’re the biggest, we’re #1 in our market, we have the best widgets, etc. and that’s the ‘old way of marketing’. Instead, businesses should be talking about their customers, how their customers are succeeding using their services/products and then letting their customers tell the prospect why that business is the best. We all know nothing makes a sale close faster than a great referral backing it up. I believe one of the core concepts behind Inbound Marketing is just that, stop screaming at your customers and instead start letting your customers find you!
• It’s no secret that sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are totally changing online marketing and making it important to build a conversation with your customers and prospective customers. It also should come as no secret that businesses are struggling with understanding this change and how to leverage it for their business. So the Inbound Marketing book will also give you a solid understanding of how to:
  • Improve your rankings in Google to increase your web traffic
  • Build and promote a blog for your business
  • Grow and nurture an online community on social networking sites like: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
  • Measure what matters and do more of what works online

As you probably saw from one of our other newsletter articles this month, Applied Innovations is taking the inbound marketing approach and applying it to our own business. In fact, that’s why we’re looking for customers to spotlight on our website in case studies, customer profiles, testimonials, etc.

So because I believe this book will completely change the way you go about your own online marketing and because I really want you to be spotlighted on our website, I’ll buy a copy of this book for the first 10 AppliedI hosted businesses that submit a profile to be spotlighted on our website.

But I hope every CEO, every business owner, every marketing manager, every web professional will not only read this book but recommend this book to their colleagues.

Happy Holidays, Jess.