A long time ago - but in this galaxy, mind you - choosing the right SEO meta description was essential for search engine rankings.

A University of Southern California study led by professor Dr. Marin Hilbert discovered that the average person is bombarded with a whopping 174 newspapers worth of data each day which means we've clearly gone from the Information Age to the Age of Information Overload.

One of the defining features of inbound marketing is that businesses can use automated workflows to help guide the buyer’s journey. Before exploring how this happens, let’s first shine a spotlight on the buyer’s journey, since it’s a relatively recent concept.

When it comes to engaging customers on Facebook and elsewhere, there are two kinds of social media ideas: those that are awesome, and those that are awesome and actually WORK.

While inbound marketing isn’t rocket science (at least we assume it isn’t), it’s true there are some aspects, concepts, strategies and tactics that have some complexity to them.

In life, we often come across warning signs that, in retrospect, seem abundantly clear - kind of like giant billboards rather than subtle cues.

If you belong to a B2B or B2C cloud-based companies, especially those in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry, you know how critical it is to get out in front of prospective customers during the fleeting decision-making stage. 

It’s an industry of short sales cycles with complex products, acronym-laden jargon, freemium trials and ever-changing services that must be marketed precisely or you risk confusing your audience. It's also an industry where inbound marketing can give you the strongest foothold for reaching your customers.

While there are many aspects of inbound methodology that makes it both innovative and effective, perhaps the most striking – and certainly the most interesting – is that it’s actually a far “truer” kind of marketing, than what we’ve been calling marketing for the last few decades.

A curious phenomenon is unfolding across the business landscape - one that began in startups with their signature “shoestring budgets” but has since caught the attention of larger organizations which are doing something that, even a few years ago, was unthinkable: setting sail without a marketing department.