Traditionally we have operated in a world where advertising, sales messages, PR pitches,
direct mail and E-mail were blasted out - shotgun or targeted- to get the attention of the market.
In today's maket a smart inbound marketing strategy utilizing the best tools and practices outperform the old strategies - more results, stronger ROI.
If you have not already experienced your own transformation, hang on to your hat! The smart thinkers at Hubspot, namely founder Brian Halligan, are helping many of us ride that wave of change confidently and with great success.
Elements of content marketing strategies are being employed by many businesses. If you are blogging and developing content, how do you know if you are effective? Are you getting the best bang for your buck (time!) Is it worth the time and effort?
Here are some A-B-C's and back again, C-B-A, to help you measure your R-O-I.
A is for ASK
What are your prospects asking for? What problem can you help solve for them? What do they want to know? What information do you have to give them? To answer these questions, you can listen in on related issue or industry groups on LinkedIn or industry blogs. You can also ask your own readers, followers and current client base to initiate the conversation. The answers you get will lead you to the keywords most likely used in their searches.
B is for Blogging
Blogging has become a critical piece of internet marketing and business success. In 40% of U.S. businesses us a blog for marketing purposes and 2 out of 3 3 claim their b log is critical or important to their business. Statistics show B2C businesses with regular optimized blog posts earn 88% more leads per month than those that don’t. For B2B companies that statistic is 67% more leads per month.
C is for Content
Target your content to meet the needs of a specific segment of your market or buyer persona. Make it useful, easy to digest and visually interesting with images, video, and infographics.
If you've analyzed and prioritized the performance of your keywords, select topics with those keywords in mind to optimize in your content.
Particularly consider the use of short videos to share your story and expertise. Videos make your pages “sticky” – viewers linger and are more likely to click through for more if the videos are concise and well-done.
C is for Channels
Content can be repackaged and recycled to fit the format or channel. Short messages with links on Twitter are necessary. Brief teasers/information with photo, video or blog links on Facebook as well questions, surveys and contests can be effective. Longer form content with additional links and video can go a long way on LinkedIn, especially in groups. Good content can also feed the old outbound channels of print and broadcast, direct mail and E-mail campaigns.
In addition to posting content on your own blog/website, YouTube channel, social media accounts, seek additional options that are relevant to your industry or niche. Perhaps there is an industry site, or influential blogger, where you can show your own expertise by posting portions of your smart content. You will also want to create longer form content packaged as “offerings” suh as an E-book, whitepaper, special tool or video that your readers might want to download for reference.
B is for Building Trust
And that brings us to building trust. If you’ve followed the rules above and you have truly shared your expertise without being pushy or “spammy”, as they say, then it is likely that the people you care about are beginning to listen to you. When you become a “trusted advisor” and a name they are familiar with, then you have the traction that can lead to real results. By this time you will be offering longer form content and those special offers.
A is for ASK AGAIN
They trust you and have high regard for the expertise you present. All along the way you have included small “Calls to Action” at the end of your posts. If you have captured the resulting leads for prospects that have downloaded your offers you have the opportunity to nurture those leads with relevant content. Studies have shown that it is only in the last third of the sales process that customers want to engage with a sales person. Now is your time to ask again. Call to qualify and schedule an appointment, demo or whatever the final steps are in your unique sales cycle.
ROI
Best practices of content marketing fold the SEO, optimized content, and calls to action in with customized landing pages, lead nurturing campaigns for a fully rounded inbound marketing effort. Marke ting integration tools allow leads captured to be nurtured and integrated with a CRM (customer relationship management) system (SalesForce, Sugar or numerous others) for further action, thus enabling you to measure the conversion rate of leads. Of course you also can measure traffic increase, page views, click-through rates as well as keyword performance. Yet real ROI is measured by the clients who sign on, make a purchase or increase their engagement with you.
1. Own all your properties.
This advice sta
rts with your website and applies to all social media accounts and content. Be sure that it is your company owns the URL, the hosting account, and own the structure and all rights to the website. Keep all account details and log-in information on file. Be an administrator on your company Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube channel, etc. The most credible and effect SEO operations will make a point that you have this access. Pay attention to the red flags if anyone tries to tell you otherwise.
In the case of social media agencies that offer to drive your sales by promoting your product/business on their own highly popular or well-trafficked accounts and websites, beware. It might result in some visibility and even some click-thru traffic, but this set-up does very little for your own organic SEO. The same is true if they offer to host your blog or videos on their own websites.
2. Set meaningful goals that will grow your business.
The goal to increase traffic, gain followers, increase Likes or whatever the activity, it is still just activity if the online interaction does not lead to a goal connected with your bottom line. Agree upon realistic targets for increased traffic and a timeline. But also set expectations for the increase in sales transactions or revenue within the same timeline. Make sure that you and your SEO/social media partner understand your respective responsibilities to help reach those goals.
3. Ask to look under the hood.
Any SEO/social media partner worth their salt will be able to explain in layman’s terms what process they follow. Ask about keyword selection, site architecture, o n page SEO and Off page SEO, timing, analytics, content development and optimization, ongoing evaluation and adjustment. What about posting, sharing and developing content for the social media? Are you a true partner in that area ensuring that the activity fits your brand?
4. Keep it real. Keep it relevant.
Business-oriented social media posts and content that have a brand personality or voice are more successful. The brand can be represented by a real person by name, which is thought to be more effective, or in the style of a branded voice and personality, which is often the most realistic within a business that has outsourced social media.
Relevance is also important. If your traffic, followers, or Likes are largely driven up by means of reciprocal connections with other clients managed by your social media agency, your audience is not relevant to your business. Likewise, if shared posts with content unrelated to your business are used to increase views, the content is irrelevant to your target audience. Your brand is diluted and you are unlikely to increase sales or revenue from such activities.
5. Go organic with optimized content.
While there are some caveats to “over-optimizing” content, it is generally most effective to follow a disciplined process of identifying competitive keywords, the easy to moderate ranking word that can be effective for you within in 1-4 months and developing content optimized by and speaking to those key search terms.
While traditionally, businesses have invested in public and community relations without a clear means to measure the return on their investment (ROI). With the online strategies we’ve been reviewing you have the opportunity to complete the process using the best practices of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing further leverages social media, SEO, blogging, link building, and online influencers to create an organic "inbound" demand for your product/services. Content and value added offers integrated with compelling Calls to Action (CTA) direct your readers back to custom landing pages on your website. If the call to action or value-added content is compelling enough, your prospect completes an online form and a lead is generated. You can measure not only traffic, but conversion rates, and A/B test for the most compelling calls and content. Success in this area requires a strong working partnership between you and your agency. Whether their core competency is SEO, web, PR or marketing, they must be experienced with inbound marketing.
Hubspot blogs improve your content and lead generation. However, if you have a website on the WordPress platform and wish to keep your blog link there, you will need to re-direct to an external (Hubspot) page. While Hubspot easily allows you to redirect to both internal and external pages, WordPress requires you to download a plugin.
The best plugin that I found for linking our Hubspot blog to our WordPress site was: Quick Page/Post Redirect DEV version 4.2.2 by Don Fischer. This plugin allows you to maintain website best practices of opening links in a new tab (after installing the plugin, make sure you go to the Redirect Menu on the toolbar and check open links in a new tab.) After installing the plugin, complete the following to make your Hubspot blog link from your website:
- Create a new page. Name it the same as your Hubspot blog.
- Go to the redirect plugin that appears below the visual/html input section.
- Check the following; make redirect active, open redirect link in a new window, show the redirect link below instead of the page URL (see image below.)
- Copy the URL of your Hubspot blog and input that URL in the redirect URL field (see image below.)
- Click publish and experience a seamless redirect to your Hubspot blog!
Note: If you would like to add this page in your menu toolbar, go to Appearance, Menus: Under Pages, select the page you would like to add to your menu (name of your Hubspot blog.) Then click add to menu and you can arrange the placement of your menu in the Main box to the right.
Important! When making changes to any site, always have 3 browsers (Firefox, Safari and Chrome) open to check compatibility with the code/plugins, etc. Not all web browsers react as quickly to your changes and you may notice that some could take a couple of hours to reflect the changes you have made.
At the start of any calendar year predictions for the year ahead fill our inboxes and newsfeeds. One report rose to the top of the masses. Awareness Networks released its annual 2012 Social Marketing and New Media Predictionsfilled with insights from 34 business and marketing leaders. It’s written for marketing strategists, brand marketers, consultants and those working in agencies and covers several aspects of our new marketing world.
One word within this report jumped out repeatedly and was hammered home by Robert Collins (@RobertCollins), Founder and Host of Social Media Breakfast when he named the top challenge for 2012 - “Integration - Integration – Integration.”
Here’s what others had to say about integration:
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Steve Rubel of Edelman predicts, “Next year will be the year that business gets religious about integration. Social media in a vacuum is not enough. It needs to be tightly integrated with traditional PR, advertising and CRM. The noise in social will reach such a breaking point that integration will be required to stand out.”
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“More businesses will actively engage with all the stages of inbound marketing,” predicts Laura Fitton of HubSpot. “Right now there’s too much focus on social media marketing and content marketing. True inbound marketing involves knowing which tactics work – which pieces of content, calls to action, forms and emails generated the most leads. It’s integrating your SEO efforts together with your content generation and sharing, with your advertising, your lead nurturing, your analytics, measurement and A/B testing, with every tool you use and everything you do as a marketer.”
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Fitton also pointed out the importance of tools to help integrate the full marketing process and measure meaningful outcomes. “Tools that truly support inbound marketing, giving marketers the ability to see which sources of traffic deliver leads and customers. I personally look forward to the day when waving your arms and quoting numbers like followers, traffic and number of ‘likes’ is frowned upon and replaced with a meaningful, inbound marketing approach.”
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“2012 is the year brands will begin to integrate social data with CRM and web analytics data in meaningful ways,” says Mike Lewis, a senior analyst at Ovum, Chairman of ILD Corp. and @OfficeArrow ; Author of Social Media Leadership: How to Get Off the Bench and Into the Game.. “This integration will answer the ROI question, as integration will allow brands to finally see and track their overall social media impact on bottom-line results.”
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“We can talk about the reach and the power of social networks presence. We can talk about integrating traditional and social for the best impact. But until we have tools that allow us to measure the right things at the right time in the right and integrated way, we won’t know what that impact is,” observes Ekaterina Walter, Intel Social Media Strategist and blogger.
At Vision Marketing integration of a variety of marketing strategies and channels has always been a priority. Yet in order to provide a fully integrated and efficient process for ourselves as well as our clients, we use a number of tools to make the process hum.
The integration tools that we rely on to provide a fully integrated Inbound Marketing process are Hubspot working in combination with Salesforce to provide the pow
er of CRM with content driven lead generation, nurturing and conversion. Together these two tools offer some powerful analytics and means to A/B test and measure performance and results.
We’ve found Hootsuite to be an efficient platform for managing and monitoring social media accounts. Listening and response to community engagement is as important as posting content.
These are not the only tools available; the marketplace is filled with options for small to very large enterprises.
What are you doing to make integration a priority within your marketing process?
Before getting started in the world of Linked in, you must first become familiar with some of LinkedIn’s basic terminology. Below are a few basic descriptions to help you get started.
InMail: is a private message from a LinkedIn member who is not your connection. You can receive InMail messages for free, however, you cannot send them unless you pay for the service.
Introduction: is a way to reach out to people who are connected to your connections. For example, if you want to contact a hiring manager for a company it is better to request an introduction through a common connection rather than trying to reach them by sending a resume along with hundreds of other people.
OpenLink Network: is a LinkedIn premium feature that’s enables network members to contact each other without occurring additional fees.
Now that you are familiar with some of the basic LinkedIn terminology, the next step is to understand the different account types. There is a free personal account are three types of premium accounts.
With any LinkedIn account you can:
- Create a professional profile
- Develop a network of contacts
- Search for jobs and people
- Receive unlimited InMail and requests for introductions
- Participate in groups
- Participate in LinkedIn Answers
Free Personal Account:
- Request a maximum of five introductions at one time
- View 100 results per search
- Save a maximum of three searches with weekly email alerts
The three types of Premium accounts all allow you to:
- Perform unlimited one-click reference searches
- Receive an OpenLink Network membership
- Send unlimited OpenLink messages
- Receive LinkedIn customer service responses within one business day
The Business Account ($24.95 USD per month):
- Send three InMails per month, rolling over a maximum of nine unused InMails to the next month
- Save five searches and receive weekly alerts on each
- Maintain 15 pending introductions at one time
- View 300 results per search
The Business Account Plus ($49.95 USD per month):
- Send 10 InMails per month, rolling over a maximum of 30 unused InMails to the next month
- Save 7 searches and receive weekly alerts on each
- Maintain 25 pending introductions at one time
- View 500 results per search
The Pro Account ($499.95 USD per month):
- Send 50 InMails per month, rolling over a maximum of 150 unused InMails to the next month
- Save 10 searches and receive daily alerts on each
- Maintain 40 pending introductions at one time
- View 700 results per search
LinkedIn’s free account is suitable for most users’ needs; therefore, it’s a good idea to try it first. If you decide that you need a feature from one of the premium accounts you can always upgrade later.
Have you ever wondered, “With all the social networks out there, why should I join LinkedIn? What can LinkedIn do for me? How does it work?”
Many people have been and still are in that same situation. Hopefully I can help you understand some of the basics of LinkedIn and in turn answer some of those questions.
With LinkedIn you can:
- Create a professional profile that helps achieve your professional goals
- Develop and manage a network of professional contacts
- Reconnect with former colleagues and classmates
- Find jobs, consulting opportunities and clients
- Recruit job candidates
- Request and give professional recommendations
- Find and give answers to compelling business questions
- Join groups to discuss issues with like-minded individuals
- Establish your credibility as an expert in your field
- Conduct marketing research
- Promote your services as a LinkedIn service provider
- Advertise your business
As a person, some of the ways you may find LinkedIn useful is if you are interested in finding jobs and attracting recruiters by developing a solid network of professional contacts. You can connect with professional contacts in a particular industry or connect with types of people who might hire you or who can provide you with job leads.
As a business, if you participate in LinkedIn Answers and LinkedIn Groups you can promote your expertise and attract business leads. You can maintain your current contacts and develop new connections with other professionals that have similar goals and interests.
Today’s technology has changed the way people find jobs, promote businesses, build relationships and partnerships, and develop professional networks. Even though LinkedIn can seem like a simple idea, the way to really thrive on it is to develop the best online networking strategies to accomplish your specific goals.
Your entire organization is built around your brand. Having a clear definition of your brand marketing strategy is essential for communicating what you have to offer to your target market. Start by answering these 12 questions.
- Who are we? Define what your organization is in one to two sentences (approximately 140 characters or less). A brief description without any meaningless jargon is essential to define because it is the best way to start your elevator speech.
- What are the three greatest strengths/weaknesses of our brand? Strengths are internal characteristics that are performed well whereas weaknesses are aspects that the organization lacks. After identifying your internal strengths and weaknesses of your brand, you are able to assess what actions need to take place, if any, to strengthen your overall brand through an importance/performance analysis. If you identify a weakness that does not make a difference to your brand or customers, then why spend resources attempting to improve that weakness?
- What are our greatest opportunities for growth? These are opportunities not already implemented. Look at competitors and the external environment to assess what might be a strong opportunity. Then perform an attractiveness/success probability analysis to determine which opportunities have the greatest potential for growth.
- What keywords would people search to find our organization/products/services? Knowing these keywords, you are able to create content that is keyword rich. Since search engines are one of the primary ways people find your web-page, your company is more likely to be found having keyword rich content.
- Who are our buyer personas? Identifying your buyer personas enables you to get closer to thinking like your customer. This is essential in fulfilling the needs of your customer. You will be able to unlock how to effectively communicate with them and are more likely to have them listen.
- What makes us different? We live in a society that bombards us with offers and information. Knowing what makes you unique you will be one step closer to creating a brand that is remarkable.
- How do we express that differentiation in words, images and actions? Show how remarkable your organization is in all aspects and have this visible through all content, images and actions. Your brand should be consistent in the messages it creates through these three aspects. The website, for example, should have content including your tagline, blogs and descriptions that all fit with the look and feel of the images (including the logo). Once you are done going through building and identifying your brand, your company should have feel like a person with only one personality.
- What value can we bring to the community? Providing valuable guidance, resources or tools to your target market makes you an expert in their minds. By integrating yourself within the community and positioning yourself as a thought leader in your field, you will develop a strong following. Maybe your organization is a non-profit and you provide social services to locals or you are philanthropic and donate services? This counts as well in bringing value to the community.
- What are we doing to innovate and move our industry forward? It is easier for you to lead customers to you if you know what makes you valuable. In what ways do you lead the industry providing value to customers?
- What is our sustainable competitive advantage? Determine your top strengths through a performance/importance analysis. Knowing your top strengths, you will be able to see which provide a lasting advantage over competitors.
- What makes customers buy from us the first time (acquisition)? Now that you have attracted the attention from potential customers, you need to close the deal. Knowing what makes your target customer convert into a paying customer is essential. Will this potential customer convert into a buyer based on a promotion or package?
- What keeps them coming back (retention)? Once you have spent the resources and finally gotten to the point where you have found a paying customer, you want to keep them. Does your exceptional customer service, quality product or competitive prices keep them coming back? You want to retain active customers by continuing to offer the same qualities that keep them supporting your company.
Next, integrate this knowledge into your Web, search marketing, advertising, marketing collateral, social media, content marketing and public relations strategies to provide a clear and consistent brand image.
Learn more about
Brand Marketing Strategy and Brand Marketing Consulting.