You may have heard the term bandied about at networking events or amongst your marketing colleagues. So what is it? Well, we're doing it right now, in this blog. In a nutshell, Inbound Marketing is the creation and sharing of content to draw people towards your brand.

It includes blogs, SEO, social media marketing, podcasts, video and e-newsletters.

Its aim is to draw your customers' attention, and make your business easy to find by producing interesting content. It uses a ‘pull’ approach to attract potential customers, when they are actively searching for products and services, as opposed to traditional ‘push’ marketing, or selling to people when they aren't necessarily ready to buy, or are not a 'warm lead'.

Here are some practical steps you can take at the start of your Inbound Marketing journey:

- Start a blog, and try to post three or four times a week.

- Share your blog content with followers on your other social media platforms.

- If you've got any educational or business-based content, share it with relevant LinkedIn Groups.

- Stay up to date with current affairs and find opportunities to mention what's happening right now, for an immediate increase in social reach (#RoyalBaby is a good example!).

- Make sure your campaign is visual, or even includes a video link. Using this tactic, your content is more likely to be shared.

Public can help with your Inbound Marketing, so just contact us to find out how.

Ask yourself these questions about your current website:

1. Is it immediately obvious what it's for? If you can't tell in the first five seconds what the website is selling or telling, then it isn't doing its job effectively. Amazingly, this is the amount of time viewers will spend deciding if they want to stay or leave. If they can't tell what you do in that time – they'll be off.
2. Is it optimised for mobile devices? Have a look at your website on a smartphone or iPad. If you think it looks a mess, your customers will think the same.
3. Is it too cluttered? If you've had the same website for a few years, it may have been tempting to keep adding more and more information, perhaps as your business has grown. To gain a competitive advantage, you need a crisp, clean design but with accessibility that overrides style.
4. Is it flexible and adaptable? What if your business launches a new product or service? You don’t want to have to revamp everything to accommodate it. Using a CMS (Content Management System) can allow for future expansion room, and enable you to add new features to your existing website.
5. Are my competitors better than me? Have a look at what your rivals are doing. If their sites have a more contemporary feel and rate above yours in search results, maybe it's time to think about a refresh.

If you'd like to a chat about what you need to go forward, don’t hesitate to give us a call.

According to the Office for National Statistics, access to the internet using a mobile device more than doubled between 2010 and 2012, from 24% to 51%. Last year, 32% of adults accessed the internet using a mobile phone every day.

This statistic is set to increase even further, with two thirds of mobile phone users now accessing the internet through their mobile devices. It's even predicted that next year, more people will be accessing the web using mobiles than using desktop computers or laptops.

With all this in mind, you should be thinking seriously about getting your business website optimised for mobile devices.

When customers walk into a shop, the owner does everything they can to make the shopping experience as simple and pleasurable as possible.

This should be the same for your website. If mobile users have to pinch and zoom; the site has difficult, poorly implemented drop down menus; features large, slow to load images and a lack of direction throughout the site, users will very quickly move on – probably to your competitors. It could also damage your brand, as potential customers will see your organisation as old-fashioned and slow to respond.

In fact, according to Google research, if you don’t have a mobile site or your site isn't optimised for smartphones in some way, 61% of visitors will return to Google to find a site that is easily readable on a mobile device.

Getting your site optimised for mobile devices should be a priority for your business. Contact us to find out more.

So you've started your own business. Or your current website needs a bit of a makeover. Or you work for an organisation and have been tasked with refreshing their site. But you haven't got a multi-million budget to spend*. What to do?

*Although it would be nice if you had.

It's tempting to go down the DIY route, especially if you've already done a bit of web stuff before. Of course you could sit down and teach yourself how to build a very basic website. But for a professional organisation, this isn't the best idea. Here we look at a few reasons why.

1. Looks cheap
   It will look like it's been built by a beginner – because it has – and this will damage your brand. If you look like a cheap enterprise, your customers will go elsewhere.
2. Looks like every other site
   Use a cheap off-the-shelf template and it will look like every other website out there, and will offer no customisation or advanced functionality such as a CMS. You'll probably want to update your website regularly, and a CMS (Content Management System) is by far the best way of doing this. Plus it will save you time and money in the long run.
3. Costs more
   It will take you a long time to build, so ultimately cost you more than using an expert. How did we work this out? Say you pay yourself £25 per hour. Your web developer charges £35 per hour. You're saving money by doing it yourself, right? Probably not. It might take you 200 hours to learn how to set everything up and try to get it just right. Factor in all of that time and you've spent £5,000 of worth of time building an average website. Instead, you could have a website beautifully designed by an expert for a cheaper price and in a shorter timeframe.
4. Takes time
   Your time and therefore money is better spent on other things – such as running your business, or doing the job you're actually being paid for.
5. Nobody will find it
   It won't be search engine optimised, so nobody will find it. Here at Public we can create comprehensive campaigns that include SEO, social media, online advertising and much more that will bring traffic to your website and attention to your brand.

By hiring a professional you'll realise a return on your investment. At Public we're experts at designing and building stunning and engaging websites. It's what we do every day. Contact us to find out how we can help your business.

We're obsessed with the weather in the UK. And rightly so. It's July, and our team are sitting here sporting sunburned faces from the weekend's heatwave, while wearing jumpers to protect us from today's chilly wind.

Retailers are obsessed with the weather too, because it affects how and when people shop. For Brits used to rain, we abandon the internet when it’s sunny and run outside to fire up the barbeque before the drizzle makes an inevitable return.

Hot days tend to result in significantly fewer online orders, and cold or rainy days result in more. Who wants to brave the high street in a howling gale or even when it's a bit nippy out? Much better to stay indoors, order online and have your goods delivered to your door.

So why are these findings of interest to me?

If you know what your customers are doing, you can target them more effectively. For example, you can integrate data on weather forecasts into your online advertising campaigns. Bravissimo, retailer of bras, swimwear and women's clothing, are based just down the road from Public in beautiful Leamington Spa. They've been using a piece of software to enable PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaigns to be tailored in real time to local weather data.

In Spring 2012 after using the software for three months, the company reported a staggering 600% growth in revenue from its online PPC campaign, compared to the same period in the previous year.

So maybe our obsession with the weather might just be more than a conversation piece in the supermarket queue?

Contact us to see how we can help tailor your online marketing campaigns to achieve best return on investment.