Hosted by Sangram Vajre, co-founder of Terminus, The Future of Marketing is an Inbound 2018 talk focusing on how to gain the focus and attention necessary to implement an effective marketing strategy that will continue to grow into the future in the ever changing digital marketing landscape.

The lesson to be taken from Sangram's talk is to go forward to change attitudes and approaches to marketing to make it a better understood industry in the future.

Every September, Boston Massachusetts becomes the staging area for one of the largest sales and marketing events centred on inbound marketing.

Inbound is about bringing together experts in content and inbound marketing from all over the world and getting them to share their knowledge and expertise with the thousands of attendees to this growing annual event.

Next week, Insynth will be attending alongside the 22,000 others set to land at Inbound. They will be attending talks with sales and marketing experts and learning more about the latest in the world of Inbound.

Keep reading to find out more about Insynth’s upcoming Inbound adventure…

You’ve written a piece of content about your building products. You’ve proofread it for technical accuracy, you’ve added alt-tags to your images and optimised the piece for SEO. You press ‘publish’.

Job done, right?

Wrong!

Just because a blog post or web page is now out there for the world to see doesn’t mean that you never have to look at it again. In ever-shifting industries, such as construction where products, protocols and building regulations are often being updated, content can quickly be out of date.

Read on to find out how you can avoid falling into this trap and why reviewing your historical content regularly is so important.

Digital content marketing is an ever-changing industry that, when utilised properly, can be hugely beneficial to those embracing it. 

In the construction industry, a setting that is still taking its earliest steps towards bringing together the building products culture and the digital marketing mindset, there is a risk that marketers can get carried away, jump in head first without first understanding the full scale of a digital marketing task thinking that they understand it all.

The result is this; The Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Let’s look at how The Dunning-Kruger Effect can infect a Digital Marketing workplace.

You've heard the phrase "a picture tells a thousand words". Did you know that images in your website can improve your SEO? 

By loading your images with the right words in the alt-text, titles, file names, while considering a range of other factors, your images won't just say a thousand words, they will help grow you website traffic and increase your chances of having great rankings on Google. 

Read on to find out how images can be a great addition to your SEO and construction marketing campaigns.

Insynth prides itself on having a team of talented content writers working alongside clients to produce amazing results for their companies.

This week, Insynth is delighted to congratulate Digital Content Marketer, Charlotte McCormac on graduating with first-class honours in her English degree from Birmingham City University.

YouTube is a video sharing website owned by Google. It is designed to allow users to post and view video footage and subscribe to creators whose content they are most keen to stay up to date with. It is quickly becoming a key tool to have in your marketing arsenal and for  , this is hugely important to success online.

Are you researching marketing agencies and looking for a construction marketing agency to bring reality to your building product growth goals?

A last-minute decision to visit Barcelona was a wonderful surprise from my wife; we’ve been talking about it for 20 years!  But with my Inbound mindset, it was more than the food, drink, architecture and culture that left an impression on me.

Here are a few of my experiences from the weekend and how my passion for Inbound was stoked again.

One of the main challenges you can face with trade shows is managing the leads that are generated from visitors to your stand.  A successful show can generate hundreds of leads, all of which need to be followed up quickly.

So learn 3 SIMPLE tips to help you process them and identify the hottest leads.

Charlotte McCormac brings a passion for writing and a first-class degree in English to the role.

Shropshire based construction marketing specialist, Insynth, is delighted to announce the appointment of Charlotte McCormac as their new digital content marketer. Charlotte is responsible for creating exciting content for clients, as well as search engine optimisation and implementing inbound marketing strategies. Charlotte will be producing blogs, eBooks and whitepapers, as well as managing social media channels. 

In one of our recent blog posts, we discussed how long it takes for content marketing to work.  Blogging frequency and quality were the key topics, but it led to questions about more subtle signs that things are starting to work.

So, here’s a quick list of the sort of signals that you should be on the lookout for when starting out on your construction inbound marketing journey (we'd love you to add your own ideas in the comments at the end of the post).

A common question that we get when discussing inbound marketing with potential construction clients is "how long does content marketing take to work?".

There are a number of factors at play, but we'll give you some insight into how long it takes and when you can start to see results.

Content Marketing is starting to become more commonplace in the marketing strategies of building product manufacturers and construction companies.  The businesses that really grasp the nettle and execute great content will soon become the thought leaders in their fields and grow their market share.

One big challenge that everyone kicking off their content marketing strategy faces is, who is going to write all of this content?  Producing 2 – 3 blog posts every week plus white papers, webinars and eBooks takes time and skill.  And, let’s face it, not everyone enjoys writing.  So how do you tackle this problem?

Developing a marketing strategy for your construction or building products business can seem like a daunting task.  While it’s not a 5-minute job, it doesn’t need to be a huge burden for you to create your new marketing plan.

Without one though, your time, effort and money can easily be misdirected and even wasted, negatively impacting your ROI and personal success. 

A well-researched and crafted strategy document will add real clarity and focus to all of your marketing, and sales, activity, improving your brand, market share, product offering and profitability.

By following a systematic process, you will be able to quickly establish where you are currently, where the opportunities are and how to realise them.  Here are a few pointers, describing how we approach construction marketing strategy with our clients.

What's interesting in our regular website reviews and health checks is that most businesses have already got most of the ingredients for success in place, they’re either poorly aligned, under-resourced or missing something crucial i.e. a construction marketing plan.

All that's needed is to shift a few elements around, refine a few areas and fill in some missing elements.  Couple this with a firm commitment to digital and you have a winning combination.  So, what are the critical pieces of a marketing plan and how should you bring them together? 

Addressing this can make a huge difference to website traffic, conversion, lead generation and ultimately sales. Follow this 15 part guide, full of simple tips and hacks, to pull your online construction marketing strategy together.

Understanding who your perfect customers are is a vital part of your construction marketing strategy, but one that is often skimmed over or missed altogether. 

If you intend to tailor and segment your content and message to your different audiences, profiles and personas will be very useful.  So, what’s the difference between a buyer profile and a buyer persona?

The main observation from the vast majority of our site audits is that most building product websites are only designed to be an online catalogue or a brochure website.

Building product manufacturers are missing a golden opportunity to turn their websites into sales lead generation engines which provide their sales teams with regular high quality enquiries.

Business guru and well-known provocateur, Tom Peters once addressed a crowd of over 400 sales and marketing executives saying: “I hate sports analogies. They’re just a bunch of male macho…” Yet, in the world of sales and marketing, sports analogies are de rigueur and tossed around like a rugby ball during at Twickenham.

To properly understand the difference between sales and marketing, however, another analogy seems more suitable: that of musical theatre. Salespeople are the performers in a West End musical, whereas marketing folks are the set designers, producers, and choreographers.

Our regular website audits and reviews are consistently highlighting missed opportunities and common shortcomings of building product websites.

The way that specifiers and buyers search and select products is evolving quickly and construction marketing professionals need to adapt or risk losing market share and sales to smarter operators.

The Marketing Technology Expo has just wrapped up for 2018.  So, what were the key takeaways for construction marketers?  How can the latest technology be used to improve engagement, generate leads and increase sales for forward-thinking and innovative building product manufacturers?

I recently returned from a major trade show.  I felt both angry with the disappointing effort from the majority of exhibitors, but also excited that there was hope that there would be a future for trade shows if exhibitors employed inbound marketing tactics.

This is why.

How would it improve your sales figures if your website was a beneficial and enjoyable experience for your customers and specifiers? What if your content made people want to not only specify and buy your product but actually come back to your site time after time?

A well designed and executed Content Marketing strategy can deliver increased traffic, improved search ranking and more sales leads, specifications and orders from your website. But it can't do any of that if you're unsure what it is or how to do it.

Impress your boss and your colleagues by getting 'position 0' on Google and winning the race for prestigious featured snippets in Google.

Here is a 6-step guide to how Insynth replaced the Construction Marketing Association on a prized snippet in just 10 days.

A conversation we always have with our clients when discussing their content marketing strategy is,  "are you open about price on your website?".

Most of the time we get an uncomfortable response, something like;

• "No, we don't want our competitors to find out how much we charge"
• "We prefer to talk to our customer face to face about price", or
• "Until we know exactly what customer wants, we can't give them a price"

Now, that's all well and good, but let's look at those arguments one-by-one and challenge the thinking behind them.  Then we will tell you why talking about price on your website can drive efficiency, increase conversion rates, win you new business and should be a key element of your construction marketing strategy.

In 2018, at the heart of every strong construction marketing strategy should be a sophisticated CRM system which manages the sales funnel, automates marketing campaigns, records customer engagement, provides clear insights into campaign success and tracks ROI.  Ultimately a system that makes it easier to win more orders and grow your business.

CRM is a rapidly changing space, driven by cutting-edge technology, some serious brains and major investment.  The choice of CRM systems can be overwhelming.  Considering that there are over 200 platforms, choosing the right system for your business may not be straightforward.

In fact, many offerings are now far more than just a CRM, they are fully formed growth stacks, encompassing CRM, sales automation, sophisticated marketing capabilities and reporting, all in one place.

So, let’s look at some of the key questions that you should be asking yourself to identify your needs, and then you can match these against the capabilities of platforms you are considering.

Too often, content marketing is perceived as simply publishing lots of project case studies and product news on your website and social media channels and expecting it to improve your brand image and increase your reputation and authority.

With the end of the year on the horizon and countless marketing plans are being finished off, ready for budget approval. You may want to check whether you are taking advantage of the latest trends for construction marketing to leverage your marketing ROI and cost-effectively increase web traffic, leads and sales.

Here are some of the latest developments and technologies that could make all the difference to your business in 2018.

Overcoming buyer fear is critical to converting leads into sales. A key component in eliminating the fear of dealing with you is to build trust. So how do you build trust with your potential customers when they may never have bought from you before?

Your blog should be one of your company’s most valuable sales and marketing assets, and blogging is a cornerstone of Inbound Marketing.

If you could unlock more sales leads of better quality with a proven change to your marketing approach, would you want to find out more? If you thought that your fiercest competitor was going to beat you to it and get those leads instead of you, would you be more compelled to act?

Here is a quick rundown of my highlights of the week at my very first Inbound 2017. If this is anything to go by, it will be the first of many trips to Boston.

I'm a dyed in the wool marketer with a love of numbers, tech, and sales!! After recently exiting my start-up, I have been immersing myself in the latest marketing phenomena – Inbound Marketing, and for the first time, I feel like I belong.