Inbound Marketing Blog

Inbox Communications provides words of wisdom about inbound marketing and other stories that are sure to inspire you.

HubSpot Re-enrollment Triggers: What's Missing and What to Do About It

Currently, users cannot set up re-enrollment triggers based on activity properties. Building an automated process on ...

What is the "First conversion" property in HubSpot?

HubSpot lets you know how your leads make their first conversion. A visitor likes your blog content and subscribes to ...

8 Best Practices for Optimizing Your On-Page SEO to Rank Higher

Analyzing and optimizing your website pages for search engines is important for getting the website traffic you need. ...

What is Shopify?

Shopify has become one of the most important ecommerce platforms available. Despite its success, people still ask us ...

What is social selling?

Today’s consumers are independent and informed. Moreover, they are more likely than not to use social media to research ...

Choosing the Right Business Software

Deciding on the right software platform for your business can be tricky. There are so many options to choose from. Of ...

How to Close Sales

Closing a sale can be tedious, nerve-wracking, frustrating and exhilarating all within 5 minutes. Closing skills are ...

How to Write a Case Study

Earning the trust of prospective customers is a critical first step to achieving business success. Case studies are a ...

Sales Connect Calls: Using the Science

Inbox was fortunate enough to be chosen to participate in HubSpot's Partner Pipeline Generation Boot Camp. The rigorous ...

The Value of Knowing Your Buyer Personas

To successfully capitalize on inbound marketing you need to have a good understanding of your intended audience. To ...

Inbound Marketing: Be Delightful!

The term “competitive advantage” has been around a long time but it has meant different things over time. Now that the ...

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is an excellent tool to use for visualizing the customer’s experience with your business. It ...

How to Create Hubspot CTA Buttons

Call-to-action (CTA) buttons are the links and buttons that appear on your website and in your email campaigns. The ...

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is by far the most successful digital marketing strategy you could adopt. It's all about creating and ...

Which is better, SEO or PPC?

Every business wants to generate an increasing amount of qualified traffic to their website. More qualified traffic ...

Migrating Your Website from WordPress to HubSpot

There are many good reasons to migrate your Wordpress website to the HubSpot platform. WordPress is one of the most ...

Why should my company be blogging?

Blogging might be the easiest marketing strategy that most companies get wrong. And by wrong, we mean ignore. Most ...

How Meta Descriptions Increase Your Click-Through Rates

Those page descriptions below your links really matter. Meta descriptions are the 300 character snippets describing web ...

Better Than BANT: Advanced Sales Qualification

It's pretty disappointing to spend hours and hours on leads that go nowhere. However, there is nothing worse than ...

20 Best Practices for Using Pinterest for Business

Pinterest is a truly unique, and often overlooked, social media marketing platform. Pinterest is best thought of as a ...

What You Should Know About Upgrading Your LinkedIn Account

LinkedIn provides a great free service that helps you build a professional network among its 530 million users. ...

What is HubSpot and How It Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales software that can help take your business to the next level. The Internet has ...

Lorem Ipsum: A Marketing Opportunity

DIY Lorem Ipsum. It's a fun team-building exercise. Moreover, it's good branding. As marketers, we're always helping ...

Protect Your Brand and Reputation from Cyberattacks

Digital technology has exploded and now most Canadian companies are at least somewhat dependent upon the Internet. The ...

Why Segmenting Your Email Lists Is Important

The most important aspect of marketing is to know your target market. You may have several buyer personas but it would ...

The Best Way to Get Started on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the preeminent social media platform for business purposes. With over 560 million active users, it is very ...

What Social Media Platform Should You Use For Your Business?

Understanding the nuances of each social media network can help you optimize your efforts and get the most bang for ...

How to Get Started with Social Media

A successful inbound marketing strategy requires an active and effective social media presence. Social media platforms ...

What is a Call-to-Action?

Call-to-action (CTA) buttons tell your website visitors what to do while leading them further along the buyer's ...

10 Reasons to Build an Automated Website

Automated websites, like those created on the HubSpot platform, have become a critical marketing tool. The penetration ...

What is the Buyer’s Journey?

The Buyer’s Journey is a central component of inbound marketing. It is the name given to the thought process that a ...

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Follow-Up Emails

The inbound methodology can be thought of as a moving sidewalk. You want to move your leads methodically across the ...

What are topic clusters?

Popular search engines such as Google and Bing have started to move beyond simple keyword algorithms when it comes to ...

Why is interview-based blogging so important?

Even if you are completely sold on the importance of having an active blog, it can still be tough to consistently ...

Keyword Research for SEO and Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) are elements of search engine marketing (SEM), one of the ...

Why Your Business Needs a Good Keyword Strategy

In the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tries to impress upon his daughter, Scout, the importance of empathy ...

SaaS Website Best Practices

Marketing a SaaS company comes with its own unique set of challenges. How can you stand out in a crowded industry? How ...

Using Facebook for Business

Facebook can provide your organization with a massive marketing opportunity. It has an estimated 1.4 billion active ...

How to Choose a Crowdfunding Platform

There are dozens of different crowdfunding platforms, but the three most established are GoFundMe, Indiegogo and ...

5 Easy Steps to Livestream Your Event Online for Free on YouTube

Do you want to host an event for a potentially large number of people, but feel constrained by a limited budget? We ...

The Top 7 Ways to Increase Leads

Lead generation will be one of the most important aspects in developing and maintaining a successful business. ...

How to Write a Great About Us Page

Building a website is a true labor of love. The design elements may be flashy and more fun to work on, but other parts ...

Best Practices for Long-Form Blog Posts

We all know that creating great content is critical for your online success. Clever, helpful, digestible content ...

Optimize Your Content Marketing Plan to Generate More Leads

The best way to rise above your competition is to create and provide solid, smart and helpful content to your audience. ...

8 Ways You Can Use LinkedIn to Prospect More Clients

You can make the most out of your profile with a commitment of only 20 minutes per day. It's important to remember that ...

Don't Bury Your Lead

The lead is the first sentence of your story and the most important sentence of your story. Writing a great journalism ...

How to Write a Great Journalism Article

Great articles start with great preparation. A great article will be written by someone that really knows their subject ...

Personal Branding on Social Media

If your goal is to become a thought leader in your industry, you need to craft a personal brand on social media. Your ...

How to Write a Blog Post Using Curated Content

Need some help with your content marketing? That’s where content curation can come in. Content curation allows you to ...

How Sales Should Evolve in the Age of the Customer

Ideas and strategies that drive sales have changed radically. Customers are knowledgeable, so their loyalty is based on ...

Best Practices for Investor Relations Content

For public companies and startups, your website is the public facing documentation that attracts investors. It's also ...

How to Drive Qualified Traffic to Your Blog

Attract the audience you need. Your blog can have a tremendous impact on your organization by attracting traffic to ...

How to Build a Powerful Brand

Contrary to popular belief, a brand is not a logo or other outward identifier, but a belief. It's what a person thinks ...

Post-Campaign Promotions

Congratulations, you completed your inbound campaign! In addition to launching your campaign, you also need to take ...

How to Launch an Inbound Marketing Campaign

Inbound campaigns should be created on a recurring basis. Decide whether you would like to build monthly, bi-monthly or ...

Build Your Inbound Marketing Foundation

From Strangers to Customers: You Make It Happen The inbound marketing methodology covers each and every step taken, ...

Inbound Marketing Action: Delight

Delight: Continue to engage with, delight, and (hopefully) upsell your current supporters into happy promoters The ...

Inbound Marketing Action: Close

Close: Email marketing tools can be used at this stage to close your leads The inbound methodology is the best way to ...

Inbound Marketing Action: Convert

Convert: Contact information is the most valuable currency there is to the online marketer The inbound methodology is ...

Inbound Marketing Action: Attract

Attract: Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your organization— where they ...

Components of Inbound Marketing

Create Marketing People Love By publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing ...

Facebook ♡ Instagram

Why You Should Always Share Your Instagram Photos On Facebook If it wasn't already obvious, Facebook loves Instagram. ...

Keyword Research Tools

Content Creation Starts With SEO It's about getting visitors to your site who are the right kind of visitors. Whenever ...

How Does Google Index Your Website Pages?

Introducing Googlebot Being found on the Internet is the cornerstone of inbound marketing. Typically, it takes time for ...

Best Practices For Website Forms

Optimizing Website Forms Means Better Marketing Results According to Marketing Sherpa, 56% or marketers consider ...

Master Marketer Series: Good Writing

If It's Worth Saying, It's Worth Saying Well "Take It Easy On The -ings" Our Master Marketer Series is a regular blog ...

Why URL Optimization Is Important

Best Practices For URL Naming Every page on your website should have a unique, properly labeled, clean URL slug. Having ...

20 Great Blog Ideas for Real Estate Agents

What Should You Write About? Breaking News. Breakfast. Breaking Bad. It's All Good. Blogging is central to a great ...

The Annual Report: Make It Sing!

A Call-To-Action To Revive The Nonprofit And Charity Reporting Regular Task The annual report is a requirement of many ...

Master Marketer Series: Your Op-Ed Checklist

Op-Eds: The Original Thought Leadership Platform Hey Digital Native! They're Not Your Grandma's Blog Op-eds are the ...

Master Marketer Series: Brush Up On Blogging Headlines

Headlines Are Like Hemlines: They Work When They're The Right Length For The Situation It's Like the Perfect Come On. ...

You're Authentic and On Message. But Are You Funny? Marketing With Personality

Adding a Bit of Zing to Your Inbound Marketing Content Strategy Some companies shy away from humour for various ...

Optimization, Or Why You Need To Be A Perfectionist

Practice Makes Perfect When It Comes To Your Website What is optimization? Optimization is a process of making ...

Academic Breakfast: Lessons, Or A Blog On Blogs

A Meta Blog? This new Tumblr site, called "Academic Breakfast" sounds like shorthand for terribly banal online content. ...

The Future Of Real Estate Marketing

Why Going Inbound Is Essential For Real Estate Marketing Where is real estate marketing in 2014? Real estate marketing ...

Three Great Stock Photo Sites: Download and Dream Away

Remember when Blondie sang "Fade Away and Radiate"? Recall that tune and change the lyrics to "Sign Up and Automate." ...

Blogging Best Practice: Reading Time Summaries

Should You or Shouldn't You Use a Reading Time Estimator? Have you seen those reading time headers on blogs? They're ...

Inbox Partners With TD Ottawa Jazz Festival

Our Top Picks For TD Ottawa Jazz Festival (June 20 to July 1, 2014) Dang! Somedays, don't you think, 'Frig, I LOVE my ...

On Photography: Getting The Right Look For Your Marketing

Separating The Great From The Cliché It's no coincidence that the title of this blog post is also the title of a series ...

Neighbourhood Insider: Ottawa! A Great Place

It's A Dapper Capital. Finding Out About The City From The Insiders Here's a short tip sheet on getting to know ...

How To Optimize Your Website

For Starters, Think Of Your Website As A Luxury Condo Why would you want to optimize your website? The answer is that ...

Brand Engagement In The Social Media Age

What Matters Now Is Engagement You might have noticed that things have changed in the last few years around the subject ...

3 Business Lessons to Live By

Inbox recently became an Invest Ottawa Portfolio Company and a Microsoft BizSpark Startup Company, in addition to ...

Quick Guide to Blogging

Do you have a ton of brilliant ideas for your blog, but continually battle writer's block? Try following our guide to ...

Quick Guide to Blogging

Eliminating Writer's Block With A Blogging Framework Do you have a ton of brilliant ideas for your blog, but ...

Keeping Real Estate Real

We've been thinking about the pros and cons of real estate marketing in the traditional way, that is the realtor's face ...

Unique Selling Propositions

Developing your USP is one of the most important ways that you can compete in any market. Your USP or Unique Selling ...

The 23 Most Important Questions in Business

A few years ago we came across Forbes' The 23 Most Important Questions in Business and it really resonated with us. It ...

We Never Look Up

We've been admiring We Never Look Up for quite some time now. This fascinating photo blog captures black and white ...

Running Facebook Contests

Running Facebook contests is an effective way to get people to love your brand. A Facebook contest can help you achieve ...

Home Page Design

One thing we focus on when designing websites is home page design. Here are some field notes on the subject: Plan What ...

Keep Calm and Carry On: The Story of the Second World War Poster

In 1939, the British government commissioned a series of propaganda posters that were intended to offer the public ...

The Power of Pinterest

In the above data, you'll discover few, important facts about Pinterest: 1) It’s dominated by women. 2) Its layout and ...

10 Commandments of Using Pinterest

Pinterest is a popular new social network that allows users to pin visual content to pinboards. Want to reach out to ...

PR 101: Making Your Pitch

PR 101 is an ongoing column about media relations best practices. Send a News Release A news release is the most common ...

PR 101: Developing Your Media Pitch

PR 101 is an ongoing column about media relations best practices. Why Pitch the Media? It is important for any ...

What is it About Instagram?

Besides being the social media world's new $1-billion baby, Facebook's purchase of Instagram is a harbinger of the ...

Typography

Type is visual language. We encounter it everywhere: every print publication, website, app, advertisement and public ...