"Hacking" conjures to mind the image of someone dressed in all black, furiously typing away at a keyboard. But hacking isn't all negative or relegated to cheesy '90s flicks - it can also be a tool for exponential growth. That's where growth hacking comes in. What is Growth Hacking? The original term "growth hacking" was coined by startup advisor
Marketing
Avoid the Summer Slump: Grow Your Marketing with Growth-Driven Design
Summer is the time for pool parties, outdoor grilling and watching the clock until the end of the work day. It's hard to stay motivated through the summer when business typically slows and your mind is elsewhere. But it's important to keep your momentum going through the summer, instead of falling into the dreaded summer slump. HubSpot asked three
10 Inbound Marketing Analytics to Watch
Inbound marketing can generate a massive amount of new business for your company - but how do you really know if it's working? The pillars of inbound marketing are analytics - the data you examine to see how well you're performing. This informs all your inbound efforts and how you tweak your content and strategy to reach more people. However with
Google vs Facebook: Where Should I Run Ads?
You know your customers are online, but how do you reach them? Online advertising is a fantastic way to reach many people quickly, but where should you advertise online? And which is better: Google or Facebook? What are the Differences Between Google Ads and Facebook Ads? The main difference between Google AdWords and Facebook Ads is how ads are
What Is Growth-Driven Web Design? (And Why You Should Care)
Traditional web design is broken. The struggle with traditional design is that almost immediately after a site is launched, the design and content begins to grow stale. The internet is an ever-evolving beast, and when your site doesn't evolve along with it, it ages quickly. A whopping 94% of visitors reported they closed out of a website
How to Use Instagram for B2B Marketing
Instagram is the land of selfies and food pics, but is there a place for B2B? It may seem like Instagram is only useful for consumer-oriented brands to post cute photos of their products, but B2B brands can also utilize Instagram to generate more business. HubSpot's team at their B2B Marketing Lab created a simple-to-follow guide on how to use
How to Create Inbound Marketing Campaigns that Convert
Anyone can slap together an inbound marketing campaign. But a campaign that actually works? One that consistently brings in high-quality leads? That's a challenge. Creating inbound marketing campaigns that convert requires more planning and maintenance than just throwing everything on the wall and seeing what sticks. But high-converting marketing
How to Build Eyeball-Worthy Emails
Nobody likes an ugly email. If I click into an email and see walls of text, no color, no images, no buttons and not even one shred of bolded text, it's booked itself a one-way ticket to the trash. Are your emails facing a similar fate? With the vast amount of emails we all receive daily, it's important to create eyeball-worthy emails that command
5 Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Landing Pages
Landing pages are the bread-and-butter of inbound marketing. But most landing pages are a burnt piece of toast. It's easy to create landing pages, but creating landing pages that convert is much more of a challenge. There are some basic mistakes that sabotage your landing pages before they ever have a chance to be successful. If your landing pages
Walking the Buyer’s Journey
In the days of print marketing, marketing efforts were broad paint strokes. You sent your fliers to as many mailboxes as you could, knowing a small percentage would actually reach out to you. Marketing wasn't tailored to different buyers, it was general to appeal to as many people as possible. Today's consumers expect a different kind of process.
What is a Buyer Persona? (And How Do I Make One?)
Do you have a clear picture of who your ideal customer is? Do you know what they like? What they do in their free time? How many children they have? If not, it's time to start building buyer personas for your business. What is a Buyer Persona? Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They have a name, an
How to Set SMART Marketing Goals in 5 Steps
It pays to be smart - SMART about your goals, anyway. If your current marketing goals are just "I want to make money," it's time to sit down and come up with some tangible goals. Defining goals is the best way to track your marketing success and get the most bang for your buck. And the best type of goals are SMART goals. What Are SMART
What is Inbound Marketing and Why You Should Care
Show of hands: who likes being told what to do? In the age of information, customers have more power than ever before to educate themselves and make their own informed choices. Traditionally, marketing was a spray-and-pray method: you told as many people as possible why your business was awesome through marketing pieces like fliers and
Google+ Is Shutting Down – Here’s What You Need to Do
It's been on the horizon for months, looming for years, but now it's finally time - Google+ is no more. Google announced a few months ago that its struggling social network would finally be retired, but a recently-revealed security breach moved their final days from August 2019 to April 2019. Here is everything you need to know and do now that
SEO: Expectations vs Reality
Often when clients come to us for SEO work, we hear the same request: "I want to rank on the first page." This is a seemingly simple request, but once you start to unravel it, it becomes very complicated. What keywords do you want to rank for? How many keywords do you want to rank for? How quickly do you want to rank? What marketing
The Step-By-Step Guide to Minneapolis Inbound Marketing
Are you new to inbound marketing and feeling a bit over your head? Take a few deep breaths. Getting started with inbound marketing in Minneapolis can feel daunting, but with this step-by-step guide you'll master inbound in no time. 1. Set SMART Goals If you don't know what you're marketing toward, it's pointless to pour resources into inbound
How to Use Facebook Ads with Inbound Marketing
Facebook, I'd like you to meet inbound. I think you two will really hit it off. Facebook ads are a great way to quickly get your business in front of many new people, but if you aren't strategic, you might as well just kiss all your money goodbye. Integrating your Facebook ads with an inbound marketing strategy is an easy way to see better
Why Email is More Important Than Ever in 2019
Q: Is email still relevant in 2019? A: Yes. Well that was easy! See you all next week, folks. ... Alright, I guess I should go into more detail. It's easy to defend email as a lasting power when email marketing continues to be one of the marketing channels with the biggest return on investment. Email allows you to reach people in a
How to Use Clickbait (Without Being Annoying)
He pressed "publish" on the blog post. What happened next will shock you. In an age where attention is a valuable commodity, clickbait is the currency of the internet. You've certainly seen clickbait titles while scrolling through Facebook: "Can we guess what [Character From Popular TV Show] you are based on you order at [Fast Casual
Goodbye Funnel, Hello Flywheel: A New Approach to Sales
For years, the sales process through digital marketing has been viewed as a funnel. You start broad, with ads and blogs and emails that target a wide array of people, and slowly narrow in on your buyer through a series of content and in-person follow-ups. Here at BizzyWeb, we've dutifully followed the funnel approach and mindset. Recently, our
5 Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Ideas
By now, the holidays are in full swing - it's time to make your list and check it twice: Baked cookies ✓ Hung the stockings by the chimney with care ✓ Set up a holiday marketing plan ✖ Oops! Don't put yourself on the naughty list just yet - there's still time to pull together some last-minute holiday marketing. 1. Use Your
How to do Keyword Research (And Why It Matters)
How do you find what you're looking for online? Would you type into Google, "floral plants with petals" or "florists near me?" Language is important. With our florist example, the "right" language is obvious, but more often than not it isn't that clear cut. The closer you are to a business, the harder it is to look at it from an outsider's
Inbound Marketing Cheat Sheet
Marketing doesn't come naturally to us at BizzyWeb. Yes, we know it - we live it, we breathe it, we occasionally dream about it - but like any other skill set it requires diligent learning and years of study. If you've done any marketing or research on your own, you've probably come across some terms that, frankly, seem like another language. Our
Fantastic Brands and Where to Find Them: Marketing Lessons from Harry Potter
On November 18, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald will be released and mark the latest entry in a decades'-long cultural powerhouse. Few things have generated the lasting impact Harry Potter has, in no small part due to some clever marketing. Your business might not spawn 10 movies and billions of dollars (sorry) but you can still nab
How to Make Your Digital Content More Accessible [Star Tribune Feature]
Recently, Dave sat down with Mike Porter of The Star Tribune to discuss accessibility in digital content. (Read the full article on Star Tribune's website). Q: What pitfalls can our business avoid when trying to make our digital content accessible for people with disabilities? A: Serious consideration of user accessibility for people with
15 Marketing Clichés Your Clients Want You to Stop Using
Searching for ways to be more efficient in your off-the-wall marketing? Let's put a pin in that, and loop back to it at our synergy meeting. With the whole wide world of marketing at everyone's fingertips, marketing clichés stick out like a sore thumb. It's easy to fall back on certain phrases, but if you want your content to really shine here
5 Easy Holiday Marketing Ideas for B2B
Bah humbug. Struggling on mustering up some holiday cheer for your B2B? Holiday marketing seems to go hand in hand with e-Commerce since November and December are big spending months, but there are still ways to market during the holidays even if you aren't trying to sell candy canes. Give these actionable holiday marketing ideas a try. 1. Use
How to Get Your 💩 in a Group with Automation
We love digital marketing, but we can't deny how frustrating it is to have to juggle dozens of different tools. Your website, your email marketing tool, your independent social media accounts, your Google Analytics, your Google My Business Listing, and that's just the bare minimum! If you also have to toss a CRM and other programs like Eventbrite
Don’t Buy that List – How to Grow Your Email List for Free
Temptation comes in many forms. Sometimes it's a double chocolate brownie when you're 2 weeks into a diet, sometimes it's an extra pair of boots just in case you get tired of the other 12 you own and sometimes it's a "list of pre-screened emails and phone numbers of certified leads!" Buying an email list sure is tempting - who wants to pass up
How to Develop a Buyer Persona in Less than 10 Minutes
If you're not currently using buyer personas, we don't want to say you're doing marketing wrong, but... You're doing marketing wrong. At the end of the day, if you aren't quite sure who you're targeting, you're throwing money away. A persona helps you hone in on our ideal customer and create content for them, instead of just throwing everything
How to Write Content (When You Hate Writing)
I'll let you in on a little industry secret: even writers don't like writing. Writing can be invigorating, watching the pieces fall into place...but more often than not, it's a deadline breathing down your neck and a creative well run dry. Like many things in life, you have to fake it till you make it. If you're not a writer by nature, that's ok.
Selling is Helping, and Other New Truths in Marketing + Sales
At BizzyWeb, we believe in a simple adage: The more you help people, the more successful you’ll become. We’ve geared our blog and email newsletter to helping as many people as possible, and we’ve published more than 300 free BizzyWebinars to help our clients and friends learn how to improve their marketing using digital tools. Helping feels
5 Simple Ways to Show Your Customers You Care
Everyone wants to feel appreciated, your customers included. Often as business owners, we're so focused on driving new business that we take our current customers for granted. Your current customers are your foundation, but beyond that a happy customer is more likely to recommend your business to others and to keep coming back for more. There are
5 Tips for Marketing to Generation Z
The generation after Millennials, the generation born to modern technology, "those darn kids" - whatever you know them by, Generation Z is a powerful slice of the upcoming American workforce. Born in in the mid-1990s to early 2000s, Generation Z makes up a whopping 25% of the US population. That's a larger piece of the population than the more
5 Ways to Streamline Your Marketing with HubSpot
The rumors are true. We're in love. Apologies if you're tired of hearing us wax on endlessly about HubSpot...but we're smitten. BizzyWeb is the latest HubSpot agency based in Minneapolis, and we want to shout from the rooftops what we love about this powerful tool. 1. A Built-In CRM You have contacts, but are you really organizing them, or do you
What is Google My Business?
If you've spent any time online, you've probably stumbled across Google My Business, even if you didn't recognize it right away. Ever search online for a service and then a map pops up or a little card appears at the side of the screen? That's Google My Business in action: We've talked a few times before about Google My Business, but with each