!!!!!! Inbound Marketing Buyer s Guide

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1 Inbound Marketing Buyer s Guide Hannon Hill Corporation 950 East Paces Ferry Road Suite 3300, Atlanta, GA spectate.com (o) (f)

2 2 Table of Contents Introduction to Inbound Marketing " Inbound versus Outbound Marketing"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""# Why pay attention to inbound marketing?"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""# What can I do to take advantage of Inbound Marketing?# Search Engine Optimization """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""$ Pay-Per-Click""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""$ Social Media""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""$ Blog Posts """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""% Microsites""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""% Inbound Links """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""& What are Inbound Marketing Tools? $ What are the benefits of using an Inbound Marketing Tool? % Saving time""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""' Helping you understand your data """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""' Providing flexibility and agility """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""' Saving money"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""' Should I buy an Inbound Marketing Tool? & Feature Checklist' Google Analytics Integration"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""( Visitor Companies""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""( SEO Data""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""( Custom Links""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )* Social Media Connectors """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )* CMS/Blogging Integration""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )* Goal Setting"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )) Action Items"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )) Real-time Data"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )) Integration with B2B tools """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )) Competitor monitoring""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )) Multi-campaign management"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )+ Multi-account management"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )+ Alerts """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )+ Form Tracking """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )+ Simple user administration """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )+ Software as a Service (SaaS)""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )+ No long-term contracts """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" )# Conclusion(# About Spectate() Contact Us ($

3 3 Introduction to Inbound Marketing You may have researched the most current marketing trends and inevitably stumbled upon the term inbound marketing. But what exactly is inbound marketing? How does it differ from outbound marketing? How can you best leverage your inbound marketing efforts? This buyer s guide is intended to answer those questions for you, and to give you tips on how to maximize your return on investment with the use of inbound marketing tools. Inbound versus Outbound Marketing The concepts of inbound and outbound marketing existed even prior to the emergence of the web. Outbound marketing is based on the idea that you go out and find your customers. A door-to-door salesman, for instance, is a classic example of early outbound marketing. A traditional example of inbound marketing would be strategically placed billboards. The idea, of course, is that your potential customers will find you. A big billboard on a highway, showing a juicy steak may increase traffic to your restaurant off the next exit. It s easy to see how these concepts translate to more high-tech marketing. You might use web tools to create a profile of your target customers, and then start cold-calling them. Again, it s an approach where you go and find your customers. There s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Now let s look at some examples of inbound web marketing: social media posts, paid listings, pay-per-click ads, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What s the idea? To make your customers find you, either searching for certain keywords, by visiting related sites, or by reading your tweets. Here s the good news: you don t have to choose between outbound and inbound marketing. They actually complement each other well. But one thing is certain: you cannot afford to neglect your inbound marketing efforts. Why pay attention to inbound marketing? Inbound Marketing is generally a less expensive and in most cases, less resource-heavy marketing model. In addition, if your inbound marketing strategy is implemented effectively, it can exponentially increase your web traffic, your leads, and your conversion rate. Inbound marketing is a way to reach more prospects more quickly than you would with outbound marketing. Another consideration is the fact that people get bombarded with phone calls and s, which makes caller id and spam filters so useful to them, and, in return, often harder for you to reach potential customers. Inbound marketing focuses on people who, through one action or another, have already expressed a certain level of interest and are thus to be considered higher caliber prospects.

4 4 What can I do to take advantage of Inbound Marketing?* Inbound marketing is a term that covers many aspects of a marketing strategy. Here are some of the efforts that fall under the inbound marketing umbrella: Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, can be a bit of an intimidating term, considering that there are so many things that you can do to optimize your site, from ensuring appropriate keyword density to internal linking to your home page, from putting keywords in your title tag to reducing Flash-based content. Since SEO can be a daunting task, many businesses hire consultants to handle this aspect of inbound marketing for them. While part of Search Engine Optimization is based on the design of your site, which means that it s a one-time task (until you go through a re-design), the other, arguably even more important side of SEO is directly related to your content, which of course, is an ongoing effort. This is an important fact to keep in mind when you are deciding whether to outsource your SEO. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing task because it is affected by your content. Pay-Per-Click* Pay per Click (PPC) is a web advertising method that can generate traffic to business sites quickly. The business pays the host of the ad only when a visitor actually clicks on the ad. PPC models can be based on a fixed price per click, as is the case with most content sites, or on a bidding system, generally offered by search engines, in which case the advertiser bids on specific keywords. The benefit of PPC to the advertisers is that they only pay the host if traffic to their sites is generated instead of paying a fee for an ad on a specific web page. However, as you may have guessed, PPC is not cheap, not just in terms of cost per click, but also considering how much time it takes to effectively monitor the keyword bidding for search engines. Social Media* Whether you are a business owner, marketer, or IT professional, you have in some way thought about social media. Does your organization have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and a LinkedIn profile? If not, it may be a good idea to start thinking about those tools. Using social media is a free, relatively hassle-free way to take advantage of inbound marketing. While establishing a social media presence is quick and easy, it is vital to keep it fresh with new posts. Make sure

5 5 you post updates frequently, that you monitor tweets or status updates mentioning you (and your competitors), that you follow your followers, and that you comment on relevant posts and discussions. The very nature of social media is that it engages people, which is why it is imperative to post updates frequently. However, that does not mean that you have to spend the majority of your day looking at TweetDeck or posting thought-provoking statements. As with all successful marketing strategies, it is essential to understand the correlation between your efforts and your success rates. In other words, if you don t dedicate time to analyzing and understanding which types of posts generate the best results in terms of likes, followers, responses, etc., you may waste your efforts on things that will not have a very high return on investment, while missing other, better opportunities. Blog Posts Make no mistake about it: when it comes to inbound marketing, there is nothing more important than fresh, quality content. Why? First of all, once your visitors land on your site, you want to make sure that you keep them engaged. Second, in order to generate inbound links, which is particularly important for SEO, your content has to be worth linking to. Blogs are an excellent way to keep your content current and interesting, and to interact with your visitors. Blogs provide you with a forum to establish yourself as a thought leader in your area of expertise, to communicate with your audience, and to attract qualified leads. As with all marketing efforts, it is important to understand what works and what doesn t, so that you can adjust and optimize your strategic actions accordingly. It s not enough to feverishly write content and post blogs. At a minimum, you have to be able to see which keywords or phrases generate a higher amount of traffic and a greater response in terms of comments, links, and tweets than others. Microsites A microsite is a mini website, sometimes consisting of only one or two pages, that has its own domain name and is used primarily as a supplement to your main site. A microsite may contain information about a special event or initiative, specific products or editorials. One of the benefits of microsites is that they can help with both Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click cost reduction, since you can optimize them for even more specific keywords than your main site. If you have a content management system in place, especially one that allows you to manage multiple sites, it is a fairly easy process to create and maintain a microsite. The actual work begins when it comes to making sure that you are

6 6 optimizing it for the right keywords. * Inbound Links Inbound links, also referred to as backlinks, are links from other sites to yours. If you re new to the concept of inbound links, you may think that their main benefit is that visitors on the linking site will click to yours, but inbound links are also an important factor for Search Engine Optimization. A lot of search engines evaluate your site based on inbound links, counting them as votes for your site. In addition, inbound links can increase your chances of improved rankings on search results, because web crawlers look at links between sites and identify the URLs to visit. There are a number of things that you can do to increase your inbound links, such as listing your site in web directories, participating in forums, creating separate blogs, or contacting webmasters of other sites and ask them if they are willing to link to yours if you reciprocate. Most importantly, keep in mind that quality content is the key to success for inbound links. You have to make your content worth linking to. What are Inbound Marketing Tools? As you can see, there are many options when it comes to generating leads through inbound marketing, and each one of these options may work trying as for your business. Getting started is easy, but how do you optimize your strategy and leverage inbound marketing to its full potential? If you follow all of the advice that you ve received so far, it sounds like you will have to log into quite a few applications, such as Google Analytics, Facebook, Twitter, a keyword density checker, a PageRank checker, an inbound link checker, etc. to monitor your success. And once you ve done that you still don t know how you measure up against your competitors. In addition, you still have to analyze your own data so that you can identify what works and what doesn t work, so that you can adjust your actions accordingly. This may sound like an intensely resource-heavy undertaking, especially if you have a small marketing team. The good news is that there are inbound marketing tools available that can provide a one-stop shop for all of your inbound marketing data and can monitor pertinent data regarding your competitors as well.

7 7 What are the benefits of using an Inbound Marketing Tool? Saving time One of the most obvious benefits of an inbound marketing tool is the time-saving effect. You do not have to log into dozens of accounts to monitor your web traffic, your SEO-related data, and your social media mentions. Instead, an inbound marketing tool provides you with a holistic view of all of your pertinent inbound marketing data. Some inbound marketing tools even integrate with content management systems, which allows you to view your data and to make updates to your site easily and quickly. Helping you understand your data* The trick of a good inbound marketing tool is to not overwhelm the user with data, but to present it in a way that makes it easy to understand and easy to act on. If you ve looked at web analytics tools, you may have found that you have so much information at your fingertips that it can be hard to identify what it means and how the data points correlate with each other. How do you act on data that you don t fully understand? This is where inbound marketing tools can assist you by showing you a custom view of your data and providing you with actionable items. An inbound marketing tool can help you understand which strategies work best for you and provide you with a framework that can make you a smarter marketer in the process. Providing flexibility and agility Marketing is not a rigid process in which you and your marketing team come up with a long-term strategy and expect it to generate the desired results smoothly. These days, agile marketing has become a necessity. If you have a tool that allows you to act on suggestions quickly and to help you see what works for your particular business, you can remain flexible and continue to optimize your marketing efforts and maximize your desired results. Saving money* Interpreting your web analytics data can be a very time-consuming task. In fact, the majority of companies who have implemented analytics have also increased

8 8 their marketing staff. In addition, Search Engine Optimization, one of the key ingredients to successful inbound marketing, can be tedious and resourceintensive. An inbound marketing tool can reduce cost by proving you with SEOpertinent data and keyword suggestions. Should I buy an Inbound Marketing Tool?* If you are a business owner, marketer, or IT professional who has limited resources available to capitalize on the immense potential of inbound marketing, you should try an inbound marketing tool. Most of the tools available on the market will offer you a free trial or proof of concept, so you don t have anything to lose by testing an inbound marketing tool that offers the features you re looking for. Instead of increasing your staff or outsourcing your inbound marketing efforts, subscribing to an inbound marketing tool on a monthly basis can be a viable, and very affordable alternative. Keep in mind that one of the main characteristics of modern marketing is agility. What that means is that you constantly have to inspect and adapt. If you don t see the value of your inbound marketing tool, you can always cancel the subscription without losing a big investment.

9 9 Feature Checklist The inbound marketing tools currently available range in scope, functionality, and price. You have to decide what s right for your business. Here is a list of features to consider when evaluating an inbound marketing tool. Google Analytics Integration* There are several things to keep in mind when you evaluate an inbound marketing tool with regard to Google Analytics. The first one, of course, is whether it actually integrates with GA. Since Google Analytics is the most popular and widely used web analytics tool, it makes sense for an inbound marketing tool to connect to it. The other part is the type of data that the tool displays and how it displays it. It should be easy for you to immediately get an idea of your web traffic over a short time frame, so that you can correlate your most recent actions to your traffic. You will also want to be able to see your visitors behavior, such as which pages they visited, how long they stayed on the pages, and from which referring site they came to yours. A tool that can retrieve the visitor s IP address and show you the company associated with would be considered an additional bonus. Visitor Companies Before visitors on your site submit a form with personal information, they are just anonymous individuals, and there is not much data on which you can act. However, if your inbound marketing tool can show you the companies to which your visitors belong, you immediately gain real value from your system, because you have a much better idea of who your visitors are. In addition, an inbound marketing tool should give you the ability to receive alerts every time a specific company is on your site, so that you can contact that organization (after monitoring their behavior on your site). This functionality also allows you to set up alerts every time one of your competitors is visiting your site. SEO Data Since Search Engine Optimization is such a crucial component of inbound marketing, make sure that you are comfortable with the amount of SEO-related information that your inbound marketing tool provides to you. For instance, in order to optimize your content, it would be helpful to view an SEO-focused

10 10 analysis of your blog posts. You may not know how difficult it is for your site to rank high for specific keywords. Therefore, your inbound marketing tool should give you an idea of the degree of difficulty and also provide you with alternative suggestions. It is also very helpful to be able to how frequently your keywords are used in searches. A tool that helps you optimize your content can be of great value. Custom Links Your inbound marketing tool should not just allow you to track your visitors and your leads behavior on your own website, but it should also allow you to track their clicks on sites, files, and pages to which you don t have access and can t inject your own tracking code. For instance, you may want to track clicks on your Facebook page or YouTube channel. A good inbound marketing tool will let you create custom links and thus allow you to track the visitors clicks on external pages. Social Media Connectors One of the major advantages of an inbound marketing tool is that is can serve as a one-stop shop for your inbound channels to simplify your marketing campaign. That s why it s critical that your inbound marketing tool allows you to connect to and tap into your social media data, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Jigsaw, to name but a few. After all, you want to be able to better understand how your social media initiatives affect your web traffic and your leads. In addition, an inbound marketing tool should allow you to not only post updates to your Facebook page and your Twitter account, but it should also provide the ability to schedule updates ahead of time. A big time-saver for a marketer is the ability to automatically send out tweets and Facebook updates every time new content, such as a blog post, is created. This functionality is key for an inbound marketing tool. Furthermore, as you are monitoring social media conversations for specific keywords, your inbound marketing tool should enable you to automatically assign individuals to those keywords, so that they can respond to the social media mentions immediately. In addition, you shouldn t have to log into various social media accounts. Your inbound marketing tool should allow you to tweet, re-tweet, and reply to conversations right within the system. CMS/Blogging Integration Inbound marketing tools that integrate with content management systems and blogging applications are especially beneficial, because they allow you to analyze existing content immediately, so that you can establish a baseline and

11 11 track your blogging success moving forward. Being able to quickly and easily update your site allows you to focus on what matters most: fresh, quality content. Goal Setting* * An inbound marketing tool should allow you to specify your own performance goals, such as Increase web traffic by 10% within a specific time frame, and to show you the progress you are making towards achieving those goals. In addition, an inbound marketing tool that helps you identify reasonable goals is very beneficial, especially if you are fairly new to the concept of inbound marketing. Action Items* Once you ve set your inbound marketing goals, a tool that gives you a list of specific action items, such as suggested keywords, is particularly useful, since it eliminates a lot of the guesswork. Real-time Data* Agile marketing is all about being flexible and acting quickly. Therefore, inbound marketing tools should sync up with your analytics and B2B data in real time, so that you can act on the most current findings and recommendations and don t lose out on opportunities. Integration with B2B tools* An inbound marketing tool that integrates with,+, and Customer Relationship Management tools allows you to mine detailed information about your visitors and to correlate your web traffic to lead generation. Competitor monitoring* It s not enough for your inbound marketing tool to just provide you with data about your own site, but it s also important for you to see how you measure up to your competition in various categories, such as Page Authority, inbound links, and keyword density. In addition, this information may be helpful as you optimize your bidding on certain keywords for Pay-Per-Click.

12 12 Multi-campaign management* As a marketer, you think in terms of campaigns, not necessarily websites. Therefore, an inbound marketing tool should accommodate the concept of multiple campaign management. For instance, you should be able to create campaigns for things like User Conference or May 2012, or even for your new website, and tag your marketing activities to be associated with those campaigns. Multi-account management An inbound marketing tool should make it easy to switch between accounts to which you have access rights without forcing you to log in with different credentials. Alerts As a marketer, you should be able to set up alerts based on conditions that you want to monitor. Ideally, your inbound marketing tool allows you to create alerts for specific monitor actions, especially related to leads, users, and groups. Form Tracking* Forms are a great way to obtain information about your leads. Therefore, an inbound marketing tool that allows you to create and edit forms easily should be considered a plus. Your inbound marketing tool should also provide you with conversion analysis, so that you can see which forms resulted in the greatest number of leads. Simple user administration* The last thing you want to worry about with an inbound marketing tool is user administration. After all, you want to focus on things that drive traffic to your site, not on administrative issues. Therefore, the easier an inbound marketing tool makes the creation, editing, and deletion of user accounts and group assignments, the better. Software as a Service (SaaS)

13 13 If your inbound marketing tool is based on a SaaS model, you don t have to worry about installing it on your servers or your end users computers. You simply access it just like any other website. As a result, you save time and money on IT resources and hardware. In addition, it gives you more flexibility, as you don t need to be logged into your company s network in order to use the product. Furthermore, since the vendor hosts the software, you don t have to handle any upgrades yourself, and you can be sure that your availability and uptime are up to industry standards. No long-term contracts* When looking for an inbound marketing tool, a subscription offered on a monthly basis is advisable. Not only does it show that the vendor is confident that the product will be valuable to you, but it also gives you the flexibility you need in the age of agile marketing.

14 14 Conclusion Inbound marketing can exponentially increase your web traffic, your leads, and ultimately your company s revenue. Monitoring and maintaining all of the various aspects of inbound marketing, such as Search Engine Optimization, social media, inbound links, etc. can be resource-intensive, but an inbound marketing tool can assist you by providing a one-stop shop for all your inbound channels. Collecting all of your inbound marketing data is only the first step in the process. The next step is to correlate your actions to your web traffic, so that you can optimize your strategy. A good inbound marketing tool will make it easy for you to understand what works and what doesn t, and it will empower you by providing you with action items. As a result, you will learn how to leverage inbound marketing to its full potential for your business, while becoming a smarter, more efficient, and more effective marketer in the process.

15 15 About Spectate Spectate is a new kind of marketing for a new kind of marketer. Spectate makes inbound marketing easy by focusing on what matters: results. Our Story As software development company we re very proud of our products and our culture. Our marketing team does a great job maintaining our website and interpreting our web analytics. However, we realized a while ago that we had a problem that we needed to solve: We didn t quite understand the correlation between our web content and our traffic. As a result, we had no idea of the value of specific content. What we needed was a marketing tool that would allow us to focus on results. That s how Spectate was born. Since we built a product that works for us, it can help you as well. Our Values We want Spectate to be valuable to you. That s why we don t lock you in with long-term contracts. We re confident that you ll be able to use our product to reach your web marketing goals and to become a smarter marketer in the process. If you don t get value from our product, you shouldn t have to keep paying for it. We care about user experience. That s why we strive for simplicity and ease of use and why we communicate in human terms. That s also why we go out of our way to provide great customer service on all levels, from engineering to sales and from support to services. Our Process We subscribe to a very simple, agile approach: inspect and adapt. We believe that we can develop a better product if we create features quickly, see what works and doesn t work, and adjust as needed. Product requirements evolve so quickly these days that solutions must evolve in the same manner. This iterative software development methodology is mirrored in the way Spectate approaches web marketing. Spectate is designed to let you act on suggestions quickly and to help you understand what works and what doesn t for your particular business. That way, you can remain agile and continue to optimize your marketing efforts and maximize your desired results.

16 16 Contact Us To learn more about Spectate and how it can help you grow your inbound leads, please contact us. We re happy to set up a demo or talk with you about your organization s specific inbound marketing needs. Hannon Hill Corporation Tel: East Paces Ferry Road Tel: Suite 3300 Fax: Atlanta, GA spectate.com