Posted by Chris Knipper on Wed, Aug 25, 2010 @ 07:48 AM
Inbound marketing has changed not only the way businesses interact with their customers but the way they interact with each other. If you pay attention to your marketing stats, you're likely to discover a dramatic drop in the cost-benefit ratio of the "old reliable" marketing techniques you've used for years. Old school marketing techniques (now called outbound marketing) such as tradeshows, cold-calls, print advertising and direct mail no longer produce the lead generation results they used to. In today's fast-paced business world of instant communication, those old reliables just aren't reliable any more. New inbound marketing techniques that make use of popular social medial marketing tools are where the action's at!
The Internet has changed business-to-business (B2B) communication and interaction. Today, more than 90% of B2B buyers begin the purchasing process online. Business buyers are turning to the Internet first to research companies and products and place their orders. Business sellers are responding by centering their marketing efforts on inbound marketing techniques such as well-designed websites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and interactive web info and order forms.
Inbound marketing tools have the substantial benefit of speeding up the entire purchasing cycle from lead generation to final sale. And not only is the cycle spinning faster, increasing opportunities to boost sales, but inbound marketing is generating a higher volume of leads from more motivated potential customers. The ease and speed with which potential B2B customers can now request information about a product or service (via Twitter, for example) and receive a response is forcing businesses to embrace inbound marketing techniques.
B2B purchasers no longer rely on sellers for research information about a company or its products; they're doing their research online at their own convenience. Potential business purchasers are no longer content to wait for a catalog to arrive via snail mail; they want you to tweet them a link to the online catalog on your website. They don't want to spend hours on the phone responding to unsolicited cold calls; they want to access your website or Facebook page, request the specific information they want and place their order.
Today, the speed of inbound marketing communications is overwhelming comparatively slow and increasingly passe outbound marketing tools. Who wants to limp along with the snails when they can run with the cheetahs?
Are you ready to get with the B2B program?
Photo credit: paulamarttila
Posted by Vanessa Knipper on Mon, Aug 23, 2010 @ 07:59 AM
Most businesses are jumping on the inbound marketing bandwagon. Facebook, Twitter and other social media marketing tools are proving to be far more effective -- and faster -- at marketing businesses to consumers and promoting brand identity. Compared to traditional outbound marketing methods like cold calling and direct mail, inbound marketing is targeted, rapid, interactive and the only way to reach today's Internet-connected consumers.
In the rush to move online, businesses often neglect to fully define their inbound marketing goals and develop a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy. Without careful forethought and planning, Internet marketing efforts can be ineffective and appear to be disjointed, failing to produce the desired results. Without proper goal definition and a well-planned strategy to meet those goals, inbound marketing experts warn that social media campaigns can fall flat and produce disappointing results. When Internet marketing campaigns fail, the fault is not in the inbound marketing techniques used but in their execution.
In order to connect with consumers, you must first figure out what consumers want. There are 3 tried and true methods of determining consumer needs relevant to the product or services you sell:
- Ask. Pay attention to consumer questions asked via twitter, comments made on blog posts and surveys conducted on your website. See which web pages on your site have the highest click rates. Review sales statistics to see what consumers are buying. All of these efforts can help you gain a better understanding of what consumers are looking for when they access your site.
- Tune in. Stay current on happenings and developments in your industry. Subscribe to competitors' blogs, follow industry experts on Twitter and subscribe to industry-related news feeds.
- Track. Sign up for Google Alerts. Google Alerts is a particularly productive tool for monitoring the effectiveness of your keywords and fine tuning them to more accurately target your desired customer pool. Google Alerts shows you how other people on the Internet are using your keywords, providing you a window to competitors using the same words. Knowing who is using your keywords and how they are using them allows you to tweak your keyword list quickly if it isn't resonating correctly with consumers.
Professional inbound marketing experts have the technical expertise, Internet savvy and social media experience to ensure that your inbound marketing campaign is effectively designed and executed to produce the results you desire.
Posted by Chris Knipper on Mon, Aug 09, 2010 @ 06:33 AM
Depending on your Internet experience and social media comfort level, inbound marketing either seems impossibly complex or ridiculously easy. The truth doesn't reside at either end of the spectrum but somewhere in between.
If your business marketing campaign is still focused on outbound marketing strategies such as trade shows, email blasts, cold calls and telemarketing, it can be more than a little disconcerting to jump into the free-wheeling, paperless, high-speed world of social media where instant gratification seems to reign.
On the other hand, if you've embraced social media in your personal life, spend hours updating your Facebook page and posting messages to your friends, and are a dedicated tweeter, you may fail to recognize the distinct differences between personal and business use of social media and the need for a certain amount of careful restraint in business applications.
In both cases, your company's marketing campaign will benefit from development and hands-on management by an experienced inbound marketing professional. Among the distinct advantages inbound marketing experts bring to the table is the expertise to build a platform of individually tailored social media products and measurement analytics to power your company's specific needs and target both broad and narrow goals.
The speed and targeting accuracy made possible by computerization and Internet dispersal allow inbound marketing strategies to be quickly and continuously tweaked by knowledgeable professionals. Computer analytics provide immediate, measurable results that quickly reveal the effectiveness of individual inbound marketing strategies. Inbound marketing experts use carefully selected analytics to continuously monitor and tweak marketing programs to ensure that they quickly produce the desired marketing results. Constant evaluation ensures that your marketing program reacts to and gains the greatest benefit from consumer response, market forces and changing demographics.
The wide variety of inbound marketing products and platforms allows businesses to capitalize on broad spectrum dispersal of their marketing message with one media while targeting very specific consumer demographics with another. Successful inbound marketing campaigns generally employ diverse techniques to approach company goals from several angles to maximize success. To the uninitiated, inbound marketing attack plans can appear to be random and fragmented. Indeed, it is manipulation by skilled inbound marketing professionals that produces a cohesive campaign.
Contact us for a free inbound marketing consultation.
Posted by Vanessa Knipper on Wed, Aug 04, 2010 @ 01:14 PM
A no-frills blog that is not enhanced with multimedia is like Las Vegas without the lights. The inclusion of multimedia -- photographs, video, audio files -- in a blog post captures the reader's attention, adds visual interest to your blog and illustrates the purpose of the post, increasing the likelihood that they will return to your site.
Multimedia firms churn out endless streams of web-ready content, but bloggers and marketers should be aware that much of this content has a price tag attached. Copyright infringement is a serious infraction that can land writers in legal hot water. Authors, reporters, students and bloggers get in trouble if they borrow a paragraph from a book or news article and print it as their own work. In the same vein, you can't add photos, graphics or song clips you find on the Internet to your blog without obtaining the originator's permission.
Here are four ways to play it safe when adding images, video or sound clips to your blog:
- Purchase media from its creator. For example, many photographers offer downloads for a fee. You can also purchase multimedia from online resources and galleries such as iStock and Getty Images. Most will allow you to pay per item, but check into quantity discounts for big savings.
- Use media that is provided with your software. Many software products like Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop come with free access to extensive clip art/image galleries that can be used without charge by their customers.
- Link to media hosted on other blog sites. Many bloggers will allow you to reproduce photos and videos on their sites as long as you provide a credit and direct link to the home site.
- Create your own original media for your marketing purposes. Post your photos, self-produced videos and original music compositions.
Lastly, if you search for images using sites like Google Images - it is imperative to click through to the image source and review the permissions required for reproduction and use in your blogs as part of your inbound marketing strategy.
Posted by John McTigue on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 @ 06:41 AM
On NBC Nightly News this week, anchor Brian Williams made an announcement that is destined to be remembered as a pivotal moment in communication history. For the first time on Amazon.com, digital books outsold paper books.
Communication has been in flux ever since the Internet became widely available. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions began dropping when consumers found they could get the same news sooner and free on the Internet. Email and online bill payment have forced the U.S. Postal Service into crisis. Mainstream TV is faltering, many believe fatally, done in by the relentless, rejected stream of TV advertising and the popularity of Tivo and Hulu as alternatives. Radio remains popular but is limited by our inability to share information in real time. Telephones are becoming "smart phones" that enable all forms of digital communication.
Social Media - The New TV/Radio/Phone
The Internet is changing the way we communicate with each other and the world around us, but change might have been a bit more gradual if not for social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook has single-handedly bridged the computer generation gap, turning computer-phobic grandmothers into Internet divas. Just this week Facebook passed the 500 million user milestone and shows no signs of slowing down. More than any prior Internet application, Facebook has popularized personal computer communication, stripped it of its mystery and made it an integral part of our daily lives. We are now seeing a new "space race" between Internet giants Google and Facebook to capture our attention in all digital media and provide us with new tools for communication and collaboration.
Twitter adds speed to the mix. The immediacy of Twitter has moved communication from plodding to light speed and, in the process, fast-forwarded our expectations. Today's consumer expects instant response. Businesses that can't accommodate that need for speed will be left choking in the dust, trampled by the thundering herd of new tech-savvy business owners who are ready, able and willing to embrace cyber communication.
Location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, keep us in touch with each other by literally following us through our daily lives.
While communication experts have been predicting the death or dramatic reinvention of many of our traditional communication institutions -- newspapers, magazines, commercial television, book publishing, libraries, movie industry -- the first concrete indication that the future is now occurred this week when Amazon's digital book sales kicked dust over the dust jackets of their paper forbearers.
The Emergence of the Inbound Marketing Agency
So what does this mean for business owners trying to market their products and services to consumers? It means that the traditional outbound marketing techniques used to generate leads and drive sales are out and inbound marketing techniques that focus on social media communication platforms are in. Early adopters will gain a competitive edge and johnny-come-latelies will struggle. Traditional ad agencies are morphing themselves into interactive agencies and are forced to compete with smaller, more flexible inbound marketing specialists. It will be interesting to see how businesses adapt to this changing marketing landscape.
The new digital age for business is here. What's your strategy?
Photo credit: darkmatter.
Posted by Chris Knipper on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 @ 07:51 AM
The pervasive presence and overwhelming influence of social media in our daily lives is forcing business owners to change their marketing strategies or face extinction. Today's marketing climate is reminiscent of the computer revolution that separated inflexible old-schoolers from forward-thinking risk-takers. Business dinosaurs who clung doggedly to their typewriters and fax machines quickly succumbed, choked by the dust as their more flexible, forward-thinking peers stampeded past. The advent of mobile phones and then cell phones marked another critical turning point in the evolution of business marketing. Today, social media has pushed U.S. business to another crossroads that is destined to change the face of business marketing.
For decades, marketing strategies have relied on trade shows, seminars, email blasts, internal cold calls, telemarketing and advertising to generate leads and attract customers. Collectively referred to as outbound marketing, these marketing techniques focus on blasting your message OUT to huge numbers of consumers in the hopes of connecting with a few. The problem today is that consumers have become pretty savvy about blocking those attempts to connect. From telephone answering machines to computer spam filters to commercial-less Tivo and Sirius, consumers have become adept at avoiding outbound marketing ploys. Despite the fact that most companies still devote nearly 90% of their budgets to outbound marketing, it has become today's dinosaur. Don't get me wrong, there's still room for mixing in outbound techniques as part of an overall marketing campaign. But the days of 100% outbound marketing are rapidly approaching extinction.
The ever-increasing availability, accessibility and mobility of computer connectivity through smartphones, tablets and notepads have shifted consumer interest to Internet-based social media. The universal popularity of Facebook and Twitter combined with omnipresent cell phones and America's love of texting has transformed communication and consumer expectations. Consumers are no longer content to wait for an email response to a question or problem. Twitter has ramped up the importance of immediacy in business-consumer relations. In a recent Time magazine article, a columnist tracked response time to a customer complaint. When email response was at 48 hours and counting, he Tweeted about his problem and received a response within 2 hours.
To catch the attention of today's consumer, marketing strategies must now focus on interactive social media that lure consumers IN to their websites. Savvy marketers are spending their marketing capital on social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn. They're creating blogs, Twitter accounts and YouTube videos to appeal to today's constantly plugged-in consumer. Called inbound marketing, these social media marketing venues are the wave of the future -- and the future is now!
Are you making the switch? We can help with the transition.
Photo credit: slworking2
Posted by John McTigue on Mon, Jul 26, 2010 @ 07:32 AM
There are more than 133 million blogs on the Internet with bloggers posting in excess of 900,000 new blog posts every day. With that kind of competition, it's a challenge just to get your blog noticed and even more difficult to keep your blog on readers' radar. Creating a blog with a high level of readability is an important key to gaining and maintaining dedicated readers.
To attract readers and entice them to return, try these tips:
Some people were born to blog. Some of them work for us.
Photo credit: stijnbokhove
Posted by Vanessa Knipper on Tue, Jul 20, 2010 @ 07:00 AM
If you’ve seen one Carlton Banks video, you’ve seen them all. If you somehow missed this show, "Carlton" (played by Alfonso Ribeiro) was a character in the popular early-90's TV comedy sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" with Will Smith. He is best remembered for his hyper-energetic, unrestrained enthusiasm while performing his infamous dance moves. His attitude is infectious and you can't help but smile while watching.
We're not suggesting you dance for your team, clients, or audience - just that you put your heart and soul into your inbound marketing campaigns to get the buy-in you need to get results. Here are some "Carlton-inspired" tips for inbound marketing buy-in...
How to convert your Team, Clients, and Audience:
Team Buy-In. It starts with your pitch to your inbound marketing team. If you don’t love your campaign idea, they certainly won't. Rally your team, give them clear campaign objectives, and empower them to devise the creative concepts and campaign parameters for presentation to your client. No one knows the social media rules/regs, trends, best practices, and possibilities like the knowledgeable members of your inbound marketing team.- Client Buy-In. Present your concepts with compelling rationale and a clear-cut plan for execution and measuring results. Clarify YOUR buy-in to the campaign and justify your enthusiasm by demonstrating why it has merit to reach their objectives, via examples and/or theory. Your client hired you because they trust you and value your frank opinion.
- Audience Buy-In. Execute your campaign with the same level of excitement that you had upon conception of the idea. Provide useful content, engaging interaction, and clear calls-to-action. Reach out and ask your audience how they feel about your campaign - making them part of the team: an insider, an influential stakeholder, a brand advocate. Accept their valuable critique. Encourage them to share your content with their friends. Reward your audience with valuable information, exclusive benefits, and recognition for their loyalty.
- Measure Results. Celebrate reaching your goals. Acknowledge team members that brought your campaign concept to fruition and ultimately helped you reach your goals. Intensely scrutinize and continuously modify campaigns that aren’t achieving the results you had planned for. Be quick to adjust to unexpected road-blocks and overcome them.
Inbound Marketing Takeaway: Be passionate about your campaign concepts - from inception through planning and execution, be agile and expect to make adjustments along the way to reach your goals, and recognize the efforts of your Inbound Marketing Team.
What's your inbound marketing strategy? We can help.
Photo Credit: jimmagz
Posted by John McTigue on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 @ 08:08 AM
Every business blog has the potential to become a marketing powerhouse, but achieving that goal takes a solid strategy, a bit of creativity and astute manipulation of search engine optimization techniques. When effectively produced and managed, business blogging can become a key element in your -Internet Marketing Strategy. Blogging has proven to be an effective way to build brand recognition, drive motivated customers to your website, generate sales leads and nurture positive customer relations.
Effective business blogs use a marketing strategy:
Interesting and useful content. Consumers return to blogs that provide information they can use. To attract potential customers, your blog should inform and be relevant to your particular business. Industry news, product updates, interviews with industry experts, developing trends, the impact of current events, and personals insights into topics important to your target audience are all potential blog topics. - Regular content updates. Blogs should be updated regularly to encourage readers to return frequently in search of new content. Publishing new blog posts three times per week, spaced every other day, is optimal. While regular additions of new content to your blog help build reader anticipation, encouraging them to return, posting new content also gives Internet spiders new material to crawl, boosting your search engine rank.
- Create a distinctive voice. Blogging is an informal medium. Approach blogging as a conversation with your readers. When you write a blog post, avoid insider acronyms and corporate gobbledygook. A blog shouldn't sound like a formal journal article or a memo to employees. This is an opportunity to humanize your business, to show potential customers that behind your website are real people waiting to take care of their needs. Most bloggers find it most comfortable to blog in their own voice, and it's okay to be chatty and humorous.
- Optimize your posts. Make sure that every post has strategic keywords in the title, headings, url, link text, body text and alt tags on images. Your blog content should be relevant to those keywords (and vice versa), i.e. make it a coherent keyword-rich post that conveys a message.
- Spread the word. Promote every blog post on social networks, social bookmarking sites and e-mail newsletters. Tell people what your post is about and why they should be interested. Use url shorteners to preserve as much descriptive text as possible in social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Leverage hashtags in Twitter to spread the word beyond your personal network of followers. Target groups, memes or audiences that should be interested in your post. Include social media sharing buttons and subscription forms on every post to encourage people to spread the word and come back for more.
Potential customers will return repeatedly to a blog that is informative and entertaining to read. Include a call to action in every blog post that is relevant to the topic at hand. This creates an opportunity to capture leads from your blog readers.
Content and voice are just the visible face of blogging. Underneath the words is a structure of search engine optimization elements that, when properly incorporated into the structure of your business blog, help to promote your brand in the search engines and bring in qualified leads.
Your blog - is it driving home the sales leads? Need some help with that?
Photo Credit: hughelectronic
Posted by Chris Knipper on Fri, Jul 09, 2010 @ 06:41 AM
Effective search engine optimization (SEO) is a complex dance between actions that take place on and off your website. The on-page SEO factors that we discussed in our previous post can be quickly and directly controlled by website designers and so provide the easiest and most efficient paths to achieving search engine optimization. However, off-page SEO factors, while more complex to manipulate, promise the bigger SEO payoff and can have a greater impact on your inbound marketing strategy.
Off-page SEO manipulation requires exacting knowledge of search engine operation, practiced experience with search engines and a high level of Internet expertise. Inbound marketing professionals are highly experienced in implementing effective off-page SEO techniques.
Effective off-page search engine optimization begins with a great website and blog. Well-designed and well-written websites attract site visitors and keep them coming back for more. All that activity keeps your click popularity soaring, one of many factors search engines measure to determine website rankings. Healthy website traffic also increases critically important link popularity. Using the on-page SEO factors we discussed in our last post to create a dynamic website sets you up to capitalize on off-page SEO factors.
Off-page SEO factors
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Link popularity is the SEO gold ring. Before your website can start climbing the rankings ladder, it has to be noticed. The more links from outside sites that point to your website, the greater your Internet visibility. Particularly on Google, link popularity is essential in winning the keyword competition. When many sites use the same keywords, it is link popularity -- the number of other websites that link to your site -- that will make your website stand out from the competition.
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Link building can be augmented by exchanging reciprocal links with website visitors. Invite visitors to link to your site. Blogs, Internet press releases, Facebook pages, white papers and newsletters all provide opportunities for reciprocal linking. The most effective links are created when one of your keywords is included in the link text. To help ensure that others link to your keywords, include your keywords in titles and headings, the items most frequently selected when creating links. Don't engage in mass reciprocal link exchange campaigns or services. They often provide low quality inbound links that aren't relevant to your site and may even damage your site search rankings.
- Social media engagement - the more of this you do, the better. Comments on blogs provide an opportunity for inbound links. They may not always provide SEO "juice", since many will have a "nofollow" attribute that prevents search bots from following them to your site. But in general, your comments should show your expertise and interest in the topic and may entice people to visit your website. In any case, social media engagement exposes your website to more people and often leads to more traffic and better SEO results.
What is your off-page SEO strategy? How well is it working?
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