Inbound marketing is the art of attracting and engaging the right people to your website through traditional and social media marketing. Done right, inbound marketing can help increase the trust of prospective clients and customers have in you – something that is essential for conversion from prospect to customer or to additional sales. My colleague Rocky Mills , member of a networking organization I belong to, coined the phrase Know-Like-Trust-Refer. First your connections (in this case referral sources, but it also applies to prospects) must know you. So, how do you get to trust online? MORE >>

Tweet. Skyline’s recent webinar, “Social Media for Trade Show Promotions,” was full of great ideas. View Skyline’s webinar here or view the slideshow itself. Presented by Skyline Sales and Marketing Trainer Nik Fradgley and Director of Lead Generation and Industry Relations Michael Thimmesch, the webinar included the results of a study of which social media sites were best practice for use pre-trade show, during the show, and post-trade show. It turns out YouTube is great for all phases of trade show promotion. Post-show blogging and YouTube videos were most effective. MORE >>

A recent study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute shows that over half (54%) of B2B marketers plan to spend more on content marketing in 2013 than in previous years. The study is the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America. Here I must make my usual side note comment about studies and their sources – this study that shows an increase in content marketing spending was done by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), which used to be Junta42. CMI is a group of consultants who make money on content marketing consulting. Just sayin’! MORE >>

Like many of you I’m enamored with Pinterest , but I can’t help but ask, “Can Pinterest benefit B2B Marketers?” ” Pinterest is a social media site that allows members to create boards for images that they like. You can name the boards whatever you like, and assign them to a category from a list of pre-determined by Pinterest. Over time as you find images that you like, you pin the images to the appropriate board. Popular board categories are used for recipes, fashion, books, wedding planning and home decor. Use Pinterest for Collaborative Branding Exercises. MORE >>

Tweet. like working from a one-page marketing plan for my clients and for my own business, whether or not we have a multi-page written plan as well. used to use Microsoft Project to create a Gantt chart of the marketing plan timeline, but few of my clients had the program nor did they want to endure the learning curve in order to be able to use it. now use Microsoft Excel to show the marketing objective, tasks, resources, start dates, and timeline as well as the estimated and actual costs and measurable results. One Page Marketing Plan. list the marketing tasks to be done in a left side column. MORE >>