All of these items impact your ability to show up in search results, which is the primary way new traffic is going to come to your site. In short, if you want to be found online, get your technical SEO in line. If You're Feeling Overwhelmed… Don't panic. This is a lot to take in. Keeping up with the new rules of inbound marketing as well as all the latest marketing trends is tough. Especially when your primary job is running your business. The pros at OBI Creative know why inbound marketing works and are here to help. Trust our talented team of web experts to create, monitor, tweak and amplify content that converts for your brand. Contact us today to start a discussion about your needs. Free Customer Persona Template Why do some of your marketing messages fall flat while others break through? The answer is customer personas. Download our free template to start building yours today! (Or, you can always contact us for help. )
This past week was incredible.... of course that's on top of an already incredible story. DFV, Ryan Cohen, and many a smooth brained ape started this fight quite some time ago. Many doubted, but the momentum built and built until the huge spike at the end of January 2021. This first clash brought apes seeking opportunity, valuing GME, and of course those seeking to exploit the greedy HF's who had overextended. As GME soared, new apes were drawn in. Then Melvin, citadel, RH, and other market manipulators did what they always do. Cheated. GME was soaring and apes were on their way to the moon. We all had our reasons for jumping in and why not? Is it wrong to seek opportunity? Is retail not good enough to play the same game? Apparently in the HF's opinion we are all crayon eating bastards, it's their game, and it only works if they make money. So they cheated, plummeted GME, and many apes were left floating in space. They didn't care. They blamed retail. "Know what you're investing in" "Meme stocks are volatile" Distractions from where the real risk came from.
Set aside a marketing budget in addition to the marketing manager's salary, and let her allocate it towards resources as she sees fit. There are plenty of inexpensive, flexible solutions for researching keywords and competitors, creating and repurposing content, calendaring social media posts, etc. High-growth startups are almost always better off putting our companies' marketing strategy and budget in the hands of our CMOs and VPs, and outsourcing the more "executable, " specialized tasks. Outsourcing ≠ overseas (it can be done right) One note about outsourcing: the word has a bad reputation, but there are plenty of high-quality vendors who can deliver awesome marketing services and collateral. PubLoft is one of them, and we like to think we're the most fun to work with. 😇 The point is, simply: when we outsource some of our marketing efforts to trustworthy and proven people or companies, we can maximize internal resources. let's not overload our marketing leaders. Let's empower them instead.
And yet, no ROI to show for it. We agree, this can definitely happen. Inbound marketing may not work for you. But the problem is likely not in the inbound philosophy, but rather your approach to it. Here's why inbound marketing does not work: Because you treat it as a silver bullet: You get a marketing team, subscribe to a few tools, and expect leads to come pouring in. That does not happen. Inbound marketing does not magically fix everything that might be wrong with your business. If you do not know your personas well enough, if your business has no clear growth strategy, if your value proposition is not useful for your audience, then there's nothing that inbound marketing can do for you. Because you use it in isolation: Inbound marketing is definitely the way to generate more leads, but it should not be the only tool in your arsenal. You need to have a mix of strategies that work for your particular needs. Different businesses have a different target demographics and how they function.
Unless you're living off the grid, you should care a lot about lead generation. And for the record: inbound marketing does pretty amazing things for your lead generation numbers. After all, properly executed inbound marketing tactics are 10 times more effective for lead conversion than outbound ones. For example, in SEO, inbound-generated leads have a close rate of 14. 6%, while outbound leads have a 1. 7% close rate. If you haven't guessed as much from the majority of our article, we'll come out and say it: outbound engagement isn't all that great. You could write an ad that won a Pulitzer and it wouldn't change the fact that 200 million people have ad blockers. You could shoot a TV ad worthy of an Emmy and 86% of people would still be in the kitchen making a sandwich. Not only is inbound marketing more effective than outbound, but it also costs less. Which one costs less: writing a blog, or paying to mobilise a marketing campaign? You don't need to be a math prodigy to figure out that calculus.
Most of my professional work is ghostwriting but I do a bit of bylined blogging on the side. 10% of that is content marketing for the writing biz and the rest is basically a hobby. No logic to it. I'll write about how to cook curry one day and then how to pay your taxes the next. If I think it's interesting or may be useful to other people I'll jot it down on Medium / my blog / elsewhere. Anyway: I know that traction has a habit of slowly building, which is why inbound marketing takes a while to work. But in the past few months I've started getting a lot of random enquiries from strangers on the internet who read something I posted online (including content marketing) and think that I can somehow help with their random life issues. This week's selection: I read your blog post about Amazon promos. Do you have a particular electric toothbrush that you recommend? I'm looking at moving to Ireland and working as a truck driver. I read your blog. Does that sound like a good idea to you? We're a [local to me] company and I read your blog post about Revolut.
3 Reasons Why Inbound Marketing Works 54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than outbound. Done well, 54% more leads are generated by inbound tactics than outbound. Companies are also 3x as likely to see higher ROI on Inbound campaigns than outbound campaigns. Why is inbound so effective? Because: 1. Inbound works with the modern marketing landscape to earn attention As technology has evolved, people have changed their expectations of how they want to interact with marketing material. For example, we're now in an environment where people can block and avoid unwanted marketing collateral such as direct mail, pop up ads, or cold calls. This of course renders poorly focussed marketing (that's most traditional/ outbound tactics) ineffective. For example, did you know: 86% of people now skip through television ads (HubSpot) 84% of audiences aged 25 to 34 have left a favourite website due to interruptive (non-Inbound) advertising. (Mashable) 44% of direct mail is never opened (HubSpot) However, by targeting specific personas and basing all activities and content around addressing their challenges, Inbound content is more likely to resonate and earn relevant attention.
Ultimately, however, it is impossible to know how many people are involved with the ad or are influenced by it. In contrast, inbound marketing provides data of incredible breadth and detail: Impressions, clicks, interactions, retention time, CTR, conversion and many other performance metrics can provide B2C companies with valuable insights. Not only how content is responded to, but WHO reads it. The resulting understanding of the buyer personas can help to make future marketing efforts even more targeted. The back-end of inbound marketing is ultimately a very powerful analytics platform that provides B2C companies with the information they need to make better and faster decisions about marketing, product development, sales strategies and more. It's essentially the same level of analysis that B2B companies access, and that's the crux of the matter: B2C companies can't afford to settle for second-rate analysis. Conclusio: Inbound Marketing is a Must-Have for B2C Companies Inbound marketing costs a fraction of conventional "interrupt" marketing and offers a wealth of results-based analysis, tracking and reporting options.
You've likely heard the term, "inbound marketing". Broken down in its simplest form, it's the idea of attracting your buyers with valuable, helpful content vs pushing product and leading with a sale. In this post, you'll learn the definition of inbound marketing, the buyer's journey, the methodology behind inbound marketing, and why it's so popular with not only marketers but buyers. Inbound Marketing It's nearly impossible to talk about inbound marketing without mentioning HubSpot. Brian Halligan, the CEO of HubSpot, coined the term "inbound marketing" back in 2006. Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy focused on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content by adding value at every stage in the customer's buying journey. HubSpot says we need to nurture our customers from the time they are "strangers" to our business all the way to equipping them to be our "promoters. " Already running inbound marketing? Download our Inbound Marketing Campaign Checklist. Never miss a critical campaign component.
). To give you an idea of what you're in for, I've outlined the eight step process below: Identify your audience There's a reason this is step one. You have to know who your marketing efforts are aimed at it in order for them to be a success. Millennials will respond to one thing, boomers to something entirely different. Set benchmarks and goals The key here is to be specific. Saying you want to "get more sales" or "make more money" is aspirational. You need something you can measure, like "generate 1, 000 leads who are interested in inbound marketing by December 31, 2016. " Choose keywords and optimize for search Determine the keywords you want to rank for and then place them wherever appropriate (headlines, content, URLs, etc. ). Whatever you do, avoid keyword stuffing. Google frowns on it and your readers will see right through it. Create a tracking URL At the end of the campaign you'll want to do a post-mortem to see what worked and what didn't. A tracking URL will help with that. Develop offers and landing pages Once you've laid the foundation of your marketing plan, it's time to create an offer, something to entice potential customers to your virtual doorstep.