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Why we’ve changed …… (more or less) from CruxBridge Media (CBM) to OmniSolus, and combine outbound sales and Internet marketing?
If you don’t mind, this is going to be what’s called a “we we” post, or one where I talk more about the company, than about the reader. In other words, I’m breaking the cardinal rule of blogging. I feel, though, that a full explanation is needed. I hope you’ll see why I’ve made this change, and how it can help your company. [Read more...]
Websites are about leads …James Brown would say it loud:
Websites are about leads.
I often hear about how a company’s new Website is just fantastic because it’s got great artwork, a Flash-based graphic that flips, turns and does cartwheels, or has a spiffy video that automatically plays when a visitor lands on it.
To those people, I just want to say one thing. And I want to say it loud:
Websites are about leads.
Salesforce.com, Sales and Marketing …When I attended last week’s Cloudforce 2011 expo in Washington, DC by Salesforce.com, I came away impressed by not only their base customer-relationship management (CRM) solution, but their extended functionality. Salesforce.com isn’t the same CRM system that your older sibling or maybe even your father used a couple of years back.
It impressed me so much, I’ve started to incorporate Salesforce.com into CruxBridge Media’s (CBM) own sales and marketing process. I also signed up CBM in the Salesforce Partner Program.
Through this new alliance, we have now filled in “the last mile” of the marketing and sales process for our clients: Taking a qualified lead and ushering it to a close.
© iStockPhoto
Website Redesign and Relaunch, and Conversion Rates …
For some reason, this lyric popped into my head when I first read a couple of mornings back about new research from our technology partner HubSpot:
What a girl wants
What a girl needs
Whatever keeps me in your arms
~ What a Girl Wants, Christina Aguilera
(Things like that tend to happen after I’ve had my first cup of coffee for the day.)
Companies relaunch Websites precisely because they want to keep their customers in their “arms”—in this case, on their sites and using them for e-commerce, lead generation, news-article views and so on. Their old sites probably weren’t getting the job done, and their sales, leads or pageviews were suffering as a result.
Or just as likely: Their old Websites were mired in 2005 (or 1995), and they needed a new, modern look that also fulfills a business purpose (see paragraph above).
What consumers want and what they don’t want in a Website, and how that can help with your Website redesign and relaunch strategy … after the jump.
Follow up email from social business meeting … that keyword string entered into Google by a person shows the power of search engine optimization, or SEO, and inbound marketing in general. It also demonstrates how quickly a well-optimized blog post can bring results to your company.
Just yesterday at my Hand to Mouse Networking site, I published a blog post called Following Up … For Success. It’s the start of a three-part series on how to follow up on social-business networking. The first part was really an intro to the series, and Parts II and III will deal with two systems on following up with both offline and online contacts.
Call it email autoresponder campaigning or drip marketing. I actually call it lead nurturing. No matter how they’re known, though, they all have the same effect: They put your brand at the top of your prospects’ minds. They’re even more effective when you’ve attracted them to your site or premium offer with an inbound-marketing campaign.
Combining a lead-nurturing campaign with a premium-content publication or special offer, and even tossing in a free trial or demo of your product or service to kick things up a notch (sorry, Emeril), can increase your conversions and give you a greater return-on-investment (ROI) than outbound marketing. Here’s how.
The concept behind inbound marketing isn’t really new. Most businesses and organizations want to get the most out of their Websites and other Internet-related marketing efforts, to generate qualified leads. What inbound marketing does is put a name and philosophy to the disparate processes and methods used to acquire these leads.
A recent report from the company that provides us (and our clients) with a centralized inbound-marketing platform contains a lot of great information on how this method is not only working, but how it kicks the pants off of traditional “outbound marketing” (advertising, direct mail, cold calling, etc.).
In fact, inbound marketing is quite “presidential” … here’s why.