I'm not a big SEO Freak…

As a matter of fact I often disregard SEO to areas I consider more relevant… creating remarkable content. Sometimes the right articles hit on hot keywords and things just blow up. It is important to understand your audience though and what they want or are searching for. Sometimes this can be done strategically and sometime is is a nice happenstance.

Yesterday I had an interesting thing happen. I had Matt Roberge from SLC Bookkeeping contact me with an interesting question. His question went something like this…

In today's fast-paced, ultra-competitive business environment, marketing is more important than ever.

However, it must be done with a laser-like focus on the potential customer… that is most likely to respond to your message and will meet your goals for profitability or customer lifetime value.

So we started asking questions as part of what we do on our social accounts in order to engage with people and offer better tips. So this is what I put out there this morning:

Roughly four months ago I decided to move the Brandwise design software to the cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud is the new direction Adobe is taking their software. I love the idea of regular automatic updates, and being current at all times. I do not like the thought of being over a barrel and not being able to switch once I get started down this path. Obviously on some level this cloud concept is a money maker for Adobe. They get regularly updated bank accounts from all users. So someone like myself who might only buy every other version of their software, now will be paying monthly forever. This will make us pay more for sure.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) calculations depend in part on predictions based on past actions or industry averages.

This means you can’t bet the farm on the outcome of your CLV formulas. The best way to use CLV is to think of it as an indicator, to be interpreted along with other customer data—and with a good dose of common sense.

There is quite a bit of talk about the positive impact that inbound marketing brings to any business

Especially when it comes to creating:

As I was doing some research for up coming articles, I ran across this nice infographic put out by Hubspot and Salesforce.com. I'm betting you will find some interesting tips on this infographic that will either educate you or reinforce what you may already know about Inbound Marketing.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) = Total Customer Revenue – Total Customer Costs

Customer lifetime value is a powerful piece of business intelligence that informs an efficient strategy for business growth. Also known as CLTV, LCV and LTV, these calculations also provide a benchmark against growth goals and a vivid indication of company value. Customer Lifetime Value, which can be expressed in a detailed or more general formula, is typically defined as the value (in current dollars) of the net profit you can expect from a given customer’s purchases over the entire life of the customer relationship.

When looking for new clients, you've probably heard about creating demographic lists for direct mail or getting more advanced with your sales and inbound marketing by creating buyer personas.

Surely you've heard the term demographics and ways to use them. There is another term that has gained popularity over the years: buyer persona. Buyer persona is used a lot in the inbound marketing and/or sales world. There is a difference between demographics and buyer persona, though it may be hard to understand at first. Let’s explore those differences.