Marketing with Web Social

12 Steps to Finding the Perfect Marketing Consultant

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 19:39:00 GMT

Finding a marketing consultant for your company isn't as easy as snapping your fingers. Fortunately, you can find one whose services match your company's marketing needs and budget by following these 12 steps.

1. Consider what your company needs out of a marketing consultant

Before you can find a consultant to suit your company's needs, you must figure out what those needs are. Create a list of marketing goals you want to accomplish by working with a consultant. This will be your primary point of reference throughout the search.

2. Ask for referrals

One of the best ways to start building a list of potential consultants is through referrals from business partners.

3. See who is talking online

Although you should use referrals, this is not where you should stop with your search. Top marketing consultants will be constantly exuding their knowledge and industry leadership through helpful blog posts, whitepapers, etc.

4. Consider the cost last

Although a marketing consultant's services are temporary, they are a long-term investment for your company. Don't be cheap and hire the least expensive one you can find. Instead, consider cost after you have found a list of consultants who can meet your needs.

5. Compare capabilities

What can a consultant do for you? Look at the capabilities they are offering and compare that against your needs. If, for example, you need help with social media marketing and a particular consultant does not offer services in this area, then you should cross them off of your list.

6. Check the reviews and testimonials

If nobody received any viable business benefits from working with a consultant, then you shouldn't work with them. Search for client reviews that will give you insight into a typical experience with the consultant. This may require you to contact clients directly.

7. Ask for references -- and check them

What have the most recent client experiences with a marketing consultant been like? This is difficult to figure out when auditing client reviews, because there is no timeline for when they worked together. Contact the consultant directly and ask them for client references.

8. Check out the marketing consultant's previous clients

Who has the marketing consultant worked with? You should look for consultants who have diverse experience working with organizations of many sizes and industries. This is because this experience allows them to be adaptable enough to adjust their approach to any business' marketing needs, including yours.

9. Consider how they market themselves

Marketing consultants should be good at marketing right? Look at every potential consultant's personal marketing campaigns and consider whether or not they are generating the kind of results you'd want for yourself.

10. Make sure that the consultant will be available

If you find the perfect consultant for your needs, but they are never available to help you, then they aren't so perfect. A good indicator is usually your initial meeting -- if they force you to wait weeks just for an introductory meeting, then it probably isn't worth it.

11. Interview your shortlist

What will it be like working with a consultant? To figure this out, sit down with consultants who made the final cut and discuss your company's goals. Pay attention to their listening skills, responses and ideas.

12. Close the deal

Once you have your list of consultants narrowed down to one, it is time to close the deal. Make sure that the agreement you sign works for you.

Taking the time to go through these steps will eliminate the chance of you having to start this process over if things don’t work out with the consultant you choose. After following these steps, you should be able to feel confident in your choice, and focus on the goals you are set out to accomplish.

10 Things We All Hate About Website Development

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 21:30:00 GMT

Website development isn't easy. Most businesses just want to get it over with so that they can get back to business. Getting your website's design or redesign right, however, is critical for your internet marketing campaign, so you can't blow it off. To make this process less painful, we are going to explore 10 things everyone hates about website development, and how you can avoid them.

1. Not being able to bombard people with ads

Popup ads seem like great ways to get people to where you want them to go. However, it actually incites them to leave. Popup ads are such a bad idea, in fact, that HubSpot ranked them as number one on the list of things that people hate most about websites. The solution to this problem isn’t to not do it at all. Instead, let your content guide your target consumers in the right direction.

2. Trying to make our websites work for all devices

If it has a screen, someone will use it to access your website. Unfortunately, different devices treat your site differently, so you must adapt. Fortunately, two modern web design solutions, adaptive and responsive web design, adjust to any device that visits your website.

3. Figuring or whether or not search engines like our websites

Search engines have a long list of criteria for judging who ranks atop their results. While SEO requires many things, most of your SEO will happen outside of your website. Instead of stewing over what features to add to boost SEO, keep your design intuitive and include an XML sitemap that makes it easy for search engines to look around.

4. Flash

While the results can be beautiful, Flash increases load times, harms SEO results and can cause your website to crash. You should avoid it entirely.

5. Trying to figure out where to put everything

You probably have a lot of information to disseminate to visitors. Bombarding them with it all at once, however, just creates clutter. As a general rule of thumb, when adding a new topic, add a new page and a clickable tab to match.

6. Columns

Multiple columns are frustrating to create and even more frustrating for visitors to use, especially those with touch screens. Avoid them all together.

7. Working with web designers who don't know inbound marketing

Your website is the foundation of your inbound marketing campaign, so why would you trust somebody who knows nothing about inbound marketing? Make sure that your web design team includes inbound marketing experts.

8. Adjusting to web address changes

When you change a single character on a URL, the link breaks; the result is a 404 error or page not found message. This ruins your SEO efforts and can lead visitors to believe that your website is down. To avoid this, ask your web designer for a 404 redirect any time you change an address on any of your pages.

9. Web designers who won't speak plain English

The tech world is filled with industry jargon, and some web designers only speak this language, no matter how confusing it is for everyone else. Working with web designers who have expertise in areas outside of website development can alleviate this problem, because understanding these additional areas requires that you know how to communicate clearly.

10. Getting it wrong

If you treat your website like your content and focus on how it can help consumers, you already have the right mindset. Stay focused on why you’ve created a website in the first place: to help your target audience and provide them with a stellar product or service. When you keep the customer in mind you can’t go wrong.

Don't let your website development be a headache

While there are several ways that website development can frustrate you, addressing these factors up front will streamline the entire process.

How to Improve Your Web Page in Five Simple Steps

Tue, 24 Mar 2015 17:18:00 GMT

As the foundation of your company's internet presence, your website needs to be built to captivate your target audience. Doing this can be perplexing, since creating a great website isn't as straightforward as designing a great ad. Here are the five things that you need to include in your website development to improve its performance:

1. Make it easy for people to get around

A website that is difficult to navigate will kill your ability to generate business on your website. This is because internet users, whose attention spans are now measured in milliseconds, expect to be able to find what they are looking for without having to put forth much effort. If your website makes a visitor feel as though it is difficult to get around, they'll leave. Simple as that. To that end, your website development strategy should make your pages simple with clear headers.

Don't forget about robots either

It is also important to remember that your website's design should able to be intuitively navigated by the search engines' algorithmic bots. They constantly analyze each website for quality; the more difficult it is for them to get around, the longer it will take for them to update your site's ranking and lower your usability score will be. To that end, include an XML sitemap that guides the bots around.

2. Make your website fully functional on all devices

By the end of 2014, over 2/3 of all internet use happened via a mobile device. This means that you need to prepare your website to be accessed via every type of internet capable device. To this end, your website development should include full compatibility for mobile devices, desktops, and even smart televisions.

3. Write the content on every page as if you were writing for a landing page

Each and every page on your website should include content that brings a qualified sales lead closer to an actual sale. To that end, you should approach your home page, about us page, product pages, etc the same way you treat your landing pages when writing content for them. Every word should be engaging and informative, and always remember to close with a strong call-to-action.

4. Add tags that will get people to click on your website

Although many of your search engine marketing efforts will occur outside of your actual website, it is important that your web page help you get relevant clicks. To that end, each individual page on your website should include title tags and meta tags that closely relate to the searches that you are targeting. Be sure to include the words being searched in the title tag and in the meta description. If, for example, you are an interior design company targeting the search "Interior design services," then you should have a title tag along the lines of "Interior Design Services, (your city name here)," and a description along the lines of "Our Interior Design Service helps you get the designer look for your home you want without the high cost."

5. Have a professional help you with your website redesign

In order to make sure that all of the best features and web design techniques are integrated into your website, make sure that you have a professional web design team helping you along the way.

Is your website ready to perform?

As you can see, having a website that supports your online business goals requires more than a nice looking home page. Your website must include a comprehensive combination of utilitarian elements that bring people there, keep them clicking, and guide them to your products.

5 Changes That Will Boost Your Website Conversion Rate

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 21:58:00 GMT

All of your content marketing, PPC ads, social networking, etc., were designed to drive sales leads to your company's website. When consumers -- even those with a strong interest in your products or services -- get to your website, your job is still not done. Most companies only spend $1 on conversion for every $92 dollars they spend acquiring them, but only 22% are satisfied with their conversion rates. This is a clear sign that you should invest more into converting customers after they arrive on your website. Let's explore five changes in your website development that you can make that will boost your website conversion rate:

1. Include a call-to-action on every page

The call-to-action (CTA) isn't just a great way to close out your blog posts and inbound emails. A well-placed CTA on your website will also help you convert by reminding people of why they are there in the first place and connecting them with the products they need (this part is especially important for people who are bad at navigating websites).

2. Make sure that your website is usable on all devices

People will access your website from a myriad of devices. To put this into perspective, out of the 4 hours and 45 minutes the people spend using internet-capable devices, 97 minutes will be spent on cell phones; 37 minutes will be spent on tablets; 70 minutes will be spent on desktops and laptops; and 81 minutes will be spent using televisions (yes, people will access your website via their televisions). You will never know which tool someone will use to access your website, and they all treat the Internet differently. In order to optimize your conversion chances, your website development should account for all of them. You can make this happen by taking advantage by integrating modern web design techniques such as responsive and adaptive web design, both of which allow your website to automatically adjust to multiple devices.

3. Solve problems before you push products on your landing pages

Many of your marketing efforts will lead people to your website's landing pages. This is a critical point for your conversion, because it is where they will decide whether or not your website has the resources to solve their problems. If you start talking up your products before they understand this, they will either leave or browse your website with less interest. To avoid this, use your landing page's content to resolve issues related to the target searches, and then discuss your products.

4. Install a chat on your website

Even after you have provided a comprehensive array of content, showing consumers how your products or services can solve their problems, some of them will still have questions. By installing a chat on your website, you give those people a channel to immediately get those questions answered by the experts at your company without leaving your website, increasing your ability to convert.

5. Create a path for people to come back

No matter what you do, not everyone can be converted upon their first visit to your website. You can ensure that there is a second visit by creating a clear pathway back to your website. This should include remarketing and renewed email marketing efforts.

Turning heads is only one part of the marketing equation

After you get people's attention, you still have to put forth effort to convert. If you aren't doing both of these things, then your digital marketing campaign has a big hole in it. To this end, make sure that your website development focuses on converting people after they get there.

How Long Does Inbound Marketing Take?

Sat, 14 Mar 2015 00:49:00 GMT

If you have done any research about inbound marketing, then you know that doing it successfully requires a great deal of work. Just thinking about how much you need to do in order to be successful with inbound will likely lead you to one question: how long does inbound marketing take? The answer to this question, however, is not as simple as giving you a general time frame. Let's explore how long inbound normally takes, and how you can accelerate your results:

Inbound marketing isn't about a quick dash to the finish line

The first thing that you must understand is that inbound is not about achieving instantaneous results – because you won’t. This can be frustrating for marketers who have focused on outbound channels for years, but unlike a TV commercial, flyer or newspaper ad, inbound marketing is not about trying to incite a consumer to jump up and buy your products immediately. Instead, it is about building relationships with people so that you can expand your reach to connect with more people, while increasing the value of each customer.

How long does this relationship building take?

Because you are building relationships, and not trying to instantly excite people into an impulse buy, the inbound marketing process usually takes between 6-9 months from initial contact to the close of a sale. This may seem like a huge drop in marketing efficiency from outbound marketing, which you often expect to result in a sale hours after your offer has generated interest, but you need to remember three things about inbound:

It will keep your customers coming back to buy more of your products
It expands your reach to connect you with customers you would've otherwise missed
Outbound marketing doesn't work anywhere near as well as it used to

How to accelerate your results

Although closing your sales with inbound can seem to take a long time -- especially if you are just starting out -- you don't have to sit on your hands and wait for something to happen. Here are a few ways that you can accelerate your inbound marketing results:

Deliver content more often

The more people think about your company and the problem that your products or service can solve, the more likely they are to contact your sales team. Content strengthens your sales lead's need, while reinforcing your brand as the best place to buy from; delivering more content will enhance these effects.

Automate your campaign

Trying to get a team of humans to manage all things inbound will significantly hamper your campaign's ability to generate results ASAP. This is because human beings simply cannot keep up with all of the data and tasks that come with an inbound marketing campaign. When you infuse tools like automated analytics, content management, automated workflows and CRMs, you can get more done.

Make your goals more clear

Ill-defined goals will slow down your inbound campaign, because you will be wasting resources on things that aren't really going to help you. Before you begin, create clearly defined, actionable goals that can be achieved within specific timelines.

Get some professional help

One of the best ways to slow down the progress of your inbound efforts is to go it alone. Instead of doing this, hire an inbound professional to help you keep your entire campaign on track and be your inbound guide.

The key to getting the most out of inbound marketing is consistency

While a new inbound marketing campaign won't get you a sale today, it will send you countless opportunities over time. Being patient, observant and consistent is the best way to ensure that the desired results do come.

How Much Does Inbound Marketing Cost?

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 01:17:00 GMT

You already know that your company is going to have to launch a great inbound marketing campaign in the near future if you want to experience sustained marketing success. But how much is it going to cost you? Most resources that discuss this topic go over strategies that will help you improve your inbound marketing campaign, but few ever give you any semblance of what inbound should cost. The first thing that you should understand is that even if your company is fully committed to inbound, the cost can still vary significantly depending on your needs. We are going to help you figure out how much it will cost your company to see inbound success by discussing the factors that affect it.

What are most companies spending on inbound marketing?

You should already have a total marketing budget set based on the marketing to revenue ratio (if not, then you should take a look at this article by the Small Business Chronicle), so what you spend on inbound will come down to a percentage of your existing budget. In 2013, marketers spent 34% of their marketing budgets on inbound, vs 23% on outbound; in 2014, the average inbound investment increased to 48%. This meteoric rise in investment is expected to continue throughout 2015. In fact, 71% of marketers are guaranteeing a substantial increase in their content marketing investment alone.

Factors to consider for your investment

The statistics discussed above are a clear sign that inbound will require a solid investment. However, although there is a trend towards increasing one's inbound marketing budget, your investment should not be arbitrary (i.e. you shouldn't just spend half of your marketing budget on inbound just because everyone else is doing it). You need to consider the factors that manage your costs -- and plan accordingly.

Deciding between money and time

Most inbound marketing channels can technically be run without paying a dime. However, if you try to do this, you are in for a huge wake up call. Even if you have your whole marketing team trying to manage your campaign, you will discover that there is simply not enough time in the day to get things done on your own. The data alone is too much for a room full of Ivy League mathematics professors to manage. As such, you will have to invest in tools like automated workflows, analytics tools and content management systems.

In most cases, investing marketing dollars to reduce the amount of time you spend will yield better results, because you can make your inbound campaign more diverse and complex without straining your human capital resources. You should, however, use discretion when choosing.

Quality versus cost

You also need to understand that your marketing team, no matter how brilliant, cannot do everything perfectly. You are going to have to outsource elements of your inbound marketing campaign for optimal results. For example, while you may have an expert on a given topic, they won't be able to consistently elocute to your target audience as well as a professional copywriter; likewise, a professional marketing firm can use their diverse, extensive experience with inbound to guide you towards better decision making for long-term success.

This doesn't mean that you will have to invest every dime that you can into outsourced resources. For example, you may already have an outstanding copywriter on your team.

Your inbound marketing spending choices should be made with discretion

Your inbound budget will never be perfect, but by monitoring and tweaking it based on your unique needs, you can improve it significantly. Consult an expert to learn more.

5 Specific Inbound Marketing Tools You Must Use

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 19:27:00 GMT

Does this title sound familiar? You may be feeling a bit of deja-vu, and you’re right, we have covered this topic before. Not too long ago, we covered 5 Inbound Marketing Tools You Absolutely Must Use. And we stand by that. While we shed some light on the kinds of tools you must use, we didn’t delve into specific platforms that we believe in. Here, we’ll share five specific inbound marketing tools that will take your inbound marketing campaign to the next level, and why.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot's comprehensive suite of inbound marketing tools help you streamline and connect nearly every element of your campaign. Here are a few of the capabilities that a membership with HubSpot provides:

An intuitive control panel for easier website management
An analytics tool for your website
The HubSpot CRM for better lead management
Powerful content management tools

HubSpot has proven itself to be the go-to source for all things inbound marketing. Whether you plan on using this for yourself, or for each of your clients, HubSpot will not disappoint.

2. LinkedIn

Social allows you to constantly remain connected with consumers on a human level that cannot be achieved by any other marketing channel. That being said, there are countless social networks, and not all of them can help your business. However, a few social networks are mandatory for inbound marketing. The likes of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube always get mentioned in this regard. LinkedIn, though, is less discussed for this purpose. This networking tool isn't just great for recruiting new talent and business partners. You can also find leads on LinkedIn. In fact, 65% of B2B businesses acquire customers through LinkedIn. Make sure that you aren't passing up on LinkedIn’s proven benefits.

3. Hootsuite

As we discussed in the previous section, you need to do well with social media for inbound marketing success. That being said, Hootsuite is a critical tool for any marketers who want to get serious about social. The enhanced efficiency provided by this tool will reduce errors, improve the quality of your posts and allow you to reduce the number of man-hours you dedicate to posting. It streamlines your social media endeavors in this way by doing the following:

Enables you to post to all of your social networks at once, saving countless hours
Monitors and compiles all activity generated by your posts
Analyzes your social media data so that you can get the timing, style and theme of your posts right

4. Moz

SEO is another critical element for inbound marketing success. Without it, most of your content would go unnoticed on the web. SEO is a complicated process all by itself, and it can be difficult to know where to start or manage all of its components. That's where Moz comes in. This powerful all-in-one digital marketing software provides you with a complete set of SEO campaign research, analytics and management capabilities, which are controlled by the following tools:

Moz Analytics (analyzes and compiles all of your SEO-related data)
Open Site Explorer (Identifies link building opportunities)
MozBar (Audits website compatibility with all major web browsers)
Fresh Web Explorer (Monitor's your websites ability to organically generate links)
Crawl Test (Audits your site for bad links, broken pages, etc).
Rank Tracker (Reports on where your page ranks for a given keyword)
Keyword Difficulty (Analyzes how difficult it is to rank high with a given keyword)
On-Page Grader (Audits the quality of your keyword usage)

5. WordPress

As your inbound marketing campaign evolves, you will have to edit and manage your website. WordPress is the perfect tool for this, because it not only makes website management easy, but it has a reputation for working well with search engines -- to the benefit of your SEO campaign.

Like a construction worker, a marketer can do their job better when they have all of the tools they need. Using the tools discussed above will allow you to get the most out of your inbound marketing campaign.

7 Inbound Marketing Tips You Should Not Overlook

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 02:05:00 GMT

Successfully launching an inbound marketing campaign can seem overwhelming. Even when you think that you are doing everything right, your campaign can still miss the mark. In many cases, such lackluster results can be improved with only a few minor tweaks to your inbound marketing strategy.

1. Improve your blog

Content is the heart and soul of your inbound marketing campaign; the foundation here should be a solid blog. Simply having a blog, however, is not enough. Your competitors are starting to use blogs to gain traction online, so you must make yours stand out. You should do two things to make this happen:

Blog often

Increased blog consistency will strengthen your relationship with your current readers (they will come to see you as a reliable resource) and it will improve your search engine rankings.

Improve your topics

You must ensure that your topics aren't off the mark or blending in with everyone else's. Every industry has plenty of interesting things to discuss, and you should create unique blog posts based off of this.

2. Be sociable

Your social media pages don't exist for you to become a detached, monolithic entity with countless followers. In fact, they are there for just the opposite. In order for your social networking pages to help you develop human relationships with consumers, you have to act like a human. Respond to people's comments and interact with recent customers often. This same logic applies to your blog and other channels in which your audience can send you comments or messages.

3. ALWAYS close with a call-to-action

Each piece of inbound marketing media has a purpose. Do not assume that your audience will know what that purpose is. Always include a call-to-action (CTA) that clearly outlines what they should do next. This will actually put you way ahead of the curve, because 70% of small business B2B websites do not include a CTAs.

4. Use a CRM

In addition to attracting sales leads, your inbound marketing campaign will also be gathering information about these people. Your sales and marketing teams can both benefit from this information. However, it is difficult to manage and communicate this information manually. By using a customer relationship management system (CRM), your entire team can effectively manage and distribute customer data gained from inbound marketing practices.

5. Optimize

All of that amazing content that you have created won't mean much if nobody ever sees it. Make sure that you are optimizing everything for better rankings on search engine results lists. Basic keyword targeting, for example, can enhance your inbound marketing results dramatically.

6. Create more landing pages

Landing pages are critical for expanding your website's accessibility, targeting specific groups and guiding consumers to the next stage in the buying process. The more high quality landing pages you have, the easier it is to connect with people, so you should be creating a lot of them.

7. Keep track of everything

As you know, analytics is critical for inbound marketing success. It tells you where your campaign is headed and what you need to do to keep everything going in the right direction. That being said, you can generate much better analytics data when you have a more complete picture of what is going on with your campaign; that is why you should track everything that you can.

If your inbound marketing campaign just doesn’t seem to be bringing in the results you anticipated, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing everything wrong. Many times, if you have the fundamentals right, there are just a few minor details that need improvement to lead to inbound marketing success.

Does Your Online Advertising Pass the Test? 7 Things You Can Improve On Today

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 22:04:00 GMT

Although outbound marketing has lost some effectiveness, online advertising is still critical for maximum success when it comes to marketing your business and reaching your target audience. That being said, you have to do more than just throw ads out there in order to be successful. Here are 7 things that you can improve upon today:

1. Use multiple online advertising channels

It is easy to lean on a single high-powered advertising resource like Google AdWords, but this is a mistake. Although single advertising tools can get a lot done, none of them can do everything. For example, Google also has a remarketing tool, which displays your ad on a vast network of partner sites, and only targets people who visit your website. Take advantage of all the things available to you, and don't rely on just one tool to get the job done, because it won't.

2. Improve your landing pages

The purpose of an online ad is to get people to visit your website, but which page? Good landing pages will make your website 100% relevant to your ads, so that your can diversify your ads and increase your click-through-rate. People judge your landing page in less then a second, so it has to have a design that keeps people engaged. Here are the secrets to having more success with your landing pages:

Make your headline relevant to the original ad
Make sure that you have a landing page that matches each ad; if not, create new landing pages
Include relevant pictures whenever possible
Make your prose concise
Always close with compelling calls-to-action

3. Cut your company's name out

People don't care about your company. They only care about what your company can do for them. As such, including your company name in an online ad is a waste of precious characters. Instead, only include your online marketing offer in the ad.

4. Synchronize online advertising with inbound marketing

Running your online marketing strategies independently of one another is a mistake. Instead of only using your online ads to sell your products, use them to build deeper connections with consumers. For example, one of your marketing offers could be a free eBook, which gives you an opportunity to gain an inbound email contact. This will keep leads that need nurturing around and within reach.

5. Make mobile ads easier to use

80% of people use a smartphone to search the web. People also interact with the internet differently via mobile devices like these. Make sure that the mobile versions of your ads are providing consumers with the full array of capabilities that mobile devices provide. For example, you should add a click-to-call feature, which has a 70% engagement rate.

6. Carefully use hover ads

A few years ago, popup ads were a wildly popular form of online advertising. While they were effective, though, people hated them, so they eventually died out. In their stead, on-site hover ads have arisen. They are just as effective as popup ads and have received a more positive reception. However, you should note that when we say to use these carefully, that is exactly what we mean. An overly obtrusive hover ad will incite a visitor to leave, so make sure that people can easily exit your hover ads by clicking both a prominent 'x' button and outside of the ad space.

7. Make your ads urgent

Regardless of whether an ad is designed to further your inbound marketing campaign or close a sale today, make sure that people can feel a sense of urgency to learn more about how you can help them.

All of the tips in this article include a recurring theme: as with the rest of your online marketing endeavors, online advertising requires you to step back and consider how you can help consumers -- not the other way around.

Announcing Pasadena’s First Inbound Marketing Lead Gen Workshop

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 20:23:00 GMT

Inbound marketing agency Kinoshita Communications is hosting Pasadena’s first Inbound Marketing Week Workshop, part of Inbound Marketing Week, a global event featuring more than 60 marketing events to encourage sales and marketing professionals to meet and share knowledge on inbound marketing. The inaugural Pasadena inbound event will take place at:

155 N. Lake Avenue, 8th Floor
Pasadena, CA 91101
10am to Noon on Thursday, March 5

What is Inbound Marketing?

From attracting visitors to a website, to closing them as customers, Inbound Marketing brings the entire marketing funnel together. Marketers can think of it like a marketing hub where content, social media, contacts and email campaigns all come together in one place. The result is less hassle, more control and an inbound marketing strategy that actually works.

With a marketing campaign tied together in a cohesive strategy, sales and marketing professionals can get more out of every budget dollar. In 2013, a survey of more than 1,000 marketing professionals found that inbound marketing saved an average of 13% in overall cost-per-lead and more than $14 dollars for every new customer acquired. With Inbound Marketing, every activity is measured, and anything measured can be improved. Inbound Week will demonstrate what’s possible when email, SEO and blogging are tied to a purpose.

Pasadena sales and marketing professionals are invited to network, collaborate, and learn through a lead generation workshop taking place on March 5, 2015 at 10am. Attendees are invited to arrive early for networking and refreshments.

Inbound Lead Generation Agenda:

Attendees will learn the philosophy of inbound marketing, how to grow their influence online, spend their marketing time more efficiently and how to lower their cost-per-lead and grow sales revenue.

10am: Networking

10:20: Inbound Lead Generation Workshop

11am: Case Studies & Group Discussion

11:20am Wrap Up & Summary of Lessons Learned

Noon: Networking Lunch

Sales and marketing professionals are invited to register for this inbound lead generation event online at: http://hub.kinoshita-marketing.com/inbound-marketing-week-pasadena. Sponsorship opportunities are available, including participation as a featured speaker, logo use and opportunities to share gifts or material with attendees. Use the contact form on the Kinoshita Communication LLC website to receive a sponsor’s package.

Why Do Inbound Marketing?

We work every day as a marketing agency to justify the business case for our inbound marketing activities. We expect no less than a 3x-8x ROI on our work, and provide a monthly client dashboard to track the one-year customer lifetime value of all new sales our campaigns generate. That's how we show value for an inbound marketing investment. Our metrics are high ROI in sales leads and revenue, lower cost-per-lead compared and an increase the overall business value of the client's CPM budget.

When evaluating which inbound marketing consultant to use, ask how your consultant will be calculating the ROI of your campaign. Will you be measuring how inbound marketing compares to traditional lead generation efforts? If so, will you be measuring success on a cost-per-lead or cost-per-customer basis?

Inbound Marketing = Higher Quality, Lower Cost Sales Leads

In a survey of more than 1,000 marketers and sales professionals, new business leads coming from inbound marketing practices are consistently less expensive than outbound leads, regardless of company size (2014 State of Inbound Report, pg. 51).

In addition, inbound marketing was found to provide 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound leads (2013 State of Inbound Report, pg. 59). Among marketers spending more than $25,000 per year on marketing, respondents reported an average 13% savings in overall cost-per-lead compared to those relying on outbound tactics.

About Kinoshita Communications LLC

Since 2007 Kinoshita Communications has been helping businesses with 5-25 employees build digital communities, grow your website traffic and turn more of that traffic into new business leads and sales. Their award-winning campaigns have produced outcomes in areas of awareness, visibility, word-of-mouth, engagement, sales leads and revenue growth. Contact an inbound marketing consultant at (626) 239-1771 for personalized inbound marketing tips you can put to work for your business today, and a better understanding of what results you could expect from an inbound campaign for your business.

The Best Advice You Could Ever Get About Google Adwords

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:27:00 GMT

Being able to market your business online is a must. Thanks to its cost effectiveness, quantitative abilities, easy use and unlimited reach, Google AdWords is possibly the single most powerful tool for online marketing. Although AdWords does include some automation features, however, is not a set it and forget it tool. Succeeding with this tool requires you to use discretion with all of your related actions. That being said, here is the best advice you could ever get about Google AdWords:

You do not want to roll the dice with AdWords

Google AdWords' ease of use and reputation as a powerful Internet marketing tool can make it seem as though you can blindly throw your marketing dollars at it to reap its benefits. This, however, is why many failed AdWords campaigns generate no profits. As such, you cannot make any assumptions when using AdWords.

But knowing that you shouldn’t roll the dice with your Google AdWords campaign just isn’t enough. It’s important to know exactly how to avoid making this costly AdWords mistake. We’ve come up with four steps for you to follow with this invaluable piece of AdWords advice:

1. Determine customer demand

If people are not searching for a particular topic, then it will not help you very much to base your entire AdWords campaign around a related keyword. For instance, if you are an online shoe store launching a local AdWords campaign about snow boots, do not expect to yield positive results if surges in warm weather have pushed people in the locality towards searching for sneakers and flip flops.

You do not have to guess with this either. AdWords has a built-in keyword suggestion tool that provides a clear outlook on customer demand for a topic for you.

2. Test what content works best for your AdWords campaign

Simply assuming that a usable keyword and some relevant ad copy will work effectively is not a good idea. Instead, launch AdWords campaign that includes ads with varying copy. Test these ads against each other to determine with is most effective and adjust accordingly.

3. Create a timeline

How long should your AdWords campaign run to gain maximum benefits? Factors you need to consider are as follows:

Whether or not your advertised product is seasonal
Whether or not your AdWords campaign coincides with a special
Whether or not your AdWords campaign coincides with an event

In order to make sure that you do not waste money on ads made irrelevant by an expiring timeline, make the AdWords campaign itself end at the exact same time as the event. Do not assume that your team will remember to deactivate the campaign either; you could experience a surge in clicks in the time it takes you to put the campaign to a stop.

4. Create landing pages that flow seamlessly with each ad

If all of your AdWords ads link to the same page, you are assuming that your ad has closed the deal, and the visitor will scour your website in search of what they are really interested in. This is a huge mistake. Not only will Google penalize or reward you based on the relevance of your ad, but an ad that leads to something that is not 100% relevant to its copy will cause people to immediately leave your website.

Success with Google AdWords requires you to step back and carefully consider what you need to do

Despite its ease of use, power and low cost, you must treat a Google AdWords campaign like any other marketing endeavor. Carefully mapping out each step you take with AdWords will ensure success.

5 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Online Advertising

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 20:48:00 GMT

Online marketing becomes more important every day. Most marketers know this and are marketing online as a result. The Internet, however, is a massive empire ruled by a handful of search engines and social networks; to succeed at online advertising, you must be prudent.

There are many clever things that you can try to make your online advertising campaigns more successful. Before you do any of these things, however, you need to avoid common mistakes. You will gain a huge advantage with your online advertising endeavors by avoiding the following five mistakes, because nearly everyone else is making them.

1. Underestimating the value of advertising on social networks

Despite the fact that there is a consensus among marketers that social media marketing is a must, only 20% of small businesses have used social ads in the past. Do not make this mistake for your online marketing endeavors. Current social advertising has fallen behind customer attention by 50%; this has created a $5 billion gap in how many opportunities online marketers -- including you -- are missing out on.

2. Assuming that numbers will win the day

Too many online marketers assume that three billion Internet users is enough for an online ad campaign to be successful. Just throwing your company's name into the web, however, is not good enough. You must remember that there are also 1.2 billion websites out there (and counting). This means that you will be facing heavy competition for the attention of consumers.

3. Not understanding the value of a good landing page

In most cases, the primary goal of an online marketing campaign is to get Internet users to visit your website so that you can convert them into qualified leads. However, even a great online ad campaign will fail if you do not have good landing pages to back the ads up. This is due to the fact that when somebody clicks on an online ad, they expect the following web page to perfectly match what the ad sold them on. Any discrepancies, and they are likely to click away. What's more, if the following page is irrelevant enough for people to deem your ad to be deceptive, you could end up facing some trouble with the FTC -- even if it wasn't intentional.

For every online ad you post, have your web design team create a landing page that perfectly matches the copy.

4. Overspending

There are many powerful online advertising resources out there, including Google AdWords, the Google Display Network, popular websites and social media. That being said, none of these will be an effective tool for your online ad campaign if you blindly throw money at it.

Instead, optimize your investment in online advertising based on your total marketing budget.

5. Thinking online advertising will work by itself

Because of the way the Internet works, there is no such thing as a standalone online marketing channel. This is especially true for online ads. Inbound marketing, which cost 61% less per lead than outbound marketing endeavors such as online advertising, can also make your online ads more effective.

For example, linking some of your online ads to your social networking pages or blog posts (when it is relevant) will help you to indefinitely nurture qualified leads and build a long-term, reputable relationship with consumers.

Avoiding these missteps will make you look like a marketing genius

The most successful people start not by creating something new, but by finding out where other people failed and avoiding those mistakes. Using the same approach for online advertising will lead you to a long line of online marketing wins.

Still not sure where to begin with online advertising? Or maybe you need some help connecting your inbound marketing efforts to your online advertising campaign?

Announcing the Global Inbound Marketing Event

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 19:39:00 GMT

Inbound Marketing Week is happening March 2-6 in multiple cities around the globe. This will be a series of evens happening simultaneously, and you can be join in on Thursday March 5th! Inbound marketing events are focused on helping professionals like you share knowledge and ideas about what's working best in their marketing strategy.

What is Inbound Marketing?

From attracting visitors to your website, to closing them as customers, Inbound Marketing brings your entire marketing funnel together. Think of it like a marketing hub where your content, social media, contacts and email campaigns all come together. The result is less hassle, more control and an inbound marketing strategy that actually works.

With your marketing campaign tied together in a cohesive strategy, you get more out of every marketing dollar. In 2014, our average client increased their marketing ROI by more than 30% by doing more of what works, and less of what doesn't. With Inbound Marketing, everything you do is measured. And anything you can measure, you can improve. See what becomes possible when your email, SEO and blogging are tied to a purpose.

60 Events Around the Globe

We are spreading the word about Inbound Marketing in Pasadena. On March 5th we will be running the first Pasadena Inbound Lead Generation Workshop for businesses who need to generate more new business leads from their website and provide better, more sales-ready sales leads to their team.

We will talk about small businesses like Distil Networks and how companies like theirs are using Inbound Marketing to double the number of sales leads and increase revenue growth by 60% or more quarter over quarter.

Inbound Marketing the Entire Company Can Love

Distil Networks' co-founder Rami Essaid says Inbound Marketing played a pivotal role in the early growth of his start-up. Instead of putting off the practice of inbound marketing, Essaid embraced it. He started to understand why so many years earlier he'd heard about the importance of blogging and content creation.  He encourages other start-ups to think about marketing differently, and to start as soon as you can. “It’s about more than content,” he said. Essaid maintains that using a software tool like HubSpot and starting your Inbound Marketing campaign early will “help you scale.”

While his entire company uses it in different ways, the greatest benefit of Inbound Marketing for Essaid, according to a recent case study, is the ability to leverage useful insights into the company's marketing activities, rather than just jumping from activity to activity or using gut instinct. As Essaid points out, data-driven decision-making is what drives real growth.

Inbound Marketing=Sales Leads

Inbound marketing is about generating qualified new business sales leads. Our Certified HubSpot Consultant will walk you through the process of creating a marketing campaign, show you how to get more return-on-investment (ROI) from your efforts and how to use social media and community-building to delight your customers, for even more referral business in 2015!

You'll learn how to:

Grow your network of supporters
Spend your time as effectively as possible
Improve your marketing
Grow your business in 2015

We will provide you with specific case studies, research studies, templates and a digital dashboard scorecard you can use to track your own progress over time.

This will be a power-packed workshop ending in a professional networking discussion, so share this event with other marketing friends and colleagues!

Inbound Lead Generation

Date: Thursday, March 5, 2015

Time: 10:00 AM - Noon

Location: 155 North Lake Avenue, 8th Floor, Pasadena, CA 91101

How Marketing Consultants Help Grow Business with Search Advertising

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 20:30:00 GMT

Learn about the value of digital marketing and how you can expand your online presence through smarter insights to grow your business.

Below is a presentation from Google #PartnersConnect LiveStream on Feb. 11 2015. Find out how you can grow your business with search advertising and claim your space in the social sphere!

Partway into the broadcast Fred Vallaeys talks about some of the features that make search advertising so powerful. For example, the ability to connect your AdWord groups to data like the weather, stock price, or a new inventory item. No more having to create new ad groups.

You'll meet Todd Rowe, Managing Director at Google, and Fred Vallaeys, GoogleAdWords Evangelist. Todd directs one of the world's fastest growing sales organizations worldwide and is responsible for selling Google'sAdWords, video and mobile products to small- and mid-sized companies through third parties in 25 countries. Mr. Rowe will be talking about how to leverage technology to thrive and is a frequent keynote speaker at technology conferences.

Fred Vallaeys will help you better advertise your business online. Fred will talk about how small businesses can navigate the Web and expand their online presence through smarter business intelligence and insights.

We work with AdWords every single day, and you can ask us about your particular business and situation.

Let us create a specific plan for your business that includes Adwords, Google Analytics, claiming your spot on Google my Business and getting more business from mobile and social.

Just click the "Contact" link on our website or call us toll free: 877-239-3067. You might also be interested in the following eBook, 25 Website 'Must Haves' for Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales.

20 Resources That Will Make You Better at Google AdWords

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 21:35:00 GMT

Although you only pay for results with Google AdWords, benefiting from this powerful PPC tool requires you to do more than sign up for its services. Here are 20 resources that will make you better at AdWords:

Learning How to Use AdWords

1. The AdWords Help Center

This is the official learning tool for Google AdWords, where you can learn the basics about the online marketing tool.

2. Inside AdWords, The Official AdWords Blog

Google discusses the latest happenings and best practices in digital marketing, especially regarding AdWords.

3. AdWords for Dummies

The For Dummies company does a great job at breaking down how you can make the most out of AdWords. They provide a book and online video resources.

4. Trial and Error

One of the best ways to learn how to get the most out of Google AdWords is to use it!

5. PPC Hero

This blog provides regular online advertising news and strategy tips; many of their posts are focused around getting the most out of AdWords.

6. Certified Knowledge

Certified Knowledge provides several resources designed to enhance your AdWords knowledge, including a blog and online videos.

Making AdWords Easier

7. AdWords Editor

This powerful tool, which is provided by Google, provides you with a long list of AdWords campaign management and editing tools.

8. Google Wonder Wheel

This is a contextual targeting tool that makes it easier to connect your AdWords campaign to relevant searches.

9. The AdWords Traffic Estimator Tool

This tool, which was recently integrated into the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, makes projections about which keywords will receive the most traffic.

10. The AdWords Wrapper

This tool automatically "wraps" your keywords and key phrases into quotation marks and brackets for exact match and phrase match purposes.

11. Google Trends

This tool keeps your keyword data more up to date by telling you which keywords are most popular at that moment.

Making AdWords More Effective

12. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner

This resource helps you enhance the effectiveness of your campaign by providing statistics and analyzing the potential performance of a keyword.

13. Google Display Planner

You can fully leverage the power of the Google Display Network with this resource. It generates ideas on how to best use the Google Display Network based on your customers' interests.

14. WordStream

This solution provides a variety of PPC tools, including an AdWords analyzer that grades your current campaigns and makes recommendations on how to improve them.

15. Google Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool

This resource provides you with live views of your ads (without paying for any clicks) and analyzes how you can improve it.

16. A good web design team

Landing pages are critical for the success of your AdWords campaign. A good landing page requires some strong web design skills.

17. A good copywriting team

After someone clicks on your ad, they will judge whether or not your website is right for them in seconds. The copy on your landing page is a huge factor in this regard.

18. Google Website Optimizer

This Google-powered resource helps guide your layout, web design and content for more effective results for both your AdWords and SEO campaigns.

19. The Keyword Typo Generator

This resource analyzes your keywords and provides common typos that you should consider using for your AdWords campaign.

20. A good inbound marketing team

Although as a PPC tool, AdWords is technically an outbound marketing tool, it uniquely uses Google Search to provide better results for searchers and savvy advertisers. This is something a stellar inbound marketing team will be able to help you execute and manage.

5 Most Expensive Mistakes To Make in Google AdWords

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 21:17:00 GMT

Google AdWords is one of the most powerful advertising tools at your disposal. It combines the benefits of both outbound and inbound marketing, while ensuring a visible place for your company's ad on the largest search engine in the world. That being said there are still ways to waste money with an AdWords campaign – let's take a look at the seven worst mistakes that you can make on Google AdWords.

1. Not setting a solid budget

A few cents per click can seem inexpensive. However, when you factor in the fact that there are over three billion people on the web, two-thirds of which use Google to conduct their online searches, it becomes very clear that a few cents can turn into thousands of dollars in no time. Incrementally increasing the amount that you spend on AdWords can cause your money to disappear as quickly as if you had spent too much time in a casino.

In order to prevent your company from overspending on Google AdWords, you must set a hard and fast budget and stick to it, no matter how tempting it is to invest just a few more dollars. Increasing your AdWords budget should come after you have analyzed your current campaign and accurately determined that doing so is reasonable, not during the campaign itself.

2. Not setting a timeline for your AdWords campaign

Why are you marketing on AdWords? It is likely to promote a sales promotion, company event or to create a surge in sales. You know when the timelines for all of these things are; if you don't incorporate that into your AdWords campaign, then you will end up wasting money on clicks long after the timeline has ended.

3. Making your ad copy too complicated

People will determine whether or not your ad interests them in less than a second. If you make your ad copy too complicated, then they will look away before they even know what you are advertising. Always cover one point while keeping it short and simple.

4. Forgetting about your keyword in the ad copy

When someone browses the results from a search, they are doing so with their typed keywords in mind. By excluding primary keywords from your ad copy, you are effectively causing searchers to dismiss your ad all together.

5. Making your ad too broad

You want to generate sales leads from as many clicks as possible. If your AdWords ad is focused around two-dozen keywords, then you are making your ad too broad. It becomes impossible to accurately target an audience with that many keywords. As a general rule, keep your keyword total between five and twenty.

All of these AdWords mistakes can be prevented with a little bit of planning. Take your time with your campaigns, and make sure you’re executing them to the best of your ability, without overdoing it.

Still have questions about your Google AdWords campaign? It just so happens we're hosting a livestream, Google event on February 11th! Learn from Google AdWords evangelists and our in-house marketing expert!

15 Things Your Boss Wishes You Knew About Inbound Marketing

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 22:13:00 GMT

Whether you are managing a team of marketing professionals or are a one man marketing band, you are well aware that every marketing campaign is ultimately to attract new customers, maintain your company’s established customers, and increase profitability. But you may not be fully aware that the best way to accomplish these goals is through inbound marketing. Your boss knows this; and your boss wants you to know it, too. In fact, here are 15 specific things your boss wishes you knew about inbound marketing.

1. What it is.

Since your company (undoubtedly) already has some sort of Internet presence, you’re doing inbound marketing – whether it’s on purpose or not. This effective form of marketing is a way to present and promote your company’s products and services by attracting visitors to your website. By consistently posting authentic, well-written, engaging, and/or SEO-keyword-rich blogs, e-books, white papers, and other content about your company, potential and established customers will be led to your website through search engines. Once they have reached your company's website, the content and thoughtfully placed landing pages will ideally inspire your visitors to take some form of action: embrace a discount, sign up for a newsletter, get on your emailing list, ask a question, or purchase a product. When done purposefully and consistently, an effective inbound marketing campaign transforms visitors into loyal clients.

2. Being liked pays off.

Facebook is a place for your potential customers to get to know you and more importantly, for you to get to know them. Facebook allows you to build relationships, and learn what your audience wants and needs from you. Consumers that like you on Facebook buy more from you, per transaction, than those who haven’t liked your page.

3. It takes time.

Launching and maintaining an effective inbound marketing campaign does not happen overnight. Posting 50 new blogs at one time – no matter how interesting or informative they may be – will not be as effective as consistently posting just a handful of engaging blogs per week. You want your website visitors to return to your company’s website on a regular basis for new information; you want your website visitors to see your company as the “go to expert” in your industry. But that doesn’t happen overnight.

4. Social media matters.

While it’s critical to create and maintain an effective website, you can’t minimize building all your social media opportunities as well. Social media leads convert 5x more than pay-per-click leads. To attract and direct new customers to your website, you have to be where they are – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other social media platforms that your target audience is active on.

5. More than half of a consumer’s shopping choices are made before they come into your store.

The products and services you promote via your inbound marketing campaign help your customers to make purchasing decisions before they even enter your store to browse your products in person. 60% of the purchase decision-making process takes place online.

6. Blogging boosts the bottom line.

Marketing consultants who implement an effective blogging campaign are 13x more likely to have a continuous increased Return On Investment each year. Blogging is not only a place for you to get creative, but it’s also the one place on your website that is constantly being updated with your target keywords, allowing you to increase the likelihood of rising through search results.

7. Inbound marketing is less expensive than outbound marketing.

Trying to secure leads through outbound marketing initiatives – such as TV commercials, print advertisements, cold calling, etc. – takes more time, more staff, and more finances than a solid, consistent inbound marketing plan. Take advantage of the resources you have and find ways to answer the questions and solve the problems of your target consumer when they are looking for it.

8. The ROI via inbound marketing is consistent.

If you take the time to measure inbound ROI, you are 17x more likely to see the same or greater ROI over the previous year.

9. Search engine optimization strategies work.

While producing and posting informative, industry-related content will help establish your company as the expert in your field, it won’t matter much if consumers searching a topic don’t see your blogs listed in the search engines. Strategically placing your target keywords in your content will significantly help draw consumers to your website.

10. Content distribution will accelerate your inbound marketing program.

Spread the word. Distribute the great content that is on your website to other platforms throughout the Internet and in your other marketing collateral. If you aren’t going to share your content – who will?

11. Your competitors already know that organic marketing works.

84% of marketing managers who embrace inbound marketing campaigns acknowledge that fresh, never-before-published, and “free” inbound marketing strategies continue to rise in importance.

12. Quality always beats quantity.

Churning out 80 blogs per month that are awkwardly stuffed with keywords, blatant grammar and spelling errors, and mediocre content will damage your marketing efforts profoundly. Concise, fresh, and quality content attracts repeat visitors to your website. Period. To be identified as the industry expert, everything you share about your company via your marketing campaigns must reflect that knowledge, insight, and expertise. Anything else will work against you.

13. Inbound marketing keeps on paying.

There will always be new potential customers looking for the exact products and services your company provides. The content you create will be there for years to come, and will continue to answer the questions of potential consumers over and over again.

14. Inbound marketing efforts are easily measurable.

You can monitor the number of visitors to your website, what they’re looking at, how they found your way to your website, how long they stayed, and so much more! This information is vastly important as it will identify what initiatives are working and which ones that aren’t. If most of your customers are coming to your website from the tweets you write each day, you’ll want to continue to beef up that strategy. If you get no traffic from your emails, you’ll either want to spend less time on your email campaign or you’ll want to rethink it and change how you are presenting the email content.

15. It’s easy to implement.

Make every single component of your inbound marketing campaign count. With each tweet, Facebook post, guest blog, e-book, newsletter, and article you post on the Internet, you are adding to your inbound marketing campaign. As easy as it is to add new content on a regular basis, the key is to make sure it matters. Taking the time to review each piece of your inbound marketing campaign before you post it is easy to do and will pay off in the long run – as it will reflect your company’s integrity, professionalism, and commitment to produce nothing less than exceptional products and services.

Still need some help with your inbound marketing efforts?

7 Small Changes To Make A Big Difference in Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 23:16:00 GMT

Maximizing the potential of your inbound marketing campaigns is not the herculean task you might think. There are plenty of strategies you can use to make your marketing campaigns more successful, and the volume of information can be daunting. But rather than sorting through or trying everything to find ways that work, you can make a big difference in your inbound marketing campaigns with these seven tips:

1. Provide Details About You

Take advantage of opportunities to give visitors a more detailed look at your company, products or services, values, and purpose by using "About" options and company profile pages. Include links in external content back to your company's website as well. When you are more than just a company name it will create stronger connections and inspire a greater atmosphere of trust and confidence.

2. Website Design & Copy

You may be surprised to know how quickly online consumers lose interest in websites over things like grammar and spelling errors. They feel that if the company doesn't care enough about its public image to ensure that online content is professionally designed and error-free, the company will likewise not care about the wants and needs of its customers. Pay close attention to not only how your website is set up, but also be sure to proofread and copy edit everything. It may take longer to have a few extra people have a look, but in the long run, it will be worth it.

3. Publish Reviews & Testimonials

You do not need to be an inbound marketing consultant to be able to check this one off your list! When you conclude business transactions with a satisfied consumer, simply ask for a testimonial and publish it on your website. By providing site visitors with accolades from real people, you are establishing trust and authenticity that motivates visitors to become customers themselves.

4. Blog!

There's a reason why a blog is listed as one of our top 5 inbound marketing tools. But surprisingly, many companies still don't have one. Blogs can help you achieve recognition as an industry expert and can provide readers with information about yourself, your company, industry trends, relevant regulatory changes, and - most importantly - they provide answers, information, and advice to purveyors of your products or services. A blog is your time to shine – take advantage of it!

5. Optimize Properly

Search Engine Optimization is just as important as it’s ever been. But top rank on search engines is meaningless if your content isn’t useful or lacks value to your target audience. Create stellar content that provides answers to questions your customers may have. Then, keyword optimize that fantastic content and you are well on your way to climbing the search rankings with inbound marketing.

6: Revamp Your CTAs

Gone are the days of "click here" buttons that take up half a page, and scrolling versus clicking has practically nullified the above-or-below-the-fold debate when it comes to where to place a call to action (CTA). The key to conversions is to make your CTAs actionable. An actionable CTA must create a need within your visitor to click it, and there should be as few distractions or clickable alternatives on the page as possible.

7: Use Analytics & Other Measurement Tools

Keep track of site metrics and marketing campaigns with analytics tools to see where your traffic is coming from (and, conversely, where it's not, which can indicate a failing campaign). Use the results of your analysis to tweak your inbound marketing campaigns until you find those that drive the most traffic to your website or landing pages, or those that are producing the most leads, clicks, or conversions.

There are other tips you can use to improve your inbound marketing campaigns like defining your audience, using responsive design for mobile users, and creating an editorial calendar. When you combine essential elements like those with the seven tips listed here, your inbound marketing campaigns will be well on their way to producing measurable results that will help you reach your marketing goals more quickly and easily.

10 Answers to Your Most Common Questions About Inbound Marketing

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 21:18:00 GMT

So, you’ve probably heard the term “inbound marketing” over the last few years or so. It’s become the main marketing strategy for many companies and has proven itself much more powerful than it’s predecessor, outbound marketing.

But for some, this term is still new. And it can be a little overwhelming if you aren’t exactly sure what the term fully entails. Even if you have a general understanding of the term inbound marketing, you may still need some clarification on a few things so you can feel confident moving forward with your inbound marketing efforts.

The following are 10 answers to the most common inbound marketing questions:

1. What is inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is a strategy in which companies make their products and services easy for consumers to find on their own using a number of different tactics, including SEO and content marketing.

2. How is inbound marketing different from traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing, which is known as outbound marketing, is a tactic in which you force information on consumers via TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads and more – the opposite strategy of inbound marketing.

3. Why should I use inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing has proven to be an incredibly effective way to increase brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand trust and your customer base. It’s a long-term strategy that will help grow your company – and one reason companies focus more on inbound marketing than on outbound marketing is that it’s often much more affordable. It is also a much less intrusive way of marketing to your target audience, providing them with resources, answers, and solutions when they need it.

4. Can I do it by myself?
If you want to do the bare minimum, yes you can. But your inbound marketing won’t be very effective if you do. If you are actually planning on implementing a full-fledged inbound marketing campaign, you’ll need web designers, graphic designers, content writers, customer service providers, individuals that analyze your metrics, individuals that run your social media and team managers to keep everyone organized. Trying to go at it on your own may seem possible, but save yourself the time and energy, and don’t bite off more than you can chew.

5. Does inbound marketing require a strategy?
Yes. Sure you can dive right in without a strategy, but you won’t know if your marketing is successful if you don’t have any goals to measure your success against. Not to mention, you may be wasting resources on things you don’t need to be doing depending on what your goals are. Decide what your main goal is and set milestones to judge how effective your inbound marketing is.

6. Is having a blog really necessary?
Yes. A blog isn’t just a public journal. It’s a way to provide valuable content to your consumers that can help build trust and loyalty as well as help you foster a reputation as an expert in your field. It’s one of the most effective tactics for inbound marketing. A blog may seem daunting at first, but just like anything else in your business, a little planning ahead can break long-term content marketing into very manageable tasks.

7. Do I really need to use social media?
Social media is not only a great way to provide consumers with content and to increase exposure, it’s also a fantastic way to engage directly with your customers and build strong relationships. Any platform that allows you to engage with your customers in a fun and creative way, is one you want to take advantage of. No inbound marketing strategy should be without social media marketing.

8. Can inbound marketing actually improve my sales?
Absolutely. Not only does inbound marketing help increase exposure to your brand, thereby helping to provide more potential customers, it also helps to build trust and loyalty, resulting in more repeat customers.

9. How long will it take to see results?
Inbound marketing requires some time and patience – it’s all about gradual but steady growth. Don’t expect to see results over night, but if you have patience, you will most definitely see results.

10. Can I do inbound marketing without a large budget?
Yes, even smaller companies with low budgets can manage a website and a single social media profile. However, don’t try to cut costs if you don’t have to – the more resources you put into your inbound marketing strategy, the more successful it will be.

There you have it! Now that you know the basics of inbound marketing, it’s probably easier for you to wrap your head around what will be required of you and your team.

Set some goals, get creative, and don’t forget to ask for help when you need it!

5 Inbound Marketing Tools You Absolutely Must Use

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 02:14:00 GMT

The past few years have seen a dramatic shift in how you should market to certain people. Bombarding people with TV commercials, newspaper ads, popup ads, cold calls, unsolicited email and other outbound marketing tactics simply does not work as well as it used to. The unlimited access to information that the internet provides has made people more resistant to outbound marketing; this is evidenced by statistics such as:

200 million Americans have registered themselves on the FTC's do not call list
84% of people between the ages of 25 and 34 will leave their favorite website if it includes intrusive ads
86% of all people actively find ways to skip TV ads

This means that while outbound marketing still has some effect, spending countless marketing dollars on ads, direct mail, etc is essentially a waste. Fortunately for marketers, all is not lost. You can effectively attract sales leads through inbound marketing by getting people to independently choose and identify your products or services as the best choice.

You may already know all of this, but where do you begin? To help you build a foundation for your inbound marketing campaign, we will discuss the five inbound marketing tools that you absolutely must use.

1. A blog

In order for your inbound marketing campaign to be successful, two things have to happen: relevant consumers have to find you and you have to keep those people engaged. Informative, entertaining and engaging content is the best way to do this, because it provides the following benefits:

Better SEO results
It positions your company as an expert and industry leader
Your audience trusts your organization more

That being said, the foundation of your content marketing strategy should be an up to date blog. This will give you a platform from which you can deliver a constant stream of easily consumable content.

2. Social networking

72% of the billion internet users out there are active on social media. These people constantly open their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc feeds in hopes of coming across informative, entertaining, engaging content. Social networking is a great inbound marketing tool for delivering insightful blurbs, informative infographics, engaging video and even direct links to your best blog posts.

3. Email

Although many marketers use randomly obtained email marketing lists to bombard consumers with unsolicited emails, this channel is not exclusively used for outbound marketing. The first step towards using email for inbound marketing is to obtain an email subscriber list by inviting people interested in your content so subscribe. After this, you deliver useful email content relevant to people's needs -- instead of blatant advertisements.

4. A CRM tool

As your inbound efforts begin to thrive, you will start to have a long list of leads to nurture. Each one of these leads is an individual person with a unique life; you can most effectively nurture these leads when your timing is perfect. CRM tools like Salesforce and the HubSpot CRM will manage your contact list, timing, scheduling, etc so that you can take full advantage of every opportunity.

5. Analytical tools

No matter how successful your inbound marketing efforts are, it won't help your very much if you don't know how you ended up with those results. By using analytical tools such as Google Analytics and Moz, you can not only repeat the actions that led to your success, but also adjust as sudden changes in consumer behavior occur.

These tools are critical for inbound marketing success.

Using these five tools will make you fully equipped for successful marketing in the modern era.

Still feeling a little lost? No problem! Let us guide you in the right direction!

Meet Our Top Notch WordPress Business Theme!

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:46:00 GMT

Sometimes we get really excited about new Wordpress Themes. We found this theme during a strategy session with one of our clients, Big Real Estate Investing. We are completely platform agnostic so when we find something that impresses us, we want to share it with others!

How to Pick a Wordpress Theme

Get ready, because Windows 10 will be here soon and Apple has already redefined the interface of the Web. The surge of mobile devices over the past three years has meant that Web publishers have had to keep step with mobile-optimized sites and navigation. Here are the essentials:

Retina-Ready Graphics. A Fresh and clean design that look outstanding on today's mobile devices, iPads and high-resolution monitors
Responsive and Mobile Optimized. A flexible, responsive platform that automatically adjusts to the user's screen size, no matter how small or how large
Play Vimeo and YouTube videos.
Highly Flexible. You can make the site look exactly like you want it to.
Ongoing Support. For updates as new versions of Wordpress become available

Easy Wordpress Development

Has it been more than 5 years since you last updated your website? Tablets and mobile devices have changed the way people interact with the Web, so it might be time for a facelift. If your website is converting fewer than 1% of all visitors, then an outdated website could be part of the problem. Does your site take longer than 1.5 seconds to load? If so you are being penalized by Google and other search engines. Newer, more responsive Wordpress themes can help solve that problem. Do you have to pay someone else to update your own website? In 2015 the ability to update your web page is the most important success factor for digital marketers and technical marketing agencies. Talk to us if you would like to have the ability of quickly updating your own blog, share event photos from your own website (not Facebook) and keep your digital home on the Web current and fresh.

If you are in need of a website update, look at our website development portfolio projects and examples. We offer a complimentary website review for any business with 10 web pages or more (a $150 value).

Let us show you how we can help your businesses get more inbound marketing leads and sales. We use a proven, 8-step program that brings down your cost-per-lead and increases conversion rates for your website. Our services include content marketing, social media and lead nurturing through email.

Key Website Development Features

This popular business Wordpress theme features a number of impressive features:

Accordian & Toggle text. Used to display collapsible text content panels for showing information in a limited amount of space. Users simply tap on a title panel to show/expand content that is hidden into different sections.
Featured Works and Blog Posts. Great for artists, photographers and creative studios. You can display the latest or random posts depending on the settings you specify.
Pricing Table. You can set price, description, link and highlight or feature one column over the others so that the best value option pops and is noticeable. No more struggling with tables. Your price chart will fit perfectly for promotion or display.
Google Map. Designed specifically for this theme. Simply copy your iframe code from Google map and insert it in the Google code field. Includes full responsive support.
Testimonials. Show new or random testimonials and set the number of testimonials to show. Includes support for a featured image so testimonials will fit perfectly.

Want to see a demo? Contact us for a free live 15-minute walk through. Simply fill out this form.

Announcing the Google Interisland HubSpot Hawaii Hangout

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 18:34:00 GMT

Join Kinoshita Communications and the HubSpot Hawaii User Group for an Interisland Google Hangout on January 29th, 2015 at 8 AM.

HubSpot now provides a sales platform with new CRM and sales tools to help sales professionals deliver a more effective process to prospects. Learn how you and your team can take advantage of these new tools at this Google Hangout. In this one hour, online event, you’ll learn about new marketing features, HubSpot sales tools, and CRM Functionality.

Are you new to the HubSpot Hawaii User Group? No problem! The HubSpot Hawaii User Group provides local HubSpot users quarterly meetings to discuss inbound marketing success, tools, and network with other inbound marketers in your area.

Head here to register for this event, and receive an invitation to this Google Hangout. You can also check out our LinkedIn Group to keep up with HubSpot Hawaii discussions, other events, and getting to know other HubSpot Hawaii users.

Join Us for Google Partners Connect!

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:43:00 GMT

We're hosting a livestream Google event on February 11th, and you're invited to join us!

It's a great opportunity to learn about how to grow your business from our in-house marketing agency expert and Google AdWords evangelists. We'll provide the refreshments--all we need is you!

This event WILL be recorded for those who can't join in person, so even if you can't be there in person, please RSVP with your interest and I will send you the link afterwards. Please RSVP as soon as possible, space is filling up:

Who Are the Speakers?

Todd Rowe, Managing Director at Google, and Fred Vallaeys, Google AdWords Evangelist. Todd directs one of the world's fastest growing sales organizations worldwide and is responsible for selling Google's AdWords, video and mobile products to small- and mid-sized companies through third parties in 25 countries. Mr. Rowe will be talking about how to leverage technology to thrive and is a frequent keynote speaker at technology conferences.

Fred Vallaeys is an AdWords Evangelist and will help you better advertise your business online. Fred will talk about how small businesses can navigate the Web and expand their online presence through smarter business intelligence and insights.

You can learn more about both speakers when you click the button below:

Please arrive early for refreshments and conversation about the value of online advertising and how to achieve success on the Web. This event is complimentary to registered guests.

Marketing Agency Shares Blogging Best Practices for SEO

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 15:09:00 GMT

Marketing agencies know there are two major aspects to having a successful inbound marketing blog – one is having great content, and the other, is knowing how to properly optimize that content so it has the best chance of being found by your target audience. And one doesn’t necessarily work without the other: stellar content doesn’t do much unless it’s found, and keyword optimizing lousy content won’t benefit anyone either.

Once you create a great blog post (and have your editorial calendar mapped out with more excellent content to follow on a regular basis), there are a number of steps that you can take to ensure that you are doing everything you possibly can to have it found.

Keep this guide handy for each and every blog post to achieve long-term success with SEO.

Keyword Phrases

There are a number of keywords that your target audience is searching when your competitors pop up. Adding those keywords or phrases into your website in *useful ways, will allow your site to start ranking higher in search results.

Read your content, and determine two keywords that are most relevant to what you are writing about. If you find yourself having trouble, you may want to reevaluate what the article is about. Chances are, you might be able to break that one post into two or even a series of posts. While this might take up more time, it will work in your favor: if you are having a hard time figuring out what a particular article is about on your own site, search engines and potential customers won’t be able to either. By breaking it down, you’ll have more opportunity to keyword optimize and clarify your topics.

*It’s important to remember to make sure you are keeping the relevance of the blog post you are working on, and not just adding in keywords that don’t make sense in hopes to get higher search results. Stick to the point, and make sure you don’t steer off topic just to add in a particular keyword.

Once you have determined the target keywords, you should try to incorporate those words 1-2 times every 100 words or so. You should also try to hyperlink those keywords and phrases to other relevant content within your site. Having one or two hyperlinks is a great way to get people back to other content you’ve produced.

Article Titles

The title of your article should also include one, if not both of your keywords. Not only is your blog post title the first thing that readers will see, but it’s also the main thing that explains to search engines what your post is about. Make a great first impression with a killer title that is clear, to the point, and packed with your primary keyword.

Meta Description

Putting your keyword in a blog post title is a very important step for SEO, but don’t underestimate the importance of meta data. This short, 150 word (or under) description dives more into detail than the main title, but sticks to the point. By shedding a little more light on what your post is about, you can draw people in with this short description. Include your keywords in this section as well.

Images

This is a portion of SEO that often gets overlooked. You may be thinking, “how can I put keywords in images?”

If you save your image file with a name that includes your keywords, you are allowing search engines to read your images. The best strategy would be to put the primary keyword with the most prominent image, and then the photos to follow will have the secondary keyword.

The file name of the image should include dashes between each word. The ALT text of the image should include the same text, but without dashes in between.

Example:

File name: Blog-Best-Practices-For-SEO

ALT text: Blog Best Practices For SEO

While SEO is not rocket science, it is however, time consuming. By following all of these steps for every page on your website, you are telling search engines what your content is about, and therefore, making it easier for them to rank you higher when those terms are searched. Pair these steps with an editorial calendar and stellar content, you will be well on your way to higher search rank.

Marketing Agency Shares 7 Things You Don't Know about Facebook

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 13:57:00 GMT

Do you know the full extent to which Facebook uses your personal information?

Few people do.

The following is provided by a Pasadena marketing agency based on actual published news accounts and interviews with Facebook employees:

1. Facebook keeps everything, forever.

By far the biggest misconception is that once you “remove” or “hide” something on Facebook, it’s gone forever. Not true. Whether you’ve deleted, untagged, hidden, removed or interacted with anything, Facebook keeps a record of it. Click on a profile, upload a photo, update your status, change your profile, Facebook remembers. This is how they keep track of who your best friends are and make the site so engaging and satisfying to use. When you type a letter in the search box, what appears isn’t arranged alphabetically, but rather who you interact with the most. The Friends that appear first in search arearranged according to who you send messages to the most, or whose profile you view the most, or people you interact with the most. So Facebook needs to keep track of every message, chat and poke. They even keep track of which people you are tagged in photos with, and how often.

2. Facebook has multiple versions of every photo you’ve ever uploaded.

When Facebook saves photos, they don’t just make a copy of the original, but instead they make multiple copies to use in various ways. For example, they store one version for the newsfeed, another version for your profile, another for your timeline and so on. And each photo that is uploaded to Facebook carries with it the metadata that digital cameras include with each image. This type of data often includes the manufacturer of the camera, themodel number and even its serial number, as well as properties such as shutter speed and exposure time. On some cameras, such as the iPhone 4, metadata can also include the precise GPS location of where the photo was taken.

3. Facebook stores multiple data “snapshots” throughout the day.

Snapshots include every viewable screen, and every piece of data behind every screen. These “snapshots” are taken every hour, of every day, of every month, for every year. That’s how Facebook can provide timelines that go back to the day you were “born,” (or the day you started using Facebook.) This data is stored in multiple data centers around the world, including San Francisco, New York and London. In each data warehouse there are approximately 10 thousand servers, and each location has essentially the same data on it as every other location. If a world disaster ever brought the entire Internet down, Facebook could be back online within just a few days, regardless of where the disaster took place.

4. Facebook engineers can look at any message, chat or photo without having to login to a specific profile.

In the early days of Facebook there used to be a “master password” which allowed a few engineers view any user’s profile from within Facebook headquarters, but practically speaking, the use of a password is irrelevant for an engineer who has access to Facebook servers. “It’s just for style,” said one employee. That’s because everything uploaded to Facebook is saved in a simple database. Whether deleted or not, every message, chat history, photo and so forth lives on in a database that can easily be accessed by Facebook engineers.

5. Facebook keeps track of every device you use, and how often.

A privacy group named Europe v. Facebook discovered this fact when they requested a copy of every piece of data Facebook had on record for two European Facebook users. One of the Facebook profiles contained more than 880 pages of information. Included among the messages, chat history, photos and viewing history was also a record of every device the person used to access their profile on Facebook, including how often they logged in from each machine, as well as all the other Facebook profiles which had ever been accessed on that same machine.

6. Facebook uses scientific research to make its site as appealing and addictive as possible.

When Facebook wants to introduce new features, they conduct a variety of scientific tests to find out which ones will be the most emotionally appealing and engaging for the greatest number of users. For example, Facebook used eye-tracking tests to find a better way to display photos. Testing revealed that one design improved the number of page views by 77% while also reducing bandwith and page load time. That test changed the way photos are displayed on Facebook.

7. Facebook’s “Frictionless Sharing” enables the site to track your browsing activity even after you log out of Facebook.

With frictionless sharing, once you approve a website or application to interact with Facebook, all your activity on that website and application will be automatically shared with Facebook, whether you’re logged into Facebook or not. The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC saying that Facebook puts secret, persistent identifiers in users’ browsers. Privacy advocates also complain that the process for people to opt-out of frictionless sharing is confusing and impractical. Facebook responds by saying they provide more granular control of data to users than any other site, and that their privacy controls are superior.

So, what can you do to better protect your data? Read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for all the sites you use most, starting with Facebook, Google and iTunes. Facebook allows you to download an archive of everything you’ve ever uploaded, but be careful—once you have a copy then you will need to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands!