One of the things I remember most about my grandfather was his reminiscing about growing up without television and telling me about how lucky we are to have the technology that we have. Now that I have gotten older, I have started to tell stories to my kids and younger adults that start with “remember when?” and “when I was growing up. . . ."

My favorite story is about when I was in college at George Mason University, sitting in the computer lab till the wee hours of the morning and working on the mainframe to run some basic programs to play online role playing games with my fraternity brothers. We would stay up all night playing these games (which was really just typing back and forth to each other but it was cutting edge technology in 1995). It was truly the beginning of the Internet (thanks Al Gore). Back then, fax machines were still used regularly, and you would get an AOL CD in the mail almost every other day. In 2016, things are a little different and we can do so much more with technology than in previous generations. But we must be wary of all of that power, or we can end up being like those scary clowns terrorizing our neighborhoods this Halloween.

As part of the LeadG2 series on "The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing" we will be discussing each of these ten commandments and the importance of each one. Also, we will be discussing why these principles are ones that you can’t ignore. The third of The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing is: Your website must be mobile optimized or responsive. (Tweet This)

In the year 2016, consumers have more choices than ever before. This is true for both B2B consumers and for B2C consumers. Not only has the number of available choices increased, but the sheer amount of information available to consumers has increased as well.

Not many people will disagree with me when I say that it’s a buyers market and that the power within the buying cycle has shifted to the consumer. In fact, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their interaction with a company without interacting with a salesperson, or any human for that matter.  

If this is true, if buyers really do have more power than ever before and are quickly gaining more, what should a salesperson do to counteract this and reestablish themselves as an important component of the buyer’s journey?

As part of the LeadG2 series on "The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing" we will be discussing each of these 10 commandments and the importance of each one. Also, we will be discussing why these principles are ones that you can’t ignore. The second of The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing is: Sales must be involved in your inbound strategy at each stage from conception to implementation to follow up. (Tweet This)

As part of the LeadG2 series on "The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing" we will be discussing each of these ten commandments and the importance of each one. Also, we'll share why these principles are ones that you need to abide by and can’t ignore. The first of The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing is: Thou Shall Not Put Pen to Paper Before Conducting Research and Understanding Your Target Persona. (Tweet This)

Many companies looking to implement a lead generation or inbound marketing program want to know the easiest and most cost-effective way to reach their goal. They want to know what the answer is before they get started so they don’t make mistakes that set them back and prohibit them from reaching their goals. This is precisely the reason we created The 10 Commandments of Inbound Marketing. We wanted to share our thoughts and insights on which best practices need to be followed in order to have success with inbound marketing and lead generation BEFORE you get started.

We created these ten commandments based on our experience of what works for clients and after spending significant time analyzing the traits that successful and unsuccessful inbound marketing programs have in common.

Over the past few years, Facebook has changed its algorithm and the way that it shows pages to those who "like" a page. When Facebook first launched pages, most (if not all) of those who “liked” a page would see the posts of the pages they liked in their feed. As more Facebook pages came online and Facebook was pressured to monetize its platform at a more rapid pace, the algorithm was modified so that most of those that liked your page would not see the post unless it was boosted.  

In 2012, Facebook said that the organic reach from a brand page on Facebook would be close to 16%— but recently that percentage has dropped even further. Some experts have estimated that the percentage of followers who actually see any given post is anywhere between 2% and 6% of the total number of people that like your page. So is it worth it to spend time and money focusing on increasing the number of "likes" on your page when only 2% to 6% see the posts? It is if it’s free and easy to do. So here are 3 steps to increasing the number of "likes" of your Facebook Page.

A few years ago at HubSpot’s Inbound 2013, one of the keynote speakers was Arianna Huffington. The insight she shared was valuable and has stuck with me ever since. During her 47 minute keynote, she didn’t directly talk about inbound marketing and lead generation. No, in order to connect and understand what she was talking about, you have to understand the greatest benefit of inbound marketing: it works while you are sleeping.

Arianna Huffington has become one of the most outspoken proponents of getting enough sleep and how leaders are more effective when they are better rested and not sleep deprived. A quick search on sleep and leadership provides us a look at how important sleep is for leaders and for salespeople and how better we function after a good night’s sleep or a nap.

Each year, for as long as I can remember, HubSpot has been surveying business owners and marketing professionals about a wide range of topics, including marketing trends, social media, sales, and technology. After these surveys are compiled each year, HubSpot puts them together into a beautifully-laid out and informative presentation that sometimes numbers more than 80 pages.

In order to help save you some time reading the entire document (even though you should anyway) we have put together what we at LeadG2 see as the biggest takeaways from the 2016 State of Inbound. 

Over the past 4 years as an Inbound Marketing and Sales Consultant at LeadG2, I’ve been asked a lot of questions by clients about where to find things in the HubSpot software tool. HubSpot is a wonderful tool, but like many “all-in-one” marketing or sales products, it takes some time to learn where everything is and hours of hands-on application to become an expert. These are the easiest questions to answer, but these are not my favorite questions to answer.  

My favorite questions to answer have one thing in common: They always start with “I was wondering if there was a way to…?” The answers to these questions are usually not something easily found in the support documentation, a Google search, or the HubSpot forum. No, these are questions that involve complex thinking and an in-depth understanding of both HubSpot and the client’s business processes and business needs.