JDR Group's 'Digital Prosperity' Blog

MailChimp has a well-deserved reputation as an efficient and versatile email marketing application – especially considering the low cost and shallow learning curve. We previously discussed the fact that MailChimp have now expanded their capabilities beyond email and are advertising themselves as an all in one marketing platform. We have also compared the paid version of HubSpot with Mailchimp.

If you provide training, coaching or consultancy services, it's essential to maintain a high profile in order to generate leads and sales. However, finding ways in which to demonstrate how much knowledge you have to people who may want to take advantage of your services can be challenging.

It's infuriating when, despite your best efforts at online marketing, your closest competitor's website consistently ranks higher than yours in the search engine results pages (SERPs). What's more, as most business owners know that the better a website performs in the SERPs, the more traffic it's likely to get, it's a dilemma that prompts many people to turn to us for help. So, let's consider the matter in more depth.

Hiring a professional agency to assist you with your inbound marketing strategy can help you achieve outstanding results. However, when you're working with an agency, it's important to remember that you're acting as a team and that you each have a part to play. Let's consider how you can contribute.

Webinars can be effective promotional tools for your business, enabling you to demonstrate your company's industry expertise and generate new leads and sales. Many business owners find the thought of hosting one intimidating, but the process is surprisingly straightforward. We'll take you through it one step at a time.

While the idea of receiving a host of enquiries every day will appeal to most business owners, responding to lots of the wrong type of enquiry can cost time and money. So, how can you prevent poor quality enquiries from taking all of your time, and ensure a higher percentage of your enquiries are the right type? Let's discuss some of the methods you can use.

Zoho and HubSpot are both automation platforms offering CRM and sales features. There are plenty of areas in which the two applications overlap, and for this reason Zoho is sometimes seen as an alternative to HubSpot. Zoho is cheap, easy to use and has plenty of features, which you can scale up so you only pay for the functions you need. Moreover, an entry-level version of Zoho is available for free for up to 10 users.

You may have heard sentiments like these spoken about content marketing:

‘Effective lead generation depends on high-quality content.’ ‘Content is king.’ ‘Content marketing is the cornerstone of lead generation.’

Hold for a moment… all these expressions emphasise just how important content – and especially written content – is for an effective marketing strategy. But sometimes they confuse the matter by failing to explain what exactly content marketing is, and why you should bother with it at all.

In this article our intention is to cut past the jargon and hype to answer three fundamental questions about content marketing:

When deciding how to approach your marketing strategy, you’ll most likely be faced with two options: hire a marketing apprentice, or work with an agency. The answer isn’t clear cut, and will depend on the size and structure of your business, your budget, and your expectations. Let’s look at each option in turn and then examine how the two could work together.

Every transaction between a seller and a buyer is a relationship and, like all successful relationships, this needs to be approached in a specific way to ensure that a beneficial outcome is received by all parties involved. However, when a customer asks you to lower your prices, it can be all too easy for this relationship to descend into a battle, ultimately leaving both parties frustrated.

As such, our experts at JDR Group have created this easy guide to help you out in these situations, offering you a framework to follow that will leave everyone happy at the end of the transaction. It is important to have a documented and consistent way of dealing with these situations, allowing you to treat every customer fairly, while also ensuring that your company continues making a profit.