Meet Linda, A Small Business Owner…

Linda owns a small business. She outsources a lot of the marketing to companies that do things she can’t, and she trusts that they are doing their jobs correctly. The problem is that she only has so much money in her budget for marketing, and is almost maxed out. She’s paying someone when she needs improvements to her website, an agency to manage social media marketing, a content writer to write for her site and blog - and she knows that she could get a lot of free traffic and more leads if she could only rank higher on Google. Linda has been looking into cost effective SEO services and wonders that even if she can afford them in her budget, will they be worth it? Should she add SEO (search engine optimization) services to her current marketing mix? Will they really be cost effective?

So, Here at Half a Bubble Out we work on anything and everything to do with marketing and advertising, but most of our staff’s time is spent focusing on Content Marketing. We love crafting and promoting the great content our clients write or we write for them. It is the commonality that brings our staff together, makes us laugh and cry together and is it is also the focus of our confessionals.

You finally get the approval to talk to your boss about potentially buying digital marketing services for the company. You want to be prepared and sound informed about this specific type of marketing. So here are a few basics that your boss wants to know.

Facebook announced that it will begin to roll out new user preferences that will give Facebook users the option to customize and personalize their news feeds more so to their liking. On July 9, 2015, Facebook announced the change, which will be rolling out to all devices in a new update during the coming weeks.

Looking for some expert advice when it comes to email marketing for your business?

Well, you’re in luck! I’ve interviewed our on-site email marketing consultant who has been knee deep in email marketing work for the past three years. She lives and breathes email marketing and can sure teach us all a thing or two. Soak up this knowledge folks, because it’s hard to come by, especially when it’s free!

Work is not supposed to be something we endure so we can get a paycheck to pay for fulfillment in life. Work is supposed to be part of that fulfillment. Finding a job that allows you to achieve happiness more than 50% of the time takes a while to find. Many people don’t ever find it because they remain lost in understanding the gifts and abilities they have to contribute.

I was recently in a meeting where our client brought up the idea of adding a short video to her blog posts. With a slight – possibly reluctant – smirk on her face she asked us what we thought of this idea. Like each of our clients, she wants her business to get found online by potential customers. We’ve been helping with this process by creating a holistic inbound marketing strategy, part of which includes blogging, organic SEO services, downloadable eBooks, and email campaigns. I smiled at our client and said I thought it was a great idea, something worth trying at least, for many good reasons that I just happen to come across in the recent article below.

You can’t ignore social media any more if you want your business to reach modern consumers. One of the common questions businesses have when hiring or evaluating their social media agency is “what exactly should be measured?" Is it more than just setting up a profile and seeing if anything happens? We would say yes, and it is essential to track the effectiveness of your social media accounts through measuring these 5 things:

We love inbound marketing! Woo! Wait, we love outbound marketing! Oh no, can we love both, inbound and outbound marketing? If we love outbound marketing are we cheating on inbound?

Have you checked your email yet today? Let me guess there were about a dozen or so spam emails that you didn’t want to have anything to do with. But why not? I am sure there were a few of those emails that could have been helpful, so where did these companies go wrong?

Most businesses understand the benefits of email marketing but know little about personalization of those emails, which is interesting because emails that are personalized generate 6 times higher transaction rates than those emails sent that aren’t personalized. Do I have your attention now? Let’s dive in and take a closer look.