From social media to video, the marketing world has definitely gotten a lot more exciting. In today’s Thought Hive, explore some of the most effective inbound marketing trends from 2016 in order to get your marketing strategy ready for the new year.

Incorporating video in your marketing strategy may seem difficult especially when you feel like everyone’s asking the same questions. In today’s FAQ Friday, we’re providing solutions to the most common questions in order to help you plan your inbound video marketing campaign.

After creating some good video content, it is time to create ways for people to find and experience your content. Learn some video marketing best practices for video search engine optimization from Rand Fishkin of MOZ and Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR.

Social video, mobile responsiveness, and more are just a few online trends worth dissecting when it comes to forming an online video marketing plan. In today’s Thought Hive, grab some key tips from the latest online video trends and how you can apply them to help you grow your presence online.

You’ve done it! You’ve published your new website. You went through the process of choosing fonts, colors, graphics. You made sure the text was on point with your brand. You painstakingly went through every page with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that it was exactly what you wanted and it looked exactly how it was supposed to look on every conceivable device. Months of your life are in this website. And now that it is published, what do you do?

FORGET ABOUT IT.

It sits in limbo with no updates, no refreshes, waiting for one day when you decide…it’s time to totally redo the website again.

As a small business, you may be working with a limited budget. But, what if you could save money just by continuously investing in your top salesperson?

What do you use your mobile device for?

Maybe if it’s a smartphone, you use it for phone calls, messaging, and email. If it’s a tablet, maybe you use it for notation and other business related needs.

But out of those needs and more, you’re mostly using your mobile device to be entertained. And what’s more entertaining than watching your favorite web series on your way to work.

In today’s In-Sites, let’s explore the many benefits of video marketing, and more specifically, mobile video marketing and how it applies to modern mobile design

Are you a person that feels that video is not for your business? If so, do these reasons sound familiar to you:

• I don’t have the resources i.e. money, DSLR camera, editing software, and especially actors.
• I don’t have the time.
• If our business did use video, I don’t know what type of video would engage our audience the most.

These are very valid reasons especially if you’ve currently experiencing all three at the same time. Or maybe these reasons are just fears keeping you from creating in the first place.

With the availability of video literally everywhere from Facebook Live to Snapchat, anyone can make video. In fact, you can minimize the resources you need to engage with your audience visually instead of solely depending on written form content.

In today’s marketing world, you can’t be afraid to try new things especially when those new trends are where your potential customers are. That’s why in today’s Thought Hive, we’re providing you with three video marketing tips plus additional visual resources, i.e., videos, to help you start making videos and creating visual conversations with your audience.

The marketing world is changing, and because of that, it’s understandable if you don’t have the team to help you catch up with it all. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean your business should fall by the wayside. In today’s FAQ Friday, we’re providing you with some resources on what it looks like to work with an inbound marketing agency.

In 2016, there’s no excuse for still using outbound marketing tactics like cold calling for example. In fact, it’s time to get more social and more involved with your customers now than ever before. Especially with platforms like Yelp, Twitter and Facebook, your customers heavily influence what your potential leads and customers think about you before you even make contact with them.

The inbound methodology has four stages: Attract, Convert, Close and Delight or attracting visitors into becoming leads, closing the sale and delighting them even after they become customers. Now closing the sale may sound like the most attractive to you, but it’s not necessarily the case for your audience. In fact, you may have qualified leads right now, but 50% of those leads are still not yet ready to buy from you.

That’s why understanding the main purpose of the close stage is so important. Its main purpose is not just the sale, but what you and your team need to focus on in order to determine and solve why your lead is not ready to purchase from you.

This is where lead nurturing comes in. Lead nurturing is providing those solutions to specific pain points that your leads have. In today’s Thought Hive, we’re going through the top three hats your lead nurturing needs when it comes to sales readiness especially through email marketing and marketing automation.

With all the trends and terms floating around, what should you really focus on that will make your website better? What modern web design trend is a passing fad or will actually make a difference in your site’s success? Let’s find out in today’s FAQ Friday.