Tactical advice and specifics on how to establish and grow a brand community.

1. Inbound Marketing
How to earn your customers’ interest, loyalty and passion
with great content, SEO, social & conversion marketing
Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz
Digital Leaders Executive Briefing 2012

2. Let’s Start with a Story

3. My First 6 Years as a Startup Founder
Rand and Gillian’s Combined Personal Debt
R
Blog post: http://randfishkin.com/blog/103/just-keep-going

4. The Last 5 Years Monthly
Visits
We took one round of
financing in 2007; $1.1MM
from Ignition + Curious Office
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

5. The Last 5 Years Monthly
Visits
Launched our
Link Graph Index
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

6. The Last 5 Years Monthly
Visits
In 2009, we dropped
consulting entirely
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

7. The Last 5 Years Monthly
Visits
2010 had 7,000
2010 had 7,000
paying subscribers
paying subscribers
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

8. The Last 5 Years Monthly
Visits
Failed to raise funding
(despite long, nasty
efforts) in 2009 and 2011
Full story at http://randfishkin.com/blog/128/misadventures-venture-capital-funding

9. The Last 5 Years Monthly
Visits
2011 was our first 8-figure
year, with 15,000
subscribers and nearly
1.5mm visits/month
More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

10. How Do We Get Customers?
Paid Channels
Inbound
~18% of our signups come via paid channels (in blue); the rest are via inbound channels

11. Interruption vs. Inbound

12. Interruption Marketing

13. Inbound Marketing

14. Interruption Marketing

15. Inbound
Marketing

16. Interruption
Marketing

17. Inbound
Marketing

18. Some
Marketing

19. Stops Us
Interruption
…

20. From Doing What
We Want to Do

21. So It Can Sell Us
R

22. R
Stuff We Don’t Need

23. That’s Interruption Marketing

24. R

25. R
Interruption Marketers

26. R
Interruption Marketers Me

27. Ads
R
Interruption Marketers Me

28. That’s
Not
R
How
We
Roll

29. How People Buy in 2012

30. Realize a Need
R

31. Investigate Options
R

32. Ask Our Friends
R

33. Seek Out Experts
R

34. Find Communities
R

35. Dig Into Every Detail Available
R

36. Convert
R

37. R
You Don’t Buy Those Visitors
You Earn Them.

38. In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing
In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing
-noun
-noun
R
Any tactic that relies on earning people’s
Any tactic that relies on earning people’s
interest rather than buying it.
interest rather than buying it.

39. We’re Here to Help
R

40. Startups Disrupt Markets. How About Marketing?

41. Inbound Channels

42. Content

43. Influences
Everything

44. Without Great
Content…

45. There’s
No
Chance of
Success.

46. Content Can Mean:

47. “Content.
”

48. Community

49. Product

50. Or
Distribution

51. No Matter the Form,
Content is the
Foundation of Great
Inbound Marketing

52. Search

53. Search is How
Things Get Found.

54. Search =
Discovery

55. Discovery Leads to
Sharing

56. Search is Still
Big

57. And Growing
Currently, there are more
than 3 billion searches/day
on Google

58. Search Often Brings the
Most Highly Qualified Traffic

59. But Guess Where Searchers
Click…
~20% of clicks
~80% of clicks

60. Social

61. Social Lives at the Top of the
Funnel

62. Social is Discovery
Prior to Interest

63. Social Demands Great
Content,

64. And Rewards It.

65. Today,
Social is
a Huge
Influence
on Search

66. Users: 50mm 750mm 200mm 120mm
120mm 10mm
Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm
And Social Appears to Be
Fragmenting into Multiple Large

67. Email

68. Email is Social’s “Secret
Weapon”
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/social-medias-secret-weapon-email.html

69. And Email Marketing is Insanely
Profitable/Powerful
http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/

70. Conversion

71. The Funnel Only
Exists So It Can
Convert.

72. Optimizing Conversion
Means Measuring &
Testing
http://dmix.ca/2010/05/how-we-increased-our-conversion-rate-by-72/

73. It Means Listening, Too.

74. A Lot of Conversion
is Wrapped in Soft
Metrics

75. Branding

76. Messagin
g

77. Familiarity

78. Trust

79. CRO is a Critical
Practice

80. But it
Requires
Holistic
Marketing
to
Succeed.

81. Building an Inbound Strategy

82. Who is Your Audience?
R
http://xrrr-slog.blogspot.com/2007/10/corporate-demographics-2007.html

83. Where are they on the Web?
R
http://searchengineland.com/a-portrait-of-who-uses-social-networks-in-the-u-s-and-how-social-media-affects-our-lives-81653

84. What Content Works There?
R
http://blog.echen.me/2011/03/14/hacker-news-analysis/

85. Value of Content at Given Quality Levels
R

86. How Will You Get Visitors Into Your Funnel?
Branding/Awareness Free Trial Retargeting
Email Social OAuth
Mailing Address Phone Number
R
Multiple paths can work, so long as you segment them when tracking CR + CLTV

87. How Will You Measure & Improve?
Step #1: Discover
Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.
Step #2:Test
Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.
R
Step #3: Measure
Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact
Step #4: Repeat
Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media

88. Top 10 Inbound Marketing
Tactics & Examples for
2013

89. #1: Create Sharing Incentives
R to link to!
http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

90. #1: Create Sharing Incentives
R
Urbanspoon’s “Spoonback” program allowed them to compete w/ Yelp and build awareness to foodies, direct traffic from relevant
sites and great SEO. Founders credited the concept as being the most important part of the company’s success.

91. #2: Mine the Social Web for Engagement Opportunities
R
Twitter, LinkedIn, Q+A Sites, Google+, Blog Posts and Facebook can all work

92. #3: Create & Spread Embeddable Content
R
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/home is a great example

93. #4: Make Your Data Interesting; Share It
R
Probably the best case study around: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

94. #5: Mine Your Twitter Followers, Emails, etc.
R
Via Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/using-twitter-and-backlinks-to-build-links/2011/07/28/; tool
is here: http://simplymeasured.com/freebies/twitter-follower-analytics

95. #6: Use Social to Connect w/ Journalists + Bloggers
R
An amazing research tool: http://followerwonk.com

96. #7: Build Features that Require and/or Reward Sharing
R
http://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-Dropboxs-referral-program-at-bringing-in-*paying*-users-i-e-how-many-subscribers-do-they-have

97. #8: Give Your Community a Platform
R
Moz has a Q+A forum, a blog and a user-generated content platform, along w/ robust user profiles and a
points/gamification system. Content contributed by non-employees is ~35% of our overall traffic

98. #9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps
R
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author - good how-to

99. #9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps
R
We use http://wistia.com to post videos that automatically send video XML Sitemaps to Google

100. #10: Create a Monthly Top X Influencers in Your Industry
R
http://www.seattle20.com/startup-index.aspx updates monthly, but doesn’t use badges (which I highly recommend)

101. Every One of These Marketing Tactics
News/Media/PR
SEO Email
Blogs + Blogging Research/White Papers
Infographics
Comment Marketing
Social Networks
Online Video
INBOUND MARKETING!
R Local Portals
Forums (AKA all the “free” traffic sources)
Webinars
Social Bookmarking Word of Mouth
Direct/Referring Links Podcasting
Type-In Traffic Q+A Sites
Helps Every Other One

102. I Can’t Wait to See the Awesome
Things You’re Going to Build 
@SEOmom
www.seomoz.org/blog
gillian@seomoz.org