We have made a lot of big statements when it comes to inbound marketing, lead nurturing and content marketing this week. Read on to find out what we are believing to be true! And mixed in you will find some great nuggets of information we found from around the web. Enjoy!
No it's not an ancient mystical riddle or Rubik's Cube. Lead nurturing should actually start at the very beginning of your sales and marketing campaign, not after lead conversion. Instead of thinking about lead nurturing as a series of post-conversion events, why not plan for the sale and work backwards? Why not envision your customer as a done deal, then figure out how you got there and plan for the next sale? Here are a few things you can do up-front to make sure that your lead nurturing campaigns deliver the goods.
In an Inc. article a few months back, the assertion was made that for the Inc. 500 (a listing of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S.), blogging was on the way out. Research from the Center for Marketing Research concluded that just 37 percent of Inc. 500 companies actively use a blog, down from 50 percent the year before. The rationale for this was that these companies are jumping directly to tools like Twitter and Facebook. There are so many questions I have about this research...
We’ve all been there. Somebody comes along and tells us that they want their marketing to look like Apple’s. What they are really saying, of course, is they want their brand to be like Apple’s, a goal that is unrealistic as they come. The truth is Apple-envy won’t produce real-world results. And Apple's branding doesn’t work for every size business. The real inspiration for marketing today should instead be a site that most of us visit on a daily basis, even if its visual identity doesn’t give you the warm-and-fuzzies: Amazon.com.
SEO cannot be done without content creation in the form of on-site content optimization and off-site optimization (i.e., blogs, press releases, case studies, how-to guides, videos, etc.), yet content marketing is often a separate line item from SEO, and unfortunately a lot of off-site content isn't optimized for SEO.
Once online visitors reach your landing page for a top- or middle-of-the-funnel piece of content, there is one more major step they must take: converting. These online visitors are potential customers who are not ready to make a purchase yet, but are considering giving you their personal information in exchange for some more educational content about your industry, product, service or company. Read more…
Surprise! LinkedIn Company Pages are about to get a little design makeover, the social network announced on its blog today. But it looks like you'll have to wait a bit -- LinkedIn is only rolling out these changes to select companies this week, including Philips, Citi, HP, and Dell, and the social network indicated the design won't be available for all Company Pages until later this year. Read more...
I've had several conversations with some pretty well established marketing agencies lately, and I'm blown away by some of the things I'm hearing. I guess I must be living in a bubble, because I was under the impression that the message from consumers has been loud and clear—we don't want to be interrupted, or called, until we're ready. That's what inbound marketing is all about, offering up solution-based content that only hints at a possible sale and nurturing people at their own pace. So why are large marketing agencies still not getting it? Here are a few snippets, paraphrased to protect the perpetrators.
Have a phenomenal weekend! See you—same place, same time!
Are you a medium- or large-sized business marketer? Discover the 4 critical steps to lead nurturing campaigns with this helpful guide.
