Curiosity Becomes a Silver HubSpot Certified Agency Partner

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We are happy to announce that we are now a Silver Level HubSpot Certified Agency Partner. HubSpot, the world’s leading inbound marketing and sales platform, works hand-in-hand with Agency Partners to grow their clients’ businesses through inbound software, services, automation, and support.

Our Channel Rep was nice enough to give us a testimonial as well. Oscar Zamorano said, “We have been thrilled to work with Curiosity as a HubSpot Partner. Their savvy, sophisticated, and innovative approach to inbound makes them a company that businesses everywhere can learn from. Watching them transform their agency and their clients with inbound has been a rewarding experience!”

Over the past 2 years, we have grown businesses by incorporating inbound strategies to attract, engage, and delight customers. Our mission is to continue helping companies and people harness technology for effective marketing, to collaborate and ask insightful questions, to create excellent stories that connect brands with the world, and to improve ourselves and our clients through continual learning, exploration, and teaching.

If you would like to learn more about Inbound Marketing and the approach we use. Schedule a free consultation. We would love to explain the process that works for us and our clients.

Adobe XD – A Game Changer

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Adobe is always looking for ways to offer its customers new, effective, and innovative tools to help their workflow, and they hit the nail on the head with Adobe XD. In case you missed it, XD stands for Experience Design and was released about a year ago, on Apple devices as a beta program and has recently been released to Windows 10 users. The whole point of XD is to help designers and developers prototype websites for the production team and clients to see their website in action.

Currently, when a design firm, like ourselves, begins a new project it goes through six stages before launching; Research, Wireframing, Design, Prototyping, Proofing, and finally, Development. The current workflow from research to launch often involves bringing in a developer to code the prototype for review, which increases time and cost of the project.

Not any longer! This is the game changing part; with Adobe XD the new workflow is like this: Research, Wireframing, Design / Prototyping, Proofing, and then Development. That’s only five steps from start to finish! XD has changed the way the web development process works.  The designer is now the team member that prototypes the design.  As they design, the program builds a prototype and the assets for the development stage are being produced at the same time. The prototype can then be sent to other team members and the client where they can comment on the pages as they review them.

This program is currently still in beta, and Adobe has promised loads of features to be added, but we at Curiosity are already using this program because we want to make sure we are offering the most innovative design techniques and services to our clients.

If you have questions on our process and how we can use it to help you with your digital marketing campaigns, contact us today!

What’s the Deal with Buyer Personas?

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With every new campaign we start, we always start with buyer personas. But what is a buyer persona?!

Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.  Personas help us and our clients fully understand why we go through the efforts we do. In marketing, sales, product and services, understanding your ideal customer and being relatable to them is very important in optimizing your marketing efforts. Having this deep understanding of your persona(s) is critical to steer your content creation, product messaging, sales process and really anything that helps support your product and how it relates to your customer.

At this point you are thinking, “Ok this sounds great, but how do we come up with these fictional customers?”

Every new client asks this. But don’t worry, it is quite simple actually.  You just need to ask the right questions to the right people and present that information in a helpful way so the people in your business can get to know your persona(s) better than the backs of their hands.

The strongest personas are produced by market research and interviewing / surveying your existing client base. We always recommend businesses form at least 2 personas when we start a campaign, however some of our clients end up with 10 or 15 by the time they get used to the process. But like anything, start small. Trying to nail down 15 personas before starting a campaign only delays the efforts. You can always add, modify or expand personas as needed.

Should we build a “negative” persona?

In the beginning, no. Remember, start small. Build your two positive personas and over time add in a negative one. The negative persona should be your non-ideal client. I know… I know…. We want every client we can get right?  Answer is no. As your business grows, avoiding these negative personas will help your business grow by turning their business away.

But, keep in mind a negative persona is not always a grumpy high maintenance account.  These can be companies that do not see you as a partner or are just not a good fit for your business style.  Don’t feel like you only have poor client types in this bucket.

So how do we start the process?

As mentioned, buyer personas can be created through research, surveys, and interviews of your target audience. That includes a mix of customers, prospects and those outside your contacts database who might align with your target audience.

 

Here are some practical methods for gathering the information you need to develop personas:

  • Look through your existing client database to uncover trends about certain markets or verticals that fit who you have been targeting.
  • When creating forms to use on your website, use form fields that capture important persona information. For example, if all of your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms.
  • Take into consideration your sales team’s feedback on the leads they’re interacting with most. What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?
  • Interview customers and prospects, either in person or over the phone, to discover what they like about your product or service. This my friends is the most important step. We cannot stress this enough.

You’ve done the research, now what?

Once you have gone through the research, interviews and analysis, you should have some good “meat” to work with. Looking over this data, start to recognize trends.  Do you see consistent business sizes? Certain types of businesses? These are the trends we want to leverage in our fictional clients.

Using the worksheet,  begin to take this data and fill in each of the areas of the Persona Worksheet. Fill in the: Who? What? Why? How? sections as you see fit based off the data you collected. Keep in mind there is no wrong answer. These are best guesses off the data you collected.

Once you have all areas filled in, pass this worksheet around to team members, upper level management and your sales team. Get their feedback and see if it aligns with the views they see as well.

Finally the fun part. Give your persona a fun name. You have done the work and you should feel like you know this person like a brother or sister.  So give them a nickname like “Finance Timmy” or “ Doctor Sherry”.  This will help segment the leads as you start to see them come in and will give your team something to track against.

In closing, the persona process, although it can be daunting and time consuming, is one of the vital parts of optimizing your campaigns. Putting the time in at the start of the process is well worth the amount of time it will save in the long run.  Be sure to grab a copy of the worksheet and give it a try.

Does my website need an SSL Certificate?

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In 2017 the answer is yes.

In 2014 Google announced it would start giving a higher quality score for sites that showed a call for HTTPS in the address bar.  Over the past couple of years it has been more of a suggestion than a requirement but that has changed.  Let’s review what SSL and HTTPS are.

What is SSL?

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private. In other words this tells your site visitors you care about their information.

What is HTTPS?

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of the standard web call HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. Essentially this is telling your site visitors that the SSL Protection is in place.

 

What is the cost?

In aspects of business and the amount of clout this gives your site in Google’s eye? Minimal. Depending on the level of encryption and the person applying the security to your site, the certificates range between $75 – $150 per year.  Overall not a big drop in the bucket considering what business expenses can be these days. Depending on the information that your site shares will decide what type of certificate and level of encryption your site needs.  When selecting the SSL certificate consult with your web host or agency on selecting the right one for your business.

 

Why is this so important?

Now that we understand what these terms mean, why is it important?  Although Google originally announced that they will give more credit to sites with SSL in 2014, in a recent article on their security Blog, Google made another announcement; They are moving to a more secure web.

As of January 2017 Google started tagging any sites not running an SSL Certificate and showing HTTP as a non-secure site.

In this article, Google states that they have conducted studies that most web users do not consider the absence of a security as a need to avoid sending content through a site. This is a problem Google is working to fix as they move towards a safer web.  Your standard contact form may not be an issue yet. But based on the article, we can see this being affected in the near future.  Being proactive may be the best solution moving forward.

 

What’s next?

If you are ready to move forward with switching to HTTPS, contact your Web Host provider or agency about getting this in place. At Curiosity we always strive to stay on the forefront of development and strategy. Since this change every new website project or new WordPress build will be requested that the site have an SSL certificate in place. Clients may go against our judgement, but we suggest you require it as well.

 

If there are any questions on how Curiosity can help, please reach out and we would love to continue conversations.

Top 3 Current Email Marketing Trends

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1.  Email automation

From the outside looking in, it would seem that email automation is a lazy man’s way to email marketing, which in actuality it has been shown statistically that – automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates than “business as usual” email marketing efforts.

By using email marketing automation workflows you can create personalized, automated email works that can be triggered in a number of different ways – when a contact gets added to a list, when a contact submits a form on your website and click a call-to-action in your email – to name a few. These email marketing automations also help in other ways by making you think a little harder on what should happen in various situation with your email and help eliminate human error, such as forgetting to send a follow up email.

2. More like a friend

The ‘less is more’ motto is becoming increasingly apparent, especially in 2017 when everyone is running full speed and does not have the time to sift through a cluttered email. At a quick glance, your customer should be able to quickly tell what your email is about.

Reducing clutter and giving your customers a more personalized experience is key here, include some interactivity to keep them engaged. Try using a call-to-action to offers that really speak to them or quizzes to get a better understanding of what they are looking for.

3. Optimization for mobile

Optimizing your emails to be mobile friendly is a must have or you run the risk of being deleted. There is no way of knowing really when your customer will decide to open your email but since  consumers now spend 5 hours per day on mobile devices there’s a huge chance they will be opening your email on their mobile device.

Want to learn more about these current email marketing trends, check out our page that is dedicated specifically to email marketing or fill out the short form below to receive a FREE consultation on your current email marketing efforts and how we can help to make them more effective and efficient.