Marketpath is honored to have Marketpath CMS, our easy to use website content management system, named as one of the industry’s Top Content Management Platforms by Website Magazine. Last month, Website Magazine selected Marketpath CMS as one of their Top 50 Web Content Management Platforms (CMS), based on extensive evaluation criteria. Although Marketpath is primarily focosed on the small to mid-sized businesses and organizations, Website Magazine's rankings included solutions focused on all areas: enterprise level, small business, open source, etc.                                                  Website Magazine (www.websitemagazine.com) presents expert information for website and marketing professionals on how to succeed... Read more →

The St. Margaret's Hospital Guild, one of Indianapolis’ most respected and longest running volunteer groups, recently launched a new website to promote their organization’s good works and their annual Decorators' Show House and Gardens project.2013 Show House (April 27-May 12)Proceeds from the annual Show House, running April 27th - May 12th, benefit Wishard Health (Eskenazi Health) and a variety of their services and programs.  And this year’s house is extra special, featuring Indianapolis’ historic Schnull-Rauch House, located at 3050 North Meridian Street in Indianapolis.   Visit the new St. Margaret’s Guild and Decorators’ Show... Read more →

I loved these things in my single digits. Heck, I would still love playing with them now if I had any because I truly enjoy building things. That is one part of my childhood I'm happy to say I've always carried with me into my (gulp) late thirties. Give me a bunch of sticks and I'll build something fun or useful out of them. And the name is perfect for these little guys, isn't it? Tinker Toys. Toys meant for tinkering. And that's what made them so great. The tinkering part. Try this, then try... Read more →

Business needs vary enormously from one organization to the next. So, naturally, continual improvement to processes and techniques to effectively run the business is a must. Business owners always have to step out of the normal day to day to evaluate whether or not we're being effective, how we can improve inefficiencies and how we can plan for the future. Because competition comes so strong and swift, we are in an age of process perfection. That is, we must understand our processes and constantly mine them for improvements. In many ways, we need to be like McDonald's where... Read more →

Casey-Bertram Construction, a leader in Indiana demolition services, launched their new website (www.casey-bertram.com) this week.  The site, which was designed and optimized by Marketpath and features our easy to use web content management system, positions Casey-Bertram as Indiana’s demolition services expert.With 20 years of experience, Casey-Bertram has been a leader in the Indiana demolition market for quite some time, with demolitions projects involving Indiana landmarks such as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Eli Lilly, the Indiana Convention Center, and the Indiana State Fair grounds.  Casey-Bertram even provided demolition services for ABC's... Read more →

The rise of smartphone usage over the past few years has come at a staggering pace.  There are now over 91.4 million smartphones in the United States alone (this stat is a few months old, and with the release of the iPhone 5 in late September, the number is probably over 100 Million in the US alone).  So, how does your website look to any one of these 100 million people that view your site on the device?  Clunky? Unreadable? Empty white boxes where Flash graphics are located? While we understand designing your site for multiple devices is a... Read more →

Every website project that Marketpath does follows the same process.  There is a hefty discovery portion of the project where we’ll discover everything from target audience & goals for the site, to design elements that will be utilized.  One question we always ask is about actual content on the site.  Who is going to write it?  What are you targeting?  Are you a good writer? Unfortunately, the content creation portion of a project is usually the portion of the projects that drag out the longest.  There are usually three different approaches to it (listed here from worst approach to the... Read more →

I’m not all together sure there is a more dynamic industry than online marketing.  With new tools, networks, tactics, and things to pay attention to debuting every day, how can anyone keep up?  It is a full-time job just staying on top of the latest trends, let alone rolling them out into a marketing campaign.  Gone are the days of launching a website with some keywords in the title tag and getting results.  Gone are the days of paying an SEO firm to "magically" gain rankings.  Gone are the days where this stuff was, well…easy. ​Are you... Read more →

We met with a prospective client last week to discuss their upcoming website redesign & development project.  This prospect is your typical small business where the owners make all of the decisions without much input from the rest of the staff.  There isn’t a dedicated marketing department, nor is there a “techie” on staff.  If you’re a small business owner, this situation may sound familiar…and you can vouch that it’s not easy.Any vendor selection process is an exercise in analytical skills.  The two owners that we met with aren’t website guys.  This whole process is... Read more →

When the time comes to hire an SEO agency to help boost your online presence and rankings, chances are you’re going to have a lot of questions.  This is okay.  I’ve been in and around the industry for close to six years and I am no expert.  Whether you’re a novice, someone who knows enough to be dangerous, or a seasoned veteran looking for some help, these 5 signs will help you eliminate a lot of so called “experts”. Guaranteed 1st Page RankingsNo SEO company can or should offer a guarantee for first page rankings for your... Read more →

So, you’ve taken the plunge and launched a corporate blog.  Congratulations!  All of the people that have been telling you for years that it’s a must finally won out, right?  Now, the hard part is here…making it actually worthwhile.  If you just said “Wait, what?” I don’t blame you.  Nobody told you that it was going to be difficult and time consuming.  Nobody told you that it’s not just as easy as throwing up a random thought here and there.  So, if that was your strategy, think again.  Here are 5 common mistakes businesses often... Read more →

Brand awareness is one of those nebulous terms we marketers like to throw around. But what does it actually mean? Brand awareness is simply a measure of how many people could pick your brand out of a lineup or say "oh yeah, I've heard of them!" In a perfect world, brand awareness is rigorously measured using market research, customer surveys and a variety of other tools to find out just who knows you. Unfortunately, most small business owners I know don't live in a perfect world. However, they still want brand awareness.According to our 2012 Small Business... Read more →

We’ve covered this topic a bit before on our blog, but recent data that has come to light makes it worth revisiting.  The question is, being a small to medium sized business (SMB), is it time to take a hard look at software-as-a-service (SaaS) for your content management needs?  The short answer – yes.  The longer answer – SaaS CMS platforms have come a long way over the years and provide companies with flexibility and reliability that installed or open-source systems lack. It's Time to Consider SaaS CMSAccording to CMSWire, it is estimated that 34% of... Read more →

Writers block? Perhaps this can help you find an easy topic for your next blog post. Six topics that might provide a jackhammer to get through the blockage.1) What does your organization do best?Every one has a core competency and strength. What is yours? Why are you the best at it? Avoid being overly blatant, though. Instead provide some examples of why you are the best and let your audience come this conclusion by themselves. Don't tell them. That just gets annoying. It might be fine for a rush hour radio commercial but not in a blog... Read more →

Marketpath is not an SEO company.  We have never tried to be an SEO company.  We will never try to be an SEO company.  Now, if you’re an existing client, you may be saying to yourself “Wait, these guys had an SEO phase during our project…what gives?”  If you’re an avid reader of our blog, you may be thinking to yourself “Two out of every three articles these guys post mentions SEO…what gives?”  Well, both questions would be warranted, but allow me to retort (said in my best Samuel L. Jackson voice, of course).SEO is... Read more →

Here at Marketpath, we help companies redesign and launch brand new websites with an easy-to-use content management system on the backend.  One challenge that we often run into, however, is gathering compelling content from our clients.  This is a widespread problem, not limited to just Marketpath’s client base, but to anyone that is redeveloping their online presence.  The dreaded “okay, now what do we say?” question always seems to arise.Does your content make me want to do this? Unless you’re paying an outside PR firm or freelance copywriter to write your website copy, it’s... Read more →

Your website isn’t maximizing its value if no one can find it- right?  That’s why Marketpath includes on-site search engine optimization (SEO) services with every website design we provide our clients.  But optimizing a new site is only the beginning.  To improve your rankings with search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, you’ll need to have a living, breathing site that continuously provides new, relevant content for your target audience. Marketpath makes it easy to add content to your site, but that’s just the start.  Marketpath CMS also provides SEO tools that allow you, the... Read more →

The holidays and the Super Bowl are over, so it’s time to get back to our “How Easy is Marketpath CMS” series.  This week, we’ll demonstrate how easy it is to create a brand new web page using Marketpath CMS, our web content management system for small businesses.   Think about it.  Marketpath lets you create any type of new page in minutes: new product pages, promotional offers, event pages, news, resources pages, project galleries, and more.  Now days, online success is all about content marketing - and we’ll let you easily create the content and calls-to-action... Read more →

I'm really not a big protestor but I do protest this legislation and I hope you will too. This will inevitably affect everyone who uses the Internet. Here's my letter to Senator Dan Coats, Senator Richard Lugar, and Representative Dan Burton. Look up your representatives and senators to send a clear message that you do not want this legislation to pass.Representative/Senator _______,  I have a small business that provides a good living for many people. We are happy and we work very hard. Our business is not without its risk, though. We provide a system that... Read more →

Search engine optimization, for many, can be an extremely daunting and intimidating task. Many of our own clients struggle with the very basics when we are building their sites, which is why we help them out in the beginning.  In an effort to help SEO newbies and first-time website owners, I am prescribing the minimum effective dose for SEO.  For anyone not familiar, the minimum effective dose can essentially be defined as the minimum amount of dosage or activity (i.e. change) needed to produce the desired effect. This term is often used in the world of exercise science... Read more →

This is our second post in our “How Easy is Marketpath CMS” series.  Last week, our video showed you how simple it is to add SEO friendly images to your website using our easy CMS.  This week we’ll demonstrate how effortless it is to add a video to your website using our web content management system for small businesses.   The best way to enhance your organization’s online marketing is to give your team a solution that makes managing and marketing your website easy.  With Marketpath, you don’t need technical experts adding unnecessary time and cost to your... Read more →

Marketpath CMS was built on the foundation of simplicity.  Everything we do is geared towards helping small businesses and organizations to be both more effective and efficient running their website marketing.  In our opinion, the best way to do that is to make things easy!That’s why anyone can manage and market their website using Marketpath CMS, our easy to use web content management solution. With Marketpath, you don’t need any technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.  Anyone can successfully market their website, adding new pages, blogging, inserting images and videos, managing event and calendars, creating web forms,... Read more →

If you keep up a blog then you are probably well acquainted with comment spam. This is an inevitable fact of life if you allow comments on your blog (which you should in most cases). At Marketpath, we reached a point with our blogging platform where we were receiving a great deal of comment spam for our own blogs and many of our customers' blogs. Here's an example:Notice how well-written this comment is? Notice its perfect grammar and its amazingly descriptive word choices? That's sarcasm, of course. The good news is that if you are using... Read more →

For small-to-medium sized B2B companies without dedicated marketing departments, content creation can be a daunting task. You’ve been hearing that content is king for years when it comes to search engine optimization, but you just can’t quite put together a process for creating engaging content.  You may feel like your product or service is self-explanatory enough and doesn’t need to be discussed.  You may feel that your product or service isn’t sexy enough to have a blog post written about it.  Whatever the reason (or excuse), content creation  just isn’t being done…... Read more →

A lot of times, before we can implement our content management system, our clients ask us to redesign their website.  While we are always happy to provide this service to our clients, I wanted to cover a few of the aspects of what makes a website design successful.  It goes far beyond pretty pictures and colors and dives into what truly makes your business work, focusing on your business goals, objectives and visitor behavior. Here are five items to take into consideration before and during your website redesign process.Website Design is a Hands-on Process1. Clearly Branded and Aligned... Read more →

As a high school junior in 1985, my family purchased our first computer, a Macintosh.  Little did I know at that time that twenty-six years later, I’d be writing a blog (heck the word didn’t exist yet) about the Mac and the founder of the company that introduced it, Apple.  Since that time, Steve Jobs personally has had a hand in revolutionizing the world of technology as well as at least five different industries:computers - Apple II (1977) & Mac (1984) personal computers, Mouse (1984) , iPad (2010)phone – iPhone (2007)music – iPod (2001)retail – iTunes Store (2001), Apple’... Read more →

Since the idea of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been around for quite a few years, the benefits have become pretty well known.  The SaaS proponents stand behind the lower cost of entry, the speed of implementation and availability of the software (not installed).  I wanted to dig a little deeper and take a look at some of the lesser known benefits of the Software-as-a-Service model.No IT Staff NecessaryMany small to medium sized business don't have internal IT staff, which makes them a perfect candidate for SaaS adoption.  In the world of web content... Read more →

The purpose of most well-crafted business websites is to convert visitors into sales leads (or customers, if your site is ecommerce). There are many aspects that go into engaging your website's visitors and convincing them to give you their information. Some of these aspects are easy to modify and test, like the placement, size and color of call to action buttons. Others are a little more difficult and costly, such as an overall website design change.  However, the element that your site relies on to convert visitors to leads, the form itself, may be hurting your website's... Read more →

A mobile website or mobile ready website is simply an internet site optimized for viewing on mobile devices or smartphones such as the iPhone, Android or Blackberry.  Because mobile gadgets are smaller than computers (with smaller screens), full websites are often difficult to view and navigate via mobile devices. Mobile websites provide a better way for consumers to learn about your organization when they’re on-the-go and typically consist of a “stripped down” version of a website, with less information, prioritized or more important to the mobile user.Visit the Internet Marketing Dictionary for a detailed definition of... Read more →