We are inundated with more than 2000 marketing interruptions per day – whether it be print, radio or TV advertisements, emails we need to sift through despite our filters, banner ads on the websites we visit, billboards we pass on the way in to work. It is a very crowded marketplace and it gets more and more challenging to get your message to your potential customer. So why not allow them to find you more easily? This is the premise of “inbound marketing” – using Google, social media outlets, blogs and other methods to get people to find you. We recommend two excellent books on the topic: Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (founders of Hubspot), and Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day, by one of our colleagues (and clients) Hollis Thomases, owner of Web Ad.vantage. While the adage “It’s not what you say, it’s what others say about you” is true to a large degree, we would also argue that you had better, indeed, have something substantive to say. You can tweet and blog and reference key search terms ’til the cows come home, but if potential clients land on your website and find little relevant content, a cluttered or crowded site, or an amateur design, you can be sure that they won’t come back. While Halligan and Shah devote a chapter to creating remarkable content, they don’t emphasize enough about the importance of branding and design.
Digital technology is here to stay and has changed the rules of the marketing game. Organizations have to work harder to reach these fragmented audiences who are already inundated with product, service and marketing clutter. There’s no denying that it’s important to track your marketing progress through hits, clicks and tweets. But even in the digital age, the essential rules of marketing remain – at the end of the day it’s about how people interact with your product or service (dare I say, brand) emotionally. Once your potential client does find you, does the look, feel and content of your landing page welcome them in? Is your brand defined and represented? Does it tell your story, draw them in, make apparent your style, culture or brand personality? These factors are more important than ever. It’s your responsibility to make sure they connect emotionally – that they like what they see, can navigate easily and want to come back again. Remember, how the potential client or consumer feels about a brand will ultimately determine whether they are willing to engage and what price they will pay.
— Wendy
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