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 Wed, Jul 21, 2010 @ 06:55 AM
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is priceless, particularly when you're talking about inbound marketing campaigns. Everyone's familiar with the speed at which a video can go viral on YouTube. Teen heart throb Justin Bieber owes his mega-star fame to home videos of the young crooner posted on YouTube by his mom. Scottish singer Susan Boyle became a worldwide overnight sensation when a video of her Britain's Got Talent performance went viral. Celebrities and celebrity-wanna-bes have made adept use of Internet video sites like YouTube to promote themselves and claim their 15 minutes of fame. Post a catchy video on YouTube that catches viewers' attention and you can put yourself in the spotlight again and again.
Viral Videos and Inbound Marketing
The power of video to attract attention and promote brands and products hasn't been lost on savvy marketing directors. Coke, Pepsi and computer giant HP are just a few of the Fortune 500 companies that have discovered marketing gold in posting Internet videos and hosting online video contests. They and others have embraced the quirky creativity of amateur video artists to tap into the public's unquenchable thirst for another 30-second chuckle. In doing so, they not only tap a new, young, hip, tech-savvy audience but they create new perceptions about their brand, widening its consumer appeal beyond core demographics.
Poking a bit of fun on YouTube isn't a good match for every brand, but the power of video can be harnessed in a number of more traditional and highly effective inbound marketing applications to draw customers and sell products. Consider a few of these proven video enhancements:
- Add a demonstration video to your website, blog post or Facebook page to demonstrate how your product works. In a simple one- or two-minute video of your product in action, you can show customers how your product operates, something that might take pages to describe in writing
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Offer a list of how-to videos for do-it-yourselfers, naturally featuring the use of your product.
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Give your company a public face by filming a greeting, personal appeal, invitation or introduction by your company's president. Video is an excellent way to connect with consumers and establish a more personal relationship.
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Offer a video showcase of your products in use to spark customers' interest and suggest new uses for your products.
How does video fit into your inbound marketing strategy? We can help.
Photo credit: HeyGabe
Posted by Chris Knipper on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 @ 07:06 AM
From an estimated $4.5 billion last year, inbound marketing on social media networks is expected to grow to $38 billion by 2015, according to a new report released by Borrell Associates, Inc., a Virginia media research and consulting firm. Last year more than $1.5 million local U.S. business owners employed social networks in their inbound marketing campaigns, accounting for half of marketing spending. Facebook pages were the most popular new marketing stratagem, but blogs, Twitter, calls to action, specially designed landing pages and website redesign were also popular choices for building and strengthening Internet marketing campaigns.
The power of inbound marketing platforms to build brand recognition both locally and nationwide, deliver advertising and promotional messages quickly, and nurture positive customer relations is quickly usurping marketing budget funds previously reserved for more traditional forms of advertising. Over the past two years, inbound marketing on social networks has been closing the advertising gap, steadily creeping up on traditional print, television, radio, direct mail and telephone advertising. Spending marketing dollars on social networks is even giving proven Internet advertising techniques like email campaigns a run for their money.
By 2012 Borrell analysts predict that social network-based inbound marketing will draw even with traditional marketing strategies and quickly jump ahead. Marketing budgets for inbound advertising on social networks are expected to grow dramatically as businesses capitalize on our increasingly connected society. This year alone, inbound marketing spending on social networks is expected to jump 68% to $7.5 billion, capturing 11 cents of every online marketing dollar spent. In five years, Borrell predicts that one-third of all online marketing expenditures will be for inbound marketing on social networking sites.
Promotional campaigns, which are particularly suited to the immediacy and interaction of social network sites, are predicted to make the biggest gains in inbound marketing. In 2009, Borrell says online advertising captured 88% of social network marketing spending. Increasing emphasis on social network promotions is expected to drop online advertising expenditures to 50% this year and a mere 36% by 2015.
It's the ability to fine tune profiling engines on social networking sites such as Facebook that is driving the marketing stampede to inbound marketing. Profiling engines allow businesses to target online promotions and advertising to specific audiences by gender, age, relationship status, education level, profession, recreational preferences, hobbies -- actually, any measurable characteristic. That's a huge advantage no other advertising media can offer.
Photo credit: wallyg
Posted by Chris Knipper on Wed, Dec 23, 2009 @ 06:46 AM
A corporate logo design need not be flashy, intricate or extremely modern to be effective. Effective logos do, however, have to elicit some sort of response. At the very least, all logos should inspire a basic level of confidence and, ideally, interest in your brand.
Style and Font
There are far more fonts available for corporate logo design than there are on Microsoft Word or Mac Pages, for example. New fonts are constantly being created and can even be custom designed for your brand. So, it’s worth exploring different options through a bit of online research and consultation with your branding company.
See what similar brands in your area are using as fonts. What inspires confidence in one industry may be confusing, meaningless or even detrimental in another. There are certain fonts that say “digital” or “cutting-edge” while others might say “traditional,” “reliable” or “powerful”. Figure out what you’re trying to say first and then seek out your ideal font.
Corporate Logo Design and Color
As mentioned above, simple designs can achieve everything you’re looking for, but a word of caution: Don’t be so simple as to seem common or derivative. In other words, your logo should never be mistaken for Clip Art.
Choose colors that speak to your brand. Much like fonts, colors and color tones or brightness levels suggest different moods, characteristics and strengths of your brand. Colors in combination also have different effects. Sample different color combinations across all of your sample font and design schemes.
Also consider color in terms of light, texture and shadow. A strong designer can suggest modifications in color, texture, shading and tone to differentiate your logo.
Convergence
Sample a few different designs in a few different color schemes each. In the brainstorming and creative phase, all options should be on the table, including fun and wild ideas. In the end you can tie all the elements—style, font, design, color—together with your brand message.
Posted by Vanessa Knipper on Thu, Nov 05, 2009 @ 12:54 PM
When was the last time you drafted your branding strategies' strengths and weaknesses chart?
1. Start by simply identifying the services that you provide and which services you don’t provide. Then, pinpoint the areas in which you excel and where you need improvement.
2. Ask yourself what your brand represents today. Come up with a list of adjectives. Do these adjectives fit into your original mission statement and brand strategy? Are they in accord with your day-to-day activities?
3. Then consider, in the past year, what projects you have executed most effectively as well as what types of clients or customers are most drawn to you. Notice any commonalities or patterns.
Remember, this is an internal audit. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is a way to see where and how your company and brand strategy can improve. This is a tool that leads to the final product of a more specific, powerful and polished brand image.
4. Determine where your brand is heading. After looking at your present branding strategies and how they square up to your goals or the original vision of your brand, you might notice some disconnects or inconsistencies. These should now command the primary attention of your brand strategy. If they are positive changes that you want to pursue as the future of your brand - great! If they are weaknesses or unfulfilled promises, consider how your brand can change course.
5. Bring the internal audit into focus. Ask yourself:
• Is my client base expanding or contracting?
• Do my clients adequately represent the types of clients I want to pursue?
• Have I gained on or lost to my closest competitors recently? (key accounts, revenue, market share, etc.)
• Do people understand my brand?
Now, take some time to reevaluate. Regroup with your team and your ad agency and begin redrafting your brand strategy. You’ll soon find the effort worth the time.
Posted by John McTigue on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 @ 09:52 AM
When to refresh your brand. That is the question.
Ideally, you want customers to come to you with a clear understanding of what you do. Taking on work that is not in your specialty area can be time-consuming, distracting or simply not possible. On the other hand, losing out on potential customers that are an ideal fit for your work and expertise can be frustrating.
Is your Brand Lost in Translation?
There are many steps along the road from brand development to brand promotion. They include brainstorming, considering your value proposition and examining competitors. As brand marketing begins, there are many areas of execution where your message can be either enhanced or distorted as it is translated into brochures, graphics, copy, designs, etc.
By simply reviewing each of these materials and seeing if they comply with a checklist of brand promotion goals, inconsistencies may pop out. If it’s still unclear why your brand might have gone stale, bring in a third party. Use a brief survey or questionnaire through SurveyMonkey.com or SurveyPool.com.
Ask respondents previously unfamiliar with your brand what they think your organization does. Tell them about your recent brand marketing and ask them their initial gut reactions. Love it? Hate it? Confused or indifferent?
First Impressions
Consider each piece of brand marketing collateral the opportunity to establish a first impression, but determine where the first first impression will be. Is it an image? Is it the title or, for an email, the subject line?
What makes for a compelling first impression? It could be a special offer or unique insight. This should be a real special offer and not the same as that of an obvious competitor or the same offer you made last month. Something your audience doesn’t know but should. Or perhaps it’s some other shocking or obscure, yet relevant, statistic that will make them appreciate your counsel.
Remember, people will often see only the beginning and end of your message so make both count. In sum: Grab the reader’s attention from the beginning and remind them of your call to action at the end.
How clear and strong is your brand? What works for you?
Posted by John McTigue on Sat, Oct 03, 2009 @ 12:35 PM
There's an interesting debate going on in LinkedIn Answers about the positioning of various lead nurturing software solutions. The marketing automation market leaders face off with each other in an unusual display of bravado. Let's try to boil this down to the primary issues and see how the players compare.
First let's define lead nurturing in the context of a marketing campaign. Lead generation is the process of attracting people to your venue (in the case of internet marketing, we're talking about your website) and convincing them to sign up for something, i.e. capture their contact information. Lead nurturing is what happens after that, the steps you go through to improve your lead's interest in your products and services and ultimately commit to a sale. More loosely defined, lead nurturing is an early form of customer relationship management (CRM), where you work on relationship-building and maintain constant contact with your customers to enhance retention and inside sales.
So the debate is about marketing automation, using software to make the process of lead generation, lead nurturing and CRM as easy and productive as possible. Here's a breakdown of the players and their solutions (this is not an exhaustive list, just the players in the LinkedIn debate):
- Eloqua - an integrated marketing automation platform featuring lead generation, contact management, e-mail marketing, website forms and landing pages, event management, lead nurturing, crm integration and marketing analytics.
- Marketo - a b2b marketing platform featuring lead generation, e-mail marketing, contact management, lead nurturing, lead scoring, crm integration and marketing analytics.
- HubSpot - an inbound marketing platform featuring a website cms, blogging, landing page creation, keyword analysis, on-page seo, social media promotion, inbound link analysis, competitive seo analysis, lead tracking, lead nurturing, marketing analytics and crm integration.
As you can see, Eloqua and Marketo offer similar solutions, focusing primarily on e-mail marketing for lead generation and lead nurturing. HubSpot, on the other hand, offers a complete solution for content marketing, social media marketing, seo, lead tracking and nurturing and marketing analytics. The Eloqua CTO and Marketo VP argue that their solutions offer more in-depth lead nurturing, scoring and deeper analysis of leads than does HubSpot. HubSpot's lead nurturing is new and has not been market-tested as long as either Eloqua and Marketo. Clearly Eloqua and Marketo offer more tools for lead nurturing, but my concern is their lead generation strategy. While e-mail marketing has a place in any internet marketing campaign, I believe that inbound marketing is a better strategy for getting found online and capturing leads.
In the interest of fairness and transparency, we have already chosen HubSpot as our inbound marketing solution, and we are a Certified HubSpot Partner. We have no experience with either Eloqua or Marketo, so it's up to you to investigate the benefits of these HubSpot competitors. We chose HubSpot because it is as close to a complete Internet marketing solution as you can find on the market.
The tip of the HubSpot spear is inbound marketing - creating great content, social media marketing and lead capture using calls-to-action and landing pages. Lead nurturing, closed-loop marketing (crm integration) and marketing analytics then allow you to take your lead generation success and optimize conversions to sales. For us and for our clients, there's a tremendous benefit to combining all of these disciplines in one coherent and easy-to-use platform. With such a platform, sales and marketing people can actually use the software to achieve maximum results without intensive training or technical support. If anyone else does all this, please let me know.
Posted by John McTigue on Thu, Sep 24, 2009 @ 01:41 PM
I found this great video by Marty Clarke from a couple of years ago, and I wanted to share it first, then throw in my 2 cents. The basic premise, managing by committee sucks. Nothing gets accomplished. You want to make progress, be a leader and make the decision yourself.
I'm going to roll this ahead to current day and talk about "crowdsourcing". That's the new buzz word for focus groups, design by the public, and yes, managing by committee. The key point of the video is that it's fine to collect everybody's opinion or create a poll, but the decision needs to be made by the senior stakeholder and noone else. There is only one "say" in the decision and that's the boss' say. Without this, there is anarchy and indecision. Not that I admire dictators, but you have to admit, they get the job done. Crowdsourcing is great for collecting data, but it's no substitute for leadership.
So when you're sitting down with your team and going around the room, listen to their advice, but don't tip your hand. They will be more likely to give it to you straight if they know it's up to you to decide. Thank them for their opinions and usher them out of the room. They can wait for you to decide.
Posted by Walt Winchel on Fri, Sep 18, 2009 @ 11:31 AM
As a graphic designer, we all strive to provide our clients with the most effective and up-to-date website designs, but, over time, there is a need to come back and look at how we can change the elements, content and design to keep our clients’ online image from becoming stale.
Clients typically become attached to their current design (“if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”) and fail to grasp the importance of the benefits of a website re-design. It may look great to the client, but to the reader it may be overlooked when they revisit because everything looks the same as it did last year. Think of the website like an article of clothing. After a year it could be that your site looks like it is wearing the web design equivalent of a pair of legwarmers and stone washed jeans, i.e. completely out-of-date.
If you’re thinking about a re-design of your existing website, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Does the site do what I originally wanted it to do? And do I still want it to do that?
- Has the audience for the site changed?
- Does the site pass accessibility and usability checks at the W3.org site?
- Do I still like the look?
- Do I need a new logo?
- Has my site that started with 3 pages become a large multi-tiered navigation site?
- Do I need help maintaining it?
The answers to these questions can help you determine if your site needs a small update or a complete overhaul. If you designed your site just a few years ago, you may not have had the opportunity (or cash) to set up your site using a Content Management System (CMS). However, advances in technology and the evolution of off-the-shelf CMS products make it much more affordable for anyone to use today.
Here are four tips to keep in mind when planning your re-design.
- Simplicity = Good.
Both in terms of functionality and design, it’s hard to go wrong with a clean and simple site that is easy to navigate.
- Know your audience.
Use applications such as Google Analytics on your existing site to see where your visitors are coming from, what browsers they are using and where they go on your site. This can help you figure out exactly what they want.
- Build your brand.
What are you telling your visitors about yourself? If the visitor can’t figure out what your site is about as soon as they land on the page, there is a strong chance you’ll lose them. People are always looking for something new when they log on. It visually tells the reader that the site is up-to-date, current, and that your company is still doing well enough for you to provide new information and/or products. Old, stagnant, and out-of-date sites say to the reader your company might not even still be in business.
- Improve functionality.
It’s OK to try something different but don’t confuse or annoy users by creating a website that is so off-the-wall that it’s unusable. Stay within your brand, but freshen up the look to current design trends.
Moral of the story: Keep your site current but also make sure the design says, "Hey, were still in business, going strong, and looking to the future!"
It’s amazing what a simple website re-design can do for a company's image and business!
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Posted by John McTigue on Wed, Sep 09, 2009 @ 09:04 AM
Inbound marketing is rapidly gaining popularity as a relatively inexpensive means to improve lead conversion rates and increase sales. Faced with marketing budget decisions for next year, many business owners wonder whether or not to completely replace traditional brand marketing methods with blogs, social media and search engine optimization. In many cases it makes sense to blend inbound and outbound marketing, when the strengths of one support the weaknesses of the other. Here are some examples.
Example 1 – Entering a New Market
Let’s say you’ve recently committed to an inbound marketing campaign with the business goal of improving web traffic by 200% and sales by 20%. You’re focusing your campaign on several counties, some of which are suburban, while others are more rural. The question is how will local residents find your blog and social media presence in the first place? Currently, if people search for local businesses in your market, your site isn’t listed. That’s one of the objectives of the inbound marketing campaign. How do you get them to follow you on Twitter and Facebook if they can’t find your site? Try some good old-fashioned brand marketing. Place some attractive billboards around the counties at key intersections announcing a promotional offer and direct people to a well-designed landing page to capture leads and announce your blogs and social networking venues. Try a short radio spot with the same pitch. E-mail your announcement to your current contact list and let them know about your new site, blog and community spirit.
Example 2 – Rolling Out a New Product or Service
Advertising is still one of the best ways to get peoples’ attention. Over time consumers grow weary of the same old intrusive ads blanketing the media, but for a quick impact to draw attention to a new product or service, there’s nothing like it. Get the buzz started with some clever “coming soon” ads to whet viewers’ appetites. If possible, target a special date that doesn’t conflict with some other popular event. Give people sneak previews via your web site, blog and social media – but don’t forget to capture your leads via landing pages! When the roll-out date arrives, throw a party of some kind, online or at a public place. Offer special promotions and prizes. Get them enrolled in your community sites and signed up for your RSS feeds. Reel in as many leads as possible and make sure they become loyal followers through your follow-up inbound marketing campaign.
Example 3 – Giving Back to the Community
Start by getting involved with local or national community outreach programs or charities. Offer your marketing (or other) expertise as a way of helping them reach their goals. Become a thought leader. Give free talks and webinars where you cite your own company’s efforts to get found online and capture leads. The main benefit will be helping struggling businesses and charities in your area, but you will also meet business leaders and potential clients. Word of mouth is still (and will always be) the most successful form of marketing. As you meet people and get the word out, don’t forget to invite them to join your online conversations via blogs and social media. You will start to build a strong following that trusts your judgment and is far more likely to do business with you.
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