It’s happening - the numbers from Nielsen are showing that TV watching is going down and the number of subscribers to online streaming services is going up. One of the popular services, Hulu, may be making a marketing move that will not only please its customers but will bring in more revenue. The billion dollar a year company might be going ad free. But as a business owner, why should you care about this weeks’ business marketing news?  

With almost everyone having access to the internet at every waking moment through their smart phones and mobile devices, reviews of businesses through social media are at an all-time high. Reviews can really make or break your business. Online reputation is something social media marketing companies take very seriously and watch closely. If you don’t have a company doing this for you, here are some stats about reviews that might blow your mind.  

Some professions require little to no explanation.Think of that section on a form: Occupation __________. If the blank space is filled in with waitress, you know that person serves people their food. If it’s filled in with firefighter, you know they put out fires. If it’s filled in with preschool teacher, you know they’re teaching kiddos their ABCs. But if you read the fill in the blank this way:

Occupation: Content Marketer

Place of Employment: Content Marketing Agency

Then people look at you with raised eyebrows. If you’re a small business owner, you may have heard about content marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing, etc., and you’re wondering if you should in fact be hiring the services of an agency for your business. Content marketing isn’t just a buzzword:

When running a local business, one of the most important ways to get exposure is through local internet marketing. But how exactly do you do this? What if you don’t want to only pay for ads, how do you optimize your site to show up locally when the right people search for your business? Check out an excerpt from the article below:

Every once in a while I get a hankering for Taco Bell. My craving usually hits when I’m stressed, pressed for time, don’t have much in the fridge, or conveniently forgot the healthy salad I made the night before. Not long ago, my content marketing plan was kind of like my desire for Taco Bell – unhealthy.

Although sometimes a necessarily evil, I know that Taco Bell isn’t the best thing for me – so why do I give in? Because it’s become a habit of sorts. It’s an easy grab and go alternative to a healthier choice. My writing used to be like that too. I got into the habit of a grab and go style of writing until I took the time for the healthier alternative – making a plan.

Email. One of the easiest and cheapest ways to communicate to a mass audience, and the majority of people still check their emails first thing in the morning. Your business probably has a marketing strategy for email, but is that strategy helping you or hindering you? Let’s learn how to segment your list to create a targeted email marketing strategy!

Kentucky Fried Chicken, better known for short as KFC, is widely known across the United States as a fast food restaurant that serves up [big surprise here] fried chicken. After 21 years of not showing his face, KFC’s mascot is back and has been reaching TV screens across the country.

So you are the CEO of an inbound marketing agency. Congratulations and welcome to the cool kids club. We know what great work you can do with inbound and we also know how much energy and effort goes into every task that we complete. To help make your life easier, here are 5 different tools that you need.

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.