Marketers are busy people.  It seems you can never get everything done on your to-do list.  There is a solution and that solution is marketing automation.  Marketing automation is software that helps you execute your tasks in a faster and more efficient way.  In addition, marketing automation allows you to personalize your marketing efforts in order to generate better quality leads.  But once you have the software how do you use it to best serve your needs and to deliver the results you're looking for?  We found this article at Hubspot "What Is Marketing Automation-A Beginner's Guide".  Written by Alyssa Rimmer, the article explains in greater detail what marketing automation is and how to effectively use it.

Being able to target promising leads through the use of personas is a crucial part of any successful inbound marketing campaign.  Compiling strong data-backed profiles enable you to target prospective buyers in a more focused and relevant way.  With personas, marketing and sales teams are able to create targeted strategies which attract higher quality leads and allow for a faster transition through the conversion funnel.  Our partner BrightInfo, has an article written by Alex Embling, that explains how data-backed personas can shorten the sales cycle.

Making the move to marketing automation may sound like a daunting task – not only do you have to prepare yourself and your team to commit to this framework and approach, but you probably also have to build a business case to explain how a Marketing Automation Platform is different from your current Email Marketing Platform to your executive team – a team that doesn’t quite live and breathe digital marketing practices as you do. So how do you 1) determine and assess your readiness to make that transition to marketing automation and 2) approach building the case for it?

Images are a powerful tool that you can incorporate into all forms of your content.  Images are powerful because they evoke emotion.  Those emotions can then motivate desired behaviors by your audience, such as registering, downloading, purchasing, or any other behavior you are trying to drive your audience towards.  This month's Inbound Lunch Bunch discussed how to use images in different formats and across multiple channels in the most effective ways.  So if you missed our July Inbound Lunch Bunch: Using Images To Attract Customers, and would like to learn more, it is now available On-Demand through HighRoadU.

In today's world, people are barraged by ads everywhere they turn.  In response to this, people have become very good at ignoring them.  This is a big problem for most traditional marketing efforts.  Content marketing can solve this problem by providing your audience something they want to see, in a way that will keep their interest.  The infographic below shows us how to develop a solid content marketing strategy that will increase engagement with your audience and ultimately boost ROI.

Inbound marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy that is designed to attract prospective customers to your organization.  In contrast, with traditional marketing you must go out and find them.  Through the use of digital platforms including social media, SEO, blogs, videos, and all other forms of content, prospective customers find you.  In this digital age, it just makes sense to incorporate inbound marketing into your overall marketing strategies.  The infographic below explains in more detail what inbound marketing is and why you should be using it.