We rarely enter awards, and we don't often blow our own trumpets. However, sometimes an opportunity comes along that's too good to ignore. 

In these days of fake news, filters and photoshop, it is understandable when clients ask if they actually have to tell the truth on their websites, social media accounts and in their inbound marketing campaigns. So, how important is it to be authentic? Is it ever OK to be economical with the truth?

In Inbound Marketing we talk a lot about buyers' journeys and the path from attracting them, through engaging with them to converting them into leads and then customers.

Inbound Marketing is all about attracting visitors to your website, engaging with them and converting them into leads. To do this you need to provide valuable content that gets noticed when people are looking for it, and makes potential customers trust you enough to want to do business with you.

With the New Year looming, it is a very good time to take stock and start planning your work and your budget for the coming 12 months. Having a written marketing plan, which is picked up and used, and updated regularly, is vital if your business is spending money on any marketing activities. Without knowing where you are trying to go you won't know if you've got there!

Hands up if you've ever referred to marketing as the "fluffy" stuff or the "airy fairy" part of business. Maybe once upon a time you might have been partially right, but not now, and especially not when it comes to inbound marketing.

According to the HubSpot State of Inbound Report 2016, the top marketing challenge is generating traffic and leads, with 65% of companies putting this challenge well above other common issues like securing budget, managing websites and hiring talent.

If you work in marketing you'll be well aware of the importance of understanding your customers, your target market, your audience... whatever you choose to call those people to whom you are reaching out in the hope of getting them to buy something from you. While it sounds strange to many of our clients, we have found that persona development is a great place to start.

Marketing is not an exact science, and it's usually a fairly major slice of your business costs. So if you're not getting the results you want, you need to do something about it, and fast. The great thing about marketing online is that you can measure and change everything, as often as you like. You just need to know what questions to ask.

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers and, more importantly, to provoke a response. Even with decreasing open rates, emails can trigger actions better than most other marketing tools.

In Business to Business Marketing, decisions tend to be lengthy and complicated. They usually involve more than one person, a good deal of money and a fair amount of risk. Every step of your marketing efforts should be moving them towards becoming a lead.

Defining your topic is a vital part of your content strategy - without it you won't know what to talk about or how to engage your audience and you can't start to develop a content plan. Here's a video explaining how to figure your topic out.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, as the great man sang. You have to turn and face the unfamiliar, do something different, if you want to move your business forward and take it to new places. 

Whether you like it or not, content has become an essential part of our day to day business and marketing lives. Without good content a company is unable to express what differentiates them from their competitors, clarify and publicise the services and products they offer and generally create and build on relationships with potential, new and existing clients. Despite this being common knowledge many companies can find themselves floundering when it comes to creating website content, in particular when creating a new website.

New Year is a great time to start afresh and try something new. Here are some ideas to try next year. Build a few of them into your marketing plan for 2016.