This presentation talks about the definition of Inbound Marketing and how to increase traffic to your site and grow your customer base.
It looks at using strategies such as Content Development, Social Media and SEO to increase engagement and traffic.
2. Inbound Marketing
Tanya Vaughan,
VP Digital
Tanya brings 15 years of digital marketing experience to DaviesMoore,
including strategy and execution of ROI-driven inbound marketing programs
including web development, SEO/SEM, social media and marketing automation
for companies such as HP, Symantec, Bodybuilding.com and CradlePoint. She
has been a speaker at marketing conferences including Search Engine
Strategies, PubCon, eTail. She served on the board for SEMPO (Search Engine
Marketing Professional Organization) and was a member of the Google Tech
Council for top technology brands
Jay’s marketing and advertising career began 17 years ago in her home of
South Africa. She went on to graduate with her marketing degree from the
London School of Marketing, and proceeded to manage and grow clients such
as British Telecom, yell.com BMW & HSBC in the UK and throughout Europe.
Since arriving in the States four years ago she has worked with brands such
as Nike, CenturyLink, Schlage and DHL. Jay is highly adept in developing
digital content to generate interaction and grow traffic and engagement
online.
Jay Bowen,
Digital Content
Director
3. Inbound Marketing
Marketing responsibilities may include:
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Brand
Messaging
Advertising
AR/PR
Field Marketing & Events
Creative/Design
Sales Support
Training / SE Support
Product Marketing
Support & Collateral
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Channel
Marketing Support
Corporate Communications
Digital Marketing
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Content
Ecommerce/Web Site Management
Social Media
Email, SEM, SEO, Affiliate
Banner advertising
Marketing Automation
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5. Inbound Marketing
Focus on What Moves Dials
• Inbound Marketing (what is it?)
• Inbound vs Outbound
• Components of Inbound
– Content
– Social Media
– SEO
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12. Inbound Marketing
Ok, I’m listening, how do I do “Inbound
Marketing”?
Great Content
+Social Media
+SEO
------------Earned (free) traffic!*
*And did we mention high-quality?
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14. Inbound Marketing
Content – Where do I start?
• Blogging: easiest way to start your content machine
• Companies that blog more regularly have…
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15. Inbound Marketing
Content: Best Practices
• Create a content strategy – not just a blog
• Offer different types of content that will appeal to
different preferences (webinars, white papers,
infographics, video e.g.)
• Put all of your content on ONE domain. Don’t make
the microsite mistake.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomainsvs-subfolders-microsites
• Distribute your content via social media
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17. Inbound Marketing
Social Media: Best Practices
• What, when and how you share matters
• Add a social bookmarking widget to site
• Share others’ content as much or more than your own
• Build relationships with the right influencers:
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Analysts
Bloggers
Press
Partners
Customers
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18. Inbound Marketing
But there are so many social media
networks…
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Experiment with multiple networks to see which appeal to your
target audience:
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20. Inbound Marketing
SEO: Best Practices
• Create content that is:
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Interesting
Unique
Credible
Share-worthy
Relevant (but not necessarily highly relevant)
• Optimize content for keyword phrases
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(Validate using Google Trends or Keyword Tool)
• Structure web site for crawlability and indexability
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Not sure how? Learn from the source: Google Webmaster Tools
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21. Inbound Marketing
What next?
Brand new to Inbound marketing?
Start with a Twitter account and retweet that supports your
product/solution
Already have a content strategy?
Launch a monthly email campaign using a free email service provider
Push content through social media networks
Already have email and social in place?
Time to embrace marketing automation for a true revenue machine
Create drip/trigger campaigns with relevant/timely messages
Nurture and qualify leads
Recommended Reads:
Marketo and HubSpot also have create great content.
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Don’t try to boil the ocean. Instead, focus on what will make the most difference with the limited resources you have.
Focus on what moves dials: Inbound MarketingQucik agenda – what is inbound marketing? What’s the difference between inbound and outbound?What constitutes “inbound”?
Let’s start with a simple definition: Earning trust versus buying it.
Example: Even if an ad is relevant and timely – i.e. watching the golf channel and a commercial comes on for Taylormade Golf clubs – it’s relevant and you’re a clear target. You might even be in the market for golf clubs. But when you’re ready to buy, you do what? Likely answer: search Google for reviews, advice and price. While the TV commercial may have helped the ad, if you don’t have time AND money, you can still compete if you have really good SEO.
You probably don’t have much of either but at a startup you typically can FIND time more easily than you can find money
If it takes so much time why do it? Simple: ROI Inbound costs 62% less per lead than outbound.
And if you don’t believe me, Forrester published this report last year. Paid marketing tactics generated 10% of the overall web traffic but cost marketers 40 billion. Conversely, Inbound marketing generated 90% of the traffic but only cost $5 billion.
Maybe you’re convinced by now and wondering how to do inbound marketing. It all starts with great content. Add some SEO and social media (maybe even al little opt-in email) and you will earn free, quality traffic to your business and/or web site. Now the web site or physical business takes over to close the sale. That’s another session.
Let’s start with content. What kind of content do I develop? Content comes in many packages – these happen to all be digital by the way. Depending on your audience some forms of content may or may not be as well received. For example, an ecommerce site probably isn’t going to use the white paper format and a B2B technology service provider isn’t going to use product reviews. But most of these formats can be very effective vehicles for both B2B and B2C. REPUPROSE content – the same content can be used for an infographic, a video, a webinar and a white paper – and then you promote that content via email, social media, press release, pitch to media.SYNDICATE! Don’t be territorial with your content – syndicate it! Slides on Slideshare, press releases to PR Web, Videos on YouTube, Social Media (add social media buttons to every page of your site)
Start with a blog –Read stats:Blogs are easy because they are meant to be top-of-mind, free flowing content (i.e. a dump of knowledge you have and can share easily). Plus it’ll generate ideas for more formal content – track the posts that get the most engagement and build on the topic to create other content assets. What can you blog about? Events you attend, opinions on industry content, trends in your business’s space, relevant newsjacking (example of March Madness), customers who use your product (better yet, get them to blog for you). Still drawing a blank? See what your competitors blog about. Or see what affliate or partner companies blog about. Go so far as to opine on one of their posts (but don’t forget to link to it).
Can’t stress enough the power of content. It not only is the backbone of and SEO strategy, it also provides fodder for social media, is required for any lead nurture program, marketing automation, pitch content for PR, analyst draw. Content = thought leadership.
Read stats – if you don’t leverage social media channels for your business you’re missing a huge, free opportunity to develop a network of brand champions and extend your reach far beyond what your web site can do alone.
Know the rules and best practices for each network. Addthis and ShareThis are both free social bookmarking tools you can add to encourage social promotion.Share relevant content – yours and others. Schedule it in advance so you stay engaged.Build relationships. Identify influencers using these sites:http://followerwonk.com/http://findpeopleonplus.com/http://www.tweriod.com/Use pictures.
With so many social networks where do you start? The social networks that appeal to your audience may be very different than other companies. Don’t just copy another company or even assume they know what they’re doing. Many companies are dabbling in social. You should too – but with a purpose. See where people engage and refocus efforts in those channels. At CradlePoint were struggling with getting new “likes” on Facebook. So we recently launched a social media contest on facebook and it took our likes from 300 to 1300 in just a few weeks. The best part was the contest was aroudn getting people to share the most innovative way they use CradlePoint so through the contest we got over 60 entries of people who (1) promoted CradlePoint to their network and (b) encouraged them to do the same so they could win. Prize of the year is an iPad Mini btw.
SEO really took off around 2006 and then social took center stage around 2009 but organic search is almost always the biggest driver of traffic to a company’s web site (or should be anyway) so it has to continue to be a top-of-mind strategy.
Again, it all starts with great content. And if it meets this criteria, you’ll get links (huge for SEO). Be sure to promote your content though your opt-in email lists, social media networks and syndication sites (all with links back to content on your site). Know your keyword phrases – be specific. Laptop or notebook computer? NAS – storage solution or famous rapper? Storage – data, clothing, furniture? Litmus test: do a search. See your competitors? Then you’re in the right space. Not all content you create will take off like wild fire but you will learn what appeals to your audience over time and get better.