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.

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.

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.