Inbound marketing

Showing posts with label Inbound marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inbound marketing. Show all posts

Thursday 9 April 2015

Inbound marketing tips to improve Inbound Marketing Results



#1. Have a WHOLE inbound marketing plan -  Inbound marketing includes blogging, articles, whitepapers, social networks engagement, social selling, lead generation, traffic and social media conversations. Which of these tactics can be improved?

#2. Implement all inbound marketing tactics -  A business should never rely on one or two tactics even if you are getting good results from current inbound marketing tactics, implementing all tactics will drastically improve desired results.

Thursday 3 July 2014

Backlink Profile Monitoring with Majestic SEO


Are you monitoring your back-link profile?

It is no secret Google have become very aggressive when it comes to links and link building strategies: highly optimized anchor text links have suddenly become toxic as they are unnatural. So perhaps branding is the way to go and people are thinking twice before placing questionable links on their money sites.

While link building is still an essential part of your SEO strategy, there is another aspect you need to consider as an everyday part of your optimization efforts: Monitoring your backlink profile.

Related Articles : 

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Qualified B2B Leads with Inbound Marketing, Blogs and Social Media, How
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Backlink profile monitoring should be an integral part of your ongoing SEO activities. You need to know who is linking out to you, and if there are any suspicious activities, in order to react in real time and avoid a disruptive, (or devastating), penalty.

How you can use Majestic SEO to monitor your backlink profile?

Majestic SEO offers 2 different ways to monitor your backlink profile:

Via a Tracking Report. The link tracking report from Majestic SEO offers a view of Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and other link quality characteristics such as external backlinks, referring IPs, referring domains, and referring subnets: link quality characteristics of any URL or website over time, updated on a daily basis. This report is useful in 2 ways:

It allows you to follow the link quality of a URL and see if there is any correlation between a change in a URLs position and whether the change was caused by an increase in good (or bad) links. These flow metrics start calculating many link iterations away from the URL you are tracking – meaning there does not have to be a change to the pages that physically link to you, for there to be a change in the page’s fortunes on the web.

It offers an overview on the rate of growth of your Inbound Links (IBLs). The daily report offered by the tracking report offers strategic insights on a day-to-day basis which you can use to understand what is happening:

  • There has been a spike in new IBLs, where are they coming from?
  • Are they related in any way to a viral activity performed by the Social media Team?
  • Was a link picked up and passed along on Twitter?
  • Did the R&D team publish a white paper?
  • Was a newsletter published offering a download?
  • If the answer to any of these questions was YES, then you are safe and should be ready to bet those links are all legitimate.


But what if the answers to all these questions was NO – nobody did anything of the sort; there were no Social Media initiatives, no newsletters, none of your content went viral – then where are these links coming from?

Spikes in the IBL profile should be looked at with suspicion – they could be coming from a site which has nothing to do with us and could have dropped a run of site link in their navigation bar or footer… this deserves your immediate attention. 

In this case we can see there is a certain trend in backlink profile, then a sudden significant growth over a few days; (in this case the IBLs shot up from just under 12.000 to 24.000). These links were found to be coming all from the same site, a very big portal with thousands of pages that had placed a link in the sidebar.

In very competitive markets competitors can organize a negative link building campaign to discredit you by adding thousands of low quality links, and then by doing so, impacting your trust flow, and boosting your citation flow. The tracking report will keep you up to date and in a matter of days you will be informed of the presence of these undesired and hostile links.

Tracking reports offer top level numbers and information but not the actual links; (they can be found in the Site Explorer under the New tab):

Inbound Links Discovery with Majestic SEO

You can see the spike noted in the previous screenshot taken from the tracking report. By hovering over the dates Majestic will reveal total number of backlinks identified and date of discovery; (which is not necessarily the date of creation).

Inbound Link Analysis using Search Explorer by Majestic SEO

Clicking on the date will retrieve the links and allow a detailed analysis. If the links are legitimate you keep them, if they are not your only option is to disavow them: by doing so you are telling Google you have nothing to do with that inbound linking activity and are taking appropriate action to distance yourself from them; (and by doing so renouncing to any link equity coming from them). The disavow will feed into your link profile and these links will be removed from your link graph. In this way you are preventing any retaliation on behalf of Google when the day of reckoning will come … prevention is better than curing.

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Dalvi Prabhakar B., Founder & Digital Manager (SEO,SEM,SMO) }}

Wednesday 25 June 2014

Qualified B2B Leads with Inbound Marketing, Blogs and Social Media, How


A business without the right leads is very much like a car without an engine; no matter what kind of fuel you put into it, it’s not going anywhere fast. However, generating leads isn’t easy and trying to acquire leads in the B2B space makes it all that much more difficult.

Before you can start to acquire business leads and turn them into customers, you’ll need to come up with an effective, brand-consistent strategy.


B2B Lead Generation: Where to Start?


Effective B2B lead generation strategies begin with drilling down into exactly the types of leads that are most likely to convert into paying customers. That means filtering out prospects based on your resources and goals, and narrowing your attack.

With a broadsword-strategy, you can swing around indiscriminately and grab leads from all over. Casting a wide net may yield you some worthwhile leads, but you'll also pull in a ton of junk leads, too. And to top that off, your results will be ineffective if your lead gen campaign is being measured on a CPA/CPL basis.

With CPL or CPA as your metric, a lead is only as valuable as the prospect, that prospect is only as valuable as the customer it becomes, and that customer is only as valuable as the revenue they bring to the bottom line, so if you can’t find the qualified leads—the leads that are most likely to ultimately convert into something profitable—then you’re just wasting  money.

Instead, drop the sword and pick up the scalpel for B2B leads. Start by asking: Who are our customers? What are their common interests? Are our prospects mostly online or off? If that information is available, then your approach can be tightly focused to define your objective and point you directly to your prospects.

 Once you've defined what  an unqualified prospect is and identified your targets, let’s get into how you'll capture your prospects' attention.

Here are six lead generating ideas and approaches that allow you hone your B2B strategy (and actually work):


1. Bring Your Leads Inbound


Traditionally, marketing has been classified as outbound marketing -- television commercials, print advertisements, internet banners, email mailing lists, and good old fashion cold-calling. These outbound lead generating techniques cast a very wide net that typically connects with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of prospects.

Outbound marketing tends to use the broadsword approach.


LEADS Outbound-leads-cost-on-average


I’m not saying that outbound marketing doesn’t work; it does, otherwise we wouldn't even bother talking about it. However, it not as effective as inbound marketing. Not only are the leads less qualified, but outbound is also more expensive. In fact, outbound leads cost on average 61% more than inbound ones.

Inbound marketing, when done well, meets your customers where they want to be. Inbound markerting focuses on creating quality content that aligns with what your customers are most interested in so they're drawn towards your offers because they want to learn more.

And because the offers are relevant, the leads that are generated are more eager and willing to become paying customers. When prospects feel as though your company is an expert in the industry, or has something worthwhile to offer, they see you as someone who wants to help, rather than a salesman that just wants to make a sale.


2. Generate Better Relationships with CRM


Sometimes generating leads is about keeping track of all of the pertinent data surrounding those leads. Customers need to know that they have a relationship with you and if you’re constantly losing track of their information or their info isn't updated, then it sends out a clear message to your prospective leads that you don’t really care about them.

Investing in a proper customer relationship management (CRM) system will allow you to gather, store, analyze, and track the most important data that can help you personalize the customer experience. And CRM doesn’t stop there.

CRM helps generate and convert leads by sifting through massive amounts of raw prospect data to locate the most promising prospects. After sorting through all that data, a good CRM can also be used to gain meaningful customer insight. With this business intelligence in hand, you can quickly and inexpensively disseminate relevant information to a wider range of specific, potential customers.

If you have the budget for a broadsword swing, ensure you are coupling it with a CRM. With access to a lead management tool, you can both control the range of your swing, while still benefitting from the accuracy of the scalpel—in other words, it’s the best of both worlds.


3. Solve Problems and Share Ideas on Your Blog


At the heart of inbound lead generation is the humble blog. If your business scoffs at or doesn't allot dedicated resources to your company blog, yet are trying to obtain quality leads, then understand that blogging has the potential to drive a significant amount of prospects into your sales funnel.

5 Secrets to Building Your Sales PipelineDid you know that 23% of total Internet usage time is devoted to social networks or blogs, which means that a large chunk of users are obtaining information and knowldge via blogs. A company blog allows you to not only draw inbound traffic to your site and your business by offering useful and interesting content, while providing solutions, but it can also give your organization added credibility within your industry.

A blog connects to customers and prospects in a less corporate manner. The company blog allows you to stretch beyond the landing pages of your core website; expanding your content past product features, business speak, and the boring FAQ page.  

If your company is a leader in its industry, your blog can be the bullhorn for your company's evangelists and leaders to share their unique perspectives and opinions on specific topics you could never espouse on the pricing page.

And at the end of each blog post? An offer, newsletter signup, or form that allows the reader to learn more if their interest has been piqued.


4. Make It Easy With Visual Content


Blog posts are wonderful and they absolutely work as a method for generating leads. However, they don’t work for everyone.There are those who are less interested in investing the time and effort into digesting a few hundred words worth of advice.

Thankfully, there are other ways of reaching these individuals. Human beings are very visual animals and what we see (as in images and videos) is actually processed 60,000 times faster than what we read. So, incorporating a visual element into your content is a sure-fire way to increase the draw of your inbound strategy.

Informative, useful, and shareable infographics are amazingly popular right now, and are more accessible and less time-consuming than videos. Of course, that’s not to say that a quality “infotaining” video posted to YouTube (with a link back to your site, of course) can’t also quickly pay for itself in increased interest and traffic.

If you can create something that ends up going viral, you’ll find that it’s well worth your time.


5. Yes, Social Media Can Generate B2B Leads


Social media has become a legitimate lead generation channel with ad formats having matured beyond just engagement metrics. With Twitter cards, Facebook’s objective-based advertising, and LinkedIn's sponsored ads, social ads have come a long way in cementing a spot in revenue-based lead generation campaigns.

Facebook offers a variety of ad products to generate leads from targeted advertising, events, tabs, or organic posts. 

Twitter’s Lead Generation Cards are a two-click solution to social lead generation. Twitter Cards are displayed as promoted tweets would, but when someone clicks on the image, the card expands to reveal an offer or sign-up form that is auto-populated with the user’s name, email address, and Twitter handle. In early testing of tweets with images, visual tweets showed an 55% increase in leads as opposed to normal 140-character text-only tweets. 


LEADS Outbound-leads-cost-on-average (1)


Don't forget about LinkedIn when looking at social media as a way to increase B2B leads. Despite being demoted to the "other social network" category, LinkedIn may prove to be the best social media network to acquire leads via social media. 

LinkedIn certainly lags behind Twitter and Facebook in recognition and users, but because LinkedIn is a professional social network, users aren't turned off by business-related marketing on their feed. The mindset and expectations of the user is entirely different when compared to consumer-focused networks and that's a good thing when it comes to B2B leads.

With product offerings such as Lead Collection, direct ads, and sponsored updates, LinkedIn has shown that their ad products can be 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter, according to a study by Wishpond.


6. New Ideas That Will Generate Real Value


As you might have gathered by now, a successful lead-generating strategy isn’t just about building a great product that offers value. A good lead generation strategy consistently puts out content and offers that provide real value to the prospective lead.

It takes patience, too, for prospects may not be prospects today, but with nurturing, optimizing and guidance, they can ultimately become paying customers.

The secret here is to continually build unique, quality content that has real value to prospects that you want to connect to. And if the prospect isn't ready to sign up yet, continuing to build and share that quality content over time will give you an edge over less-patient competitors.


Quality Leads Are Built Over Time 


There are quicker and dirtier lead generation techniques that can be used to bring in potential customers right now, but in the long run, these won’t be as profitable as those leads that you draw in through the targeted and steady process of effective inbound marketing and lead nurturing.

With your lead generation, keep these six techniques (and the various points and principles they represent) in mind. That said, the lead generation methods and tactics you put forth are not nearly as important as how well you target your potential customers. The better focused your lead gen campaign is to your prospects, the likelier they'll find relevant content they want, and that will yield higher odds that they'll convert into paying customers.

However you end up generating leads, be it through direct mail marketing, telemarketing, email, social media, or any other technique, the more clearly you can identify and pursue your ideal client, the sharper your razor-edged focus is, the more successful your strategy — and ultimately your business — will be. 

{{ The Guest Post Blogger organization was not involved in the creation of this content. - Prabhakar Dalva, Founder }}

Wednesday 11 June 2014

Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business


Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business

Engagement is the end game for content marketing. Getting people interested in and involved with your product is half the battle in making a sale. When your customers know that they can look to you for stellar insights and advice about the industry, you’ve succeeded. But achieving this goal is not easy. It takes a lot of time investment to create the high-quality content you’ll need.

Below are Some tips on how to use content to increase your audience’s engagement.
  • Create Gated Content 
  • Run a Live Q&A Based On of a Controversial Piece of Content  
  • Include Calls to Action at the Bottom of Content 
  • Ask Questions at the End of Blog Posts to Increase Comments
  • Be Consistent at Something

Create Gated Content for SE ( Search engine )
“Gated content” refers to information or whole sections of your web site that are only available to people who agree to provide something in return. Gated content creation can be tricky to execute, but when used well, it’s a great way to not only pump up engagement but also to generate leads. For marketing purposes, that “something” is usually contact information, such as:
  1. Geographic location
  2. Name
  3. Email address
  4. Phone number
  5. Company information

Gated content may also require payment for information, such as whitepapers or exclusive video, but generally speaking it’s just another rung on the sales funnel.

Not every company is comfortable with using gated content. Some are wary of alienating potential customers who are not ready to establish contact, or sending them to competitors who do not have gates. It’s best to reserve gated content for premium information; be sure to leave product descriptions and blogs free to navigate for any visitor.

For instance, a site such as Gate to Garage, which sells a wide variety of furnishings and décor, would not benefit from walling off its product listings to visitors. But it might consider requiring potential customers to submit an email address for future contact if they want to see a how-to video or white paper.

One thing to keep in mind, don’t gate all your content. Leave blog posts and info graphics as free material for everyone. That free material will drive traffic to your site and then special gated content can be used to increase engagement and build an email database.

Run a Live Q&A Based On of a Controversial Piece of Content  

Live chats have a colorful history on the internet. They’re one of the earliest ways that companies engaged with their customers, dating back well before the age of social media. Though they’ve evolved over time, they still remain a great way for businesses to gauge opinions about not only their products but also their industry. The smartest way to draw people in is to play off a piece of content that’s gotten a lot of attention.

This type of content will inspire strong opinions on both sides, which will draw people into the conversation. Be sure to promote the Q&A beforehand, but don’t just rely on live questions to fuel the discussion. Solicit questions and topics beforehand via social media, and keep things open-ended so that you can engage as many people on as many aspects of the issue as possible. If you’re doing the chat on Twitter or Facebook, look over your analytic beforehand to decide what the best time is to hold the conversation.

Last year Paper.li, an online content curation service, sponsored a live Twitter chat to promote awareness for bloggers, who make up the hottest area of its community. The success of the Q&A surprised even the company’s community manager, who personally heard from more than 200 people after the chat via email and on Twitter asking for help and offering their input. The chat also reached people in other countries, a bonus Paper.li hadn't expected.

Include Calls to Action at the Bottom of Content 

Sometimes when you become engaged in a great piece of content, whether it’s a whitepaper, a blog post or a podcast, you’ll forget how you stumbled upon it and your true purpose for looking into the subject. Don’t let that happen to your potential customers. While you don’t need to hammer them over and over with sales pitches, you do need to gently remind them as they reach the end of their time with your content that there’s something they need to do. That may mean registering for something, buying a product or filling out a form.

Whatever it is, make sure your call to action is clear and concise so that you don’t lose your fish from the hook. On the blog for Writers Relief, an author submission service, posts end with reminders that the site can help make writing dreams come true and a link to their submission page, a succinct but effective call to action.

Ask Questions at the End of Blog Posts to Increase Comments

This sounds like an obvious way to increase engagement, but a surprising number of sites do not try to interact with their readers this way. They’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Once you've finished discussing the topic at hand, ask your readers what they think. Many blogs put a daily question at the bottom of a blog post in bold, training readers to look for these queries and answer them, thereby increasing engagement.

Don’t just get people to comment, though. Interact with them in the comments section and see how you can further engage them. For instance, the Gawker network of web sites have perfected this approach. Writers interact with readers, exchanging ideas — okay, and often insults — in such a way that the comments sections themselves have become must-reads.

Inbound Marketing Plans for Understanding Customer Pain Points


Part 1: Product Grouping
Part 2: Upselling and Cross-Selling
Part 3: Maintaining Visitors’ Attention
Part 4: Human Element

One of the sad truths of life is that nothing motivates a person like pain. In this context, we’re not talking about physical pain; we’re talking about the emotional pain we experience every day. This pain can be related to time pressures, social issues, work-related problems or family concerns. We naturally gravitate toward products or services that promise us a resolution from that pain. For example, if your daughter is failing at math, you get a math tutor. If you’re struggling with scheduling resources at work, you purchase and install project-tracking software. If you’re too busy to mow the lawn this weekend, there’s a kid down the street who would happily do it for ten bucks. In every case, you sense a problem – a pain point – and automatically search for a solution.

An effective salesperson understands customers’ pain points and positions products to address those points. Website designers should incorporate some of the same thinking in their designs. More specifically, as a web designer, you need to position your solution and product pages in a way that shows you understand your viewer’s pain points. This article focuses on how you can understand and use your knowledge about customer pain points while designing web pages.

Identifying the Pain Points

A well-trained salesperson understands how to find pain points. He accomplishes this task by briefly introducing himself and his company, providing a few anecdotes on how his products have helped other customers, and then – most importantly – he pivots the conversation toward the customer and asks open-ended questions. If the salesperson has done his job well enough, the customer comfortably divulges the pain points and asks the salesperson for help. The salesperson then merely needs to show how his products directly address those points.

Unfortunately, this is considerably more difficult for you, because your interaction with potential customers is limited to online activities. Your website is generally a one-way communication medium, so it is impossible to have these types of two-way conversations. Your search for customer pain points therefore becomes an online information search. Fortunately, there are several ways to acquire this information.

1. Launch a Blog Patrol – Identify a list of blogs related to your products or industry. Google has a blog search engine that can assist you. Create your own top-ten list of blogs and peruse them several times each week. This is an excellent way to find out what your potential customers are saying about their pain points.

Let’s say, for example, you sell camping gear. You search on Google’s blog site and immediately find a site for the American Camp Association. The first article you see is entitled, “Summer Camp: The Social Supplement for Modern Society.” Upon analyzing this blog post, you immediately see a pain point: Kids are not spending enough time outdoors, and their lack of exercise is jeopardizing their health and education. That’s a pain point! So what can you do with this information? Analyze your own product line in light of this pain point and see how it might mitigate the pain. Prepare a story around the pain point and create blog articles of your own.

American Camp Association

Tip: You can help drive business to your site by leaving comments on your target blogs. Be very careful, however, because overt advertising through blog comments can quickly get you banned from commenting on blogs. Learn the proper etiquette for blogging before attempting to blog and / or leave comments on existing blogs.

2. Appeal Directly Online – Similar to patrolling blogs, you can peruse through online organizations and forums. LinkedIn, for example, hosts hundreds of online groups, where each group consists of hundreds – if not thousands – of like-minded professionals dealing with similar problems. The barrier to entry is fairly low, and you can either silently monitor these groups or post pain-point-seeking questions of your own. For example, you can join the Business Analytics group and ask an open-ended question like, “Has anyone experienced issues trying to analyze customer surveys?” Over the course of a few days, you’ll get many responses, each related to pain points.

Tip: You can start up your own online forum, hosted directly from your company, via a third party forum provider like Comm100. A hosted forum allows you to communicate directly with your customers and identify their pain points.

3. Analyze Your Competitors – Is your competition causing pain? Look for online complaints regarding your competition. Make a list of the top 10 complaints. Inevitably, price will be one of them, but price is always going to be a complaint, so don’t be so quick to put it on your list. Instead, look deeper for fundamental issues like customer service, quality and reliability issues. Look for shortcomings in product features, like limited battery life or a confusing user interface. Online, people are especially honest – brutally honest – and you can use that honesty to get an idea of your competitor’s pain points, and then use that information to help position your own product or service.

Tip: Don’t forget to look for complaints about your own products or services as well! You can bet that your competitors are analyzing complaints against your company, and they will try to use those pain points to position their product or service against yours.

4. Talk to Your Salespeople – This may sound obvious, but many companies are so vertically organized that the web designer doesn't even know any of the salespeople. If you have salespeople in your company, make a point to engage with the best ones at least once every quarter. Salespeople are full of front-line information, and after a short interview, you should have a sizable list of customer pain points.

Tip: If your company is big enough to host annual sales meetings, get yourself scheduled to attend. At the meeting, you can run a focus group with the best performing salespeople, where over the course of an hour, the group compiles a top-ten list of customer pain points.

Now What? ---- Now that you've identified the pain points that your products or services will address, summarize them into short sentences. It is very important to compile this summary, because these sentences will form the basis of your website content that speaks directly to the pain points.

For example, one issue with backup power supplies is that they fail silently. In other words, you plug your computer into the backup supply, and you plug the backup supply into the wall power outlet. As long as the power company supplies power, you’ll never know the difference. The backup supply is supposed to kick in and keep your computers running when the power company fails. There is a critical pain point in this solution, however. The power company may be reliable for a year or more, and all the while, the batteries in your backup supply are slowly fading and wearing out, even though they’re not being used. But you won’t know the batteries are failing until that inevitable moment when the power company fails. At that time, your batteries also fail, and your computer will crash. Had you known the batteries were failing beforehand, you would have replaced them and avoided the pain.

So if you were selling a superior backup power supply, how would you use this pain point to position your product?

You can probably make the summary even shorter, but you get the point. You’ve crystalized the pain point and shown – in one sentence – how your products make a difference. This sentence immediately resonates with your online visitors and lets them know that you “get it” and understand the pain point.

These one-sentence summaries constitute the basis for all your solution pages on your website. They should be featured prominently on each solution page, at the top, where people will see them right away and immediately identify with your solution.

See the Taradata solution page for Data-Driven Marketing below. What are the pain points? Loyalty and profitability. The one-sentence summary on this page is deceptively short, but it directly addresses two pain points and sets the tone for the rest of the page.

in the Ends, People are naturally pain-averse and will therefore look for ways to avoid pain. Companies must understand their customers’ pain points and look for ways to address the pain through their products. Locating and understanding customers’ pain points was traditionally performed during face-to-face sales meetings; however, this is not possible online. This article suggests some ways to find customer pain points and briefly discusses how you can use this knowledge to enhance your website.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers


Inbound marketing focuses on being found by potential leads instead of searching for customers.


Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers


Traditional marketing methods such as paid TV ads, direct mailings, cold calling and trade shows are costly. Inbound Marketing is not only effective and less expensive but the results are better tracked.

1. Search Engine Optimization

The primary way that inbound marketing works is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is a method to get your website to rank high on search engines for specific keywords.

When a potential customer does a web search, they are actively searching for your product or service. So as a marketing firm your audience might type in “Marketing San Antonio,” if you’re website is listed on page 1 of Google, Bing or Yahoo search engines you’ll be likely to receive more quality leads.

Help your business get visibility online with these SEO marketing tips.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is creating valuable information to display on your site to increase customer interest. Often businesses will attract customers by delivering a blog or a tips area on their website that provides relevant content making  their company a trusted and helpful resource.

Ways to provide valuable content:

  • Educational Ebooks
  • Training  or How To Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • Webinars

Tip: don’t forget to provide a call to action in your content to convert sales.

3. Email and Marketing Automation

Inbound marketing should not relying just on generating business but a balance of nurturing leads and converting visitors into customers. Email and marketing automation should contain information useful to nurture the visitor’s interest and is a great opportunity to deliver sales pitches.

How to capture email addresses:

Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers
Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers

Since the newsletter was actively sought, it is less likely to be viewed as spam, but it is wise to set expectations and inform how often your emails will be sent to the individual.  The optin opportunities are most effective on a landing page, above the home page fold, or on sidebars of your site.

Affordable and easy optin and email automation systems include:
  • Aweber.com
  • ConstantContact.com
  • Infusionsoft.com

These email automation systems have customizable opt-in templates and for more creative opt-ins you may need a developer to create unique opt-in forms.

4. Social Presence 

Social Media Inbound Marketing

Using sites such as Twitter and Facebook to generate interest in a product or service are great ways to use inbound marketing strategies. Provide regular content that is engaging on your social media account to attract potential clients.

Some important factors to consider:

  • Who is your target audience on social channels?
  • Which social channels does your audience communicate and interact in?
  • What type of content is valuable?
  • Tip: don’t just self promote, give your audience useful information and encourage sharing.

Learn more why your business should get social!

5. Video Marketing

Viral Video Inbound Marketing

One of the most effective ways to convey information is through videos. People often go to popular video channels such as Youtube or Vimeo to get info to solve problems or learn about a service or product. Get in front of your audience by being visible on these video channels.

Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers


Tip: Also make sure to provide a link or phone number in the video description to ensure they will find your company.  Check out these top 5 tips to make your viral video reach more!

It’s a brave new world for marketing and it’s important for businesses to stay on top of all the current trends and directions that inbound marketing are taking. By staying current and staying focused on inbound marketing, businesses can take advantage of all the new possibilities being offered with today’s technology.
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How to Close Leads for Better Business in Inbound Marketing


How to Close Leads for Better Business in Inbound Marketing


You’re on the right track. You’ve attracted the right visitors and converted the right leads, but now you need to transform those leads into customers. How can you most effectively accomplish this feat? Certain marketing tools can be used at this stage to make sure you’re closing the right leads at the right times.

Closing tools include:


Lead Scoring

You’ve got contacts in your system, but how do you know which ones are ready to speak to your sales team? Using a numerical representation of the sales-readiness of a lead takes the guesswork out of the process.


Email

What do you do if a visitor clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page, or downloads your whitepaper, but still isn’t ready to become a customer? A series of emails focused on useful, relevant content can build trust with a prospect and help them become more ready to buy.


Marketing Automation

This process involves creating email marketing and lead nurturing tailored to the needs and lifecycle stage of each lead. For example, if a visitor downloaded a whitepaper on a certain topic from you in the past, you might want to send that lead a series of related emails. But if they follow you on Twitter and visited certain pages on your website, you might want to change the messaging to reflect those different interests.


Closed

Loop Reporting- How do you know which marketing efforts are bringing in the best leads? Is your sales team effectively closing those best leads into customers? Integration with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system allows you to analyze just how well your marketing and sales teams are playing together.

How to Attract Websurfer to website for Better Sales ROI


How to Attract Websurfer to website for Better Sales ROI

Blogging

Inbound marketing starts with blogging. A blog is the single best way to attract new visitors to your website. In order to get found by the right prospective customers, you must create educational content that speaks to them and answers their questions.

Social Media

You must share remarkable content and valuable information on the social web, engage with your prospects, and put a human face on your brand. Interact on the networks where your ideal buyers spend their time.

Keywords

Your customers begin their buying process online, usually by using a search engine to find something they have questions about. So you need to make sure you’re appearing prominently when they search. To get there, you need to carefully, analytically pick keywords, optimize your pages, create content, and build links around the terms your ideal buyers are searching for.

Pages 

You must optimize your website to appeal to and speak with your ideal buyers. Transform your website into a beacon of helpful content to entice the right strangers to visit your pages.