What would marketing be without its counterpart, selling? The answer is that it would be pretty much pointless. Why get leads if you can’t close them into customers? So how do you as a salesperson close leads into customers in this internet age where we all do so much research and relationship building online?

Sales has changed, as we know, thanks to the internet. Here in Dallas, Texas I'd say the attitude towards that tends to be middle of the road, just like our spot in the country. Many people prefer to keep some things what's now deemed a little more "old fashioned" by many, but many are also starting to be open to newer ways of doing things, like marketing automation and creating email templates for sales representatives. At DMD, I'd say we're believers in a mix in the old and the new as well. We believe in finding new and better ways to do things, as long as they don't hurt the number one most important thing: relationships. 

There are a lot of programs and companies online that have seen the benefit of Hubspot and inbound marketing. These companies—like Pandadoc, Eventbrite, GoToWebinar, and Wistia—make it their business to help you connect and maintain good relationships with your clients. The way in which these programs achieve this goal is by making their content integrated. Hubspot works together with these companies to give you a better and more trackable experience as a business person.

Really understanding and executing your company’s brand identity is far harder than it looks. Many companies boast values and philosophies which they surely admire, but fall short of living in daily practice. This is why it takes a certain amount of insight, practice and research to truly discover a brand’s identity and how to build that identity into marketing efforts, everyday client interactions and touchpoints.

Video content is an integral part of the twenty-first century, and has made itself indispensable to just about everything. This includes our entertainment, education, news, and our marketing. We all know commercials can be a pain, but they are the medium through which businesses promote their products. Watching videos directed towards marketing can be tedious, especially when the content is far from engaging, but if there is some entertainment value then they can be less of a chore to watch. This is why it is important to avoid making any blunders when you try to create video content, otherwise you will fail to get the wanted attention and possibly even turn potential customers away.

People always ask if we develop websites. We do, but for us, developing a beautiful website is more of a means to an end than the ultimate end goal. You have to have a website that makes sense for your business, looks great, and works before we can start driving traffic to it that eventually turns into sales. There are many tools out there that have made building a great looking website fast, cheap, and fairly easy. Mopro is a great resource for small business owners looking to modernize their look quickly, and they even have some added support. Plus, it only costs $199/mo. They can add stock images that move around the homepage or video for an added flare. Otherwise, yes, we can build you a custom website if it’s a good fit or refer you to a company that specializes in what you're after, depending on your needs.

Coming up with a good keyword strategy is difficult, especially in this day and age when everyone knows the benefit of having their site search engine optimized. With every site on the Internet trying to lay claim to their own little space on the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) it becomes incredibly important to know how you can get yourself near the top of the results pages. With that in mind, here are six important tips to take into account for your search engine optimization.

Intriguing offers that are relevant to your personas' interests and pain points are a crucial second step in the inbound methodology: convert. On average, Hubspot customers following best practices convert 2% of website visitors into leads and 6% of those leads into customers. So for every 1,000 visits, you should be converting one new customer. Again, that's an average, so it can vary by industry and company, but overall I'd say it holds true. That being said, if your offers aren't performing well and your website is converting less than the average 2% of website visitors, you're probably not getting very many leads per month, even if your traffic is pretty solid. By adding a few more enticing offers to your website, you can solve that problem. Here are some ideas:

Possibly the most important thing you will need if you are planning on selling anything is a buyer persona. A persona represents the ideal customer looking to buy your product, service, or concept. Without one, you will be stuck trying to find your way in the dark. That is why they are so important; they help illuminate what prospects you want to attract, where those prospects will be searching for information, what content you want to create, and why you are making your content beyond a need for profits. A good way to look at the process of creating a persona is to think of the five Ws and the H as your questions—Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How—as a guide for making the right persona.

The thought maybe running through your head is, "How can inbound help me with my marketing?” It’s a fair question, but the real one should be, “How can’t inbound help me with my marketing?”