INBOUNDMARKETING. For Beginners. Everything you need to know to get started.

Transcription

1 INBOUNDMARKETING For Beginners Everything you need to know to get started.

2 2 Bill is a Certified Inbound Marketing Specialist with Honors with 18 years of marketing experience. Not only is Bill an Inbound Marketing Specialist, but also has been a successful small and medium sized business owner in multiple industries since With a marketing degree from UCLA and a team of inbound marketing agents behind him, Bill founded Inbound Marketing Agents to help small and medium sized businesses close the marketing gap on larger companies at a fraction of the budget. In this ebook, Bill will share with you everything you need to know to start inbound marketing for your business.

3 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. What is Inbound Marketing? Why Inbound Marketing? Required Resources Software Requirements Getting Found Lead Generation Converting Leads to Customers Measuring Results...38

4 What is Inbound Marketing?

5 5 Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing Inbound marketing primarily uses the Internet to distribute compelling content that attracts prospects and builds trust with clients within your sales funnel. Outbound marketing pushes marketing messages to prospects via billboards, television, direct mail, telemarketing, and tradeshows, which disrupt your prospects daily schedule. Inbound Marketing consists of: Blogging Premium Content (ebooks, Whitepapers) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Closed Loop Marketing Analytics Marketing Social Media Marketing Webinars Content Distribution Measureable ROI

6 6 Outbound Marketing consists of: TV Commercials Billboard Advertising Direct Mail Print Media Direct Mail Trade Shows Banner Advertising Non-measureable ROI

7 7 Rather than doing outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing inbound marketing where you help yourself get found by people already learning about and shopping in your industry. In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a hub for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through search engines, the blogosphere, and social media. I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing, and I advocate that those ratios flip.

8 8 The best analogy I can come up with is that traditional marketers looking to garner interest from new potential customers are like lions hunting in the jungle for elephants. The elephants used to be in the jungle in the 80s and 90s when they learned their trade, but they don t seem to be there anymore. They have all migrated to the watering holes on the savannah (the internet). So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole. Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot

9 2Why Inbound Marketing?

10 10 Leads generated by inbound marketing cost 61% less than outbound marketing leads. % OF PEOPLE WHO SKIP TV ADS % DECLINE IN TRADE SHOW SPENDING % OF DIRECT MAIL NEVER OPENED 86% 46% 44% SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN, AUGUST 2011, TSEA.ORG, MARCH 2009, & EPA.GOV, NOV 2010

11 11 COST: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing 82% of consumers search the Internet prior to purchasing a product or service

12 12 Inbound marketing costs 61% Less per lead than traditional, outbound marketing The average company marketing budget spend on social media & blogs has increased by 3X in three years Small businesses are allocating 14% of their marketing budget to outbound, while large companies are allocating 33% in 2012

13 13 Inbound marketing channels cost less than any outbound channel. State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot, March 2012

14 Inbound marketing tactics don t just generate leads. They generate revenue. State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot, March

15 Required Resources

16 16 Inbound marketing is changing the way traditional marketing departments operate and consists of numerous components to be successful. You need to identify a few key resources to be sure inbound marketing will be a good fit your company and your brand. 1. ANALYZE YOUR CURRENT MARKETING Before you decide to jump into inbound marketing, you need to know where your current marketing plan stands. Do you have a website and can your team work with it? How many visitors do you generate each month? How many leads do your currently generate per month and how many convert to customers? You must understand this so you can understand what needs to be implemented with your new inbound marketing plan.

17 17 2. DEDICATED PERSON TO HANDLE INBOUND MARKETING Inbound marketing consists of multiple marketing channels all being utilized at the same time to increase website traffic, generating leads, creating compelling content, building buyer personas, managing your SEO, measuring success and failures via analytics, and optimizing landing pages. The components above do not include social media, marketing, lead scoring, press releases, creating video content, and building new web pages. You don t have to start with all of these components, but it is important to understand that you need a person or a team that can perform all of these tasks on a regular basis. Most small businesses can t afford a full fledge marketing department, but it is still critical that you have at least one member of your team that is dedicated to your inbound marketing strategy.

18 18 This individual can work with an inbound marketing agency, like INBOUND MARKETING AGENTS, to support, educate, and teach this person the process and supplement services that your company can not complete in-house. 3. GOALS You now know what your business will need and where you currently stand with your current marketing plan. Now you need to identify what your goals and benchmarks will be for your new inbound marketing plan. How many new leads or customers do you need each month? What verticals within your current client base do you want to grow? What decisions need to be made to achieve these goals? Once you have this information in place you can accurately plan your inbound marketing strategy to specifically target your goals.

19 19 4. BUILDING YOUR CUSTOMER PERSONAS Many small businesses don t know exactly whom they are selling too. You will want to know exactly whom you re trying to sell to based on demographic information. By defining these personas, you identify potential markets and will know exactly what you need to do to sell to them. You will market differently to a 50-year-old male executive than you will to a 25-year-old female just out of college. By having developed your personas you won t waste valuable time and money sending the same marketing messages to each persona unsuccessfully. 5. BRAND What is your company all about? What are your goals? What is the company culture? Your company brand is much bigger than your logo and your color scheme.

20 20 Everyone within your company to be able to implement an effective inbound marketing strategy, as you will be communicating your culture, tone, and commitment Everyone within your company to be able to implement an effective inbound marketing strategy, as you will be communicating your culture, tone, and commitment via your content, must share your company goals and identity. Identifying via your content, your company must brand share is your one of company the first steps goals that and should be taken before implementing your new inbound strategy. identity. Identifying your company brand is one of the first steps that should be taken before implementing your new inbound strategy.

21 4Software Requirements

22 22 Your software needs will be determined by your budget and the goals you have set forth previously. Keep in mind that your budget needs to be inline with the goals that you have set and the software your choose will play a big role in the efficiency of your inbound marketing campaigns. Below are our recommendations for software to execute inbound marketing, but if you have little or no budget there are also solutions you can implement to get started and then work your way to these platforms. We will note these options at the end of this chapter.

23 23 1. INBOUND MARKETING SOFTWARE There is a big difference between inbound marketing software and Google Analytics or social media software or apps. Inbound marketing software gives you all of the tools to track the success of your marketing like analytics for traffic, leads, lead conversions, click through rates, social media, marketing, and more. HubSpot brings your entire marketing world together in one powerful, integrated system. Integrating HubSpot into your marketing allows you to reap the benefits that this software has to offer as the best in the industry.

24 24 2. TASK MANAGEMENT/TIME TRACKING SOFTWARE Time tracking and task management software is a component that most beginners neglect to implement, yet it is crucial to effectively manage your time and projects. Blogging is a prime example that requires time tracking. A word blog article should be written in one hour or less, but it will take a beginner much longer in the early stages. You need to track your time so you can become more efficient and identify the components that slow you down. Inbound Marketing Agents uses TeamworkPM to manage all of our internal projects and time tracking for each project.

25 25 3. CLIENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Small companies with smaller budgets won t need CRM in the early stages, but for medium to large companies this is an essential investment to close the marketing and sale loop to track your ROI. We use Salesforce.com to manage our sales funnel and customer lifecycle, which enables us to further customize our marketing and track our ROI.

26 FREEWARE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES If you don t have the budget for all of the software listed above that is ok. What you need to start with is a manageable platform to host your website on like Wordpress.com. Wordpress will allow you to make in-house changes to your content and add a blog to your website for free or you can purchase a nice template for typically less than $ Wordpress is also compatible with hundreds of widgets that will allow you to integrate landing pages, forms, social media sharing, and much more. We recommend that you consult an inbound marketing agency prior to making any changes, as there are many options to choose from.

27 Getting Found

28 28 How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site Getting found is the first goal that must be accomplished within your inbound marketing plan. Website traffic is what converts into leads, and then customers. Remember, if Google can t find you, neither can your customers. Increasing traffic is a difficult and time-consuming process that doesn t happen overnight. If some Marketing Guru or Ninja tells you they can double your traffic in a month you probably want to hang up the phone. It doesn t happen. To properly and safely increase your website visitors, you will need to implement multiple marketing channels that are beneficial to gaining visibility.

29 29 1. BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS Blog. Blog. Blog. We have heard this mantra for the last few years, but do you believe in it? If you don t, you better start because blogging is the cornerstone for inbound marketing and the single channels that creates content to be distributed via social channels, bookmarking sites, press releases, and most importantly Google loves it if done correctly. Selecting the right platform is critical. This is why we use the HubSpot platform as it is pre-configured for on-page SEO, subscriptions, scheduling, and analytics that takes a lot of the hassle out of blogging. 2. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Many non-marketers think that social media is just about Facebook and seeing the picture of what your friends had for dinner.

30 30 We are here to tell you as a business owner that if you feel the same way you are missing the boat. Social media is one of the most crucial elements to increase your following, brand, and traffic to your site. Social media also provides you the opportunity to engage in dialogue with your followers, visitors, and fans, which can be used to migrate them through your sales funnel via social nurturing. EO 3. MARKETING Video Marketing is the YouTube second is largest the second search largest engine search on the engine planet on behind the planet Google behind and Google and ve to people watch love video. to watch It is very video. important It is very to important communicate to communicate your message your message, and in succinct a quick, and message succinct that message is visually that appealing is visually for appealing your customers for your to customers to with. connect with. ating visual content for your business will attract nd customers while increasing your visitor s time to create than writing a full-length blog article. r site which Google loves and is easier to create riting a full-length blog article. Generating visual content for your business will attract leads and customers while increasing your visitor s time on your site which Google loves and is easier

31 PRESS RELEASES How do your currently get your message out to large numbers of potential customers nationwide or globally? A press release is a powerful way to get your message out to the masses and if done right, you can also benefit your SEO and generate immediate leads for under $200.

32 Lead Generation

33 33 Now that you have targeted traffic visiting your site on a daily basis it is time to start converting your site traffic to qualified leads. To convert visitors to leads you must have compelling Calls to Action, Offers, and Landing Pages. 1. PREMIUM OFFERS No, we aren t talking about deep discounts or coupons. We are referring to offers that appeal to your potential customers. Compelling content like free white papers, videos, ebooks, and webinars can dramatically increase your lead generation and build your trust and authority as an industry thought leader.

34 34 2. CALL TO ACTION Now that you have a premium offer ready to go, you must create a compelling Call to Action that will entice your visitors to click on and get them to your landing page. Use graphical and appealing call to action that your visitors can easily identify and connect with to get them to click through to your landing pages. 3. LANDING PAGES Your compelling CTA has driven a visitor to your landing page, now you have to entice the visitor to give up their contact data to download the premium offer. Using attractive graphics on your landing pages is very important to increase conversion rates as well as testing your forms to qualify your leads.

35 7Converting Leads to Customers

36 36 Once you re generating leads, you now need to make the sale! By using proven methods such as lead generation and marketing, you can effectively push your leads down the sales funnel and more towards using your company for your product or solution. This is the process in which your marketing team hands things over to the sales team, and the sales are made. By having steady communication between marketing and sales, you can implement your buyer personas in order to convert more of your leads into sales.

37 37 1. Lead Management An effective lead generation strategy is one with clear goals and objectives. The idea isn t to generate leads and forget about them. Instead you want to focus on pushing your lead further down the sales funnel in order to further qualify them as sales ready. Once a visitor converts into a top-of-the-funnel lead, you ll want to engage in a lead nurturing campaign that aims to work them further down the sales process. Using marketing best practices, you ll be able to more effectively reach and market to these leads. 2. Lead Intelligence How well do you know your stats? One of the key characteristics of an effective inbound marketing campaign is the ability to measuring everything. Mastering your lead intelligence will give you greater insight into how to execute your marketing.

38 38 Where did your leads come from? What offers did they download? What pages and blog articles are they viewing? By knowing this information, you ll be able to more effectively market to them to help nurture them further down the sales funnel. 3. Lead Nurturing Lead Nurturing is an extremely necessary process in which you take your leads and send them user-specific content that converts them into sales. Using your inbound marketing software, you can analyze the process in which users became leads, and use this information to send them content that is specific to them. You can create a campaign suited to their specific characteristics, making them more likely to use your company s solution. Lead nurturing campaigns can drastically increase your lead-customer conversion rates, and create more business for your company.

39 Marketing Your leads love getting interesting content! So keep sending it to them! The more content that you send your leads that you know they want to read, the more likely they will come to you when it s time to buy. marketing is critical to any marketing program, but using marketing that is integrated with an inbound marketing program allows you to take advantage of technology and trends to help you get far more value out of your lists of prospects, leads and customers.

40 Measuring Results

41 41 You can do everything in your inbound marketing perfectly, a powerful SEO strategy, Social Media, Visual Content, Marketing, and have great landing pages, but how do you know if it s working? You need to track your results! Your inbound marketing software has analytics that allow you to track how much traffic is going to your site, how much traffic is being converted into leads, how many customers you re gaining, and much, much, more. With all this data, you can easily make educated decisions for the future of your campaign, and run a fully optimized inbound marketing campaign.

42 1. Marketing Analytics 42 By using HubSpot, you can track the results of everything on your website, including traffic, leads, lead conversions, click through rates, and more. Anything that s measurable about your website s marketing progress can be found using the tracking software. You can use this information to make educated decisions on the campaign to further the success even more. 2. A/B Testing A/B Testing is a great way to improve your marketing campaign, as it tells you what is performing better throughout various aspects of your website. Between landing pages, calls-to-action, and s, A/B testing allows you to make educated decisions regarding different pieces of your site. By utilizing HubSpot, you can perform many A/B tests to compare parts of your site and see which performs better, and what needs improving. Comparing things like which calls-to-action perform better, what offer produces more leads, and which landing page is working better, can give you valuable information on the effectiveness of your site.

43 3. Marketing Analytics 43 Closed-Loop Reporting is one of today s most essential tools for the inbound marketer. One of the most important tasks in today s inbound marketing world is to close the gap between sales and marketing, and closed-loop reporting does just exactly that. You can see where each and every lead comes from, what offer they ve downloaded, and where in the sales funnel they are. Then you can use this information to send them targeted content relevant to them and increase your chances of making a sale. By using HubSpot, you can utilize closed-loop reporting to custom-make a lead nurturing campaign that is sure to increase sales and revenue. Developing buyer personas is critical; as by knowing what kind of content your leads prefer, you can effectively push them down the sales funnel more quickly and efficiently.

44 4. Automated Reports 44 By using HubSpot, you ll get weekly and monthly reports ed to you regarding all of the analytical information regarding your traffic and leads you could ever want. Included in the report will be a breakdown of your traffic and leads, a content summary and an SEO summary that will give you a good idea of what s performing well and what needs work. That s great, but how do you expect me to do this on my own?

45 45 Inbound Marketing Agents is a full service inbound marketing agency that specializes in all services listed in this ebook. Talk to an expert today! If you learned something valuable, please share using the links below.