Putting customers and their needs at the center of your organizations' efforts is at the heart of the inbound marketing flywheel and will set you up for ongoing success. In the first stage of the marketing flywheel, we work on attracting the right prospects.

The first, and most impactful step in the attract phase (and all phases) is to understand your ideal customer prospects or buyer personas. By truly understand your buyer personas (their needs, motivations and what they are looking to solve), you can align your marketing strategies.

Developing buyer personas help to attract more of the ideal prospects as visitors to the website, increase the rate of converting them into leads, which paves the way for a smoother sales process as well. 

No matter what era we live in, you can always be certain of uncertainties, disruptions, innovation and major shifts. How can you strengthen your brand to better prepare to adapt to the promise of constant change? 

An AB test can be a great tool for nonprofit or small business marketing. Whether you're doing the marketing yourself or overseeing a team, it's important to understand how AB testing works — when to do it, how to do it, and what kind of effort you can expect to put into it.

The biggest tactical challenges for how to market a small business often come down to time, expertise and resources. You know you should be marketing, but who has the time? How do you even know where to start? Where will the money come from?

Fortunately, launching an effective marketing program doesn’t have to take forever, can use tools you already have in hand and won’t break the bank if you make wise investments. And keep in mind that you don’t have to go it alone.

Over time, technology has truly transformed small business marketing: It used to be that unless your firm was a big company with sophisticated advertising and PR programs or had big marketing teams with big budgets to go with them, you didn't think marketing was for you.

The digital environment has provided us with a democratic marketing revolution, making it more accessible to everyone. As a small business, you've been committing more resources to your web presence through the accessibility of marketing channels such as websites, social media, and email marketing.

Still, marketing can be confusing and overwhelming, especially with ever-changing and emerging digital platforms and tactics.

Anyone who’s been lucky enough to work as both a journalist and in marketing will attest that the common thread is the power of stories. Whether I'm covering breaking news for a wire service or developing content strategy for a non-profit, the ability to draw people in with compelling narratives is key.

I approach my work with marketing clients in much the same way that I approach my articles as a reporter, using storytelling techniques to inform, educate and sometimes entertain. When it comes to conveying stories effectively, there are some important common themes to keep in mind.  

In that spirit, here are three marketing lessons from a real, live journalist.

As you dig into your marketing plans for the year, one of the biggest challenges is knowing where to start. When creating a marketing plan with the specifics of your marketing activities for the entire year, it's easy to get pulled in different directions. Some of your colleagues may see budget as the place to start, while others want to jump right in with how to improve the website, social media, email, or blogging strategy.

If you’re posting or overseeing web content and you know just enough about keywords to be dangerous—it’s time to learn more. Keywords are a critical part of search engine optimization, to drive traffic to your website and for finding your company’s ideal customers. If you’re investing time and money on creating content and you’re not researching keywords, you’re not getting a full return on your investment.

There are a number reasons you may be considering using HubSpot CMS (content management system) for your website. You may be using HubSpot for landing pages, CTAs, lead nurturing emails, and other marketing activities. You may even be publishing your blog on HubSpot, but still have your website in Wordpress, Joomla or another platform. Or you may not using HubSpot at all, but just refreshing your website and wondering whether you should have your site built on this platform.

Your boss has asked to you to create a marketing plan, but what does that mean?

For the business, it means setting marketing goals and planning ways to achieve them so the business will succeed. For you, it means you’ll have a clear direction when it comes to carrying out your day-to-day marketing work—and concrete signs that you’ve succeeded.