How to Build an Effective Landing Page

Sep 2 2010

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re defining a landing page as a conversion page—a simple page to help you generate some sort of goal whether it be a sale, a lead, a newsletter sign up, a referral, etc. The landing page will most likely live on your website (though it could be its own microsite), but it won’t need to contain all of the elements and links of your main site.

So how do you ensure that your web visitors will actually convert once they’ve found your landing page? Below you will learn about the basics of effective landing pages.

Lead with a relevant headline. Keep them reading.

Clear up any confusion right off. Make sure your headline directly refers to the ad copy or link that drove your prospects to the landing page. Match the headline as closely to the driving link or pay-per-click ad that led them to your landing page. Speak to the reader’s self-interest and keep engage them immediately. You want them to keep reading.

Keep the copy concise and focus on the task at hand.

The task at hand? Conversion. Keep your landing page copy focused and directly related to the point. The landing page is not the space to sell all of the other great services or products you offer, tell the reader all about yourself, or give them extraneous information. Keep the opening paragraphs short to draw them in (no more than 1-2 lines to start), and make sure to lead with persuasive arguments—don’t bury these arguments in the middle or end.

Remember to stay focused on your goals in the copy—the landing page is not the space to show off ancillary services or wow your readers with your great writing.

Make your call-to-action apparent.

Let your prospects follow through before they reach the end of the landing page—embed a call-to-action (CTA) graphic buttons or hyperlinks in various places. Make it obvious what you want the users to do, and give them a clear link to do it. A good rule is a minimum of 2 CTAs on a short page, and a maximum of 5 CTAs on a longer landing page.

Write to your reader.

Mind your language. Remember that the landing page is to convert. Use the second person “you” and “yours” instead of “us” and “we.” Tell people how your product benefits them. That’s why they’re on the landing page.

Keep your landing page clean.

The goal, remember, is to convert. Remove all extraneous glitz and glamour about your company. Don’t let your users get distracted by hyperlinks so that they leave your landing page and never close the sale. Lose the navigation bars, side bars, and clutter.

Find out who your customers are when you share information with them.

Say the goal of a particular landing page is to provide a white paper on a topic. Before you freely give out your amazing white paper, make sure you first have your contact fill out an information form. Then let them download. You want a way to stay in contact with them, too, right?

On that note, don’t be too nosey.

If all you’re offering is a free newsletter subscription, don’t expect someone to give you much more than their email address. If, on the other hand, if you’re giving away a 50 page guide on how to grow a money tree, you could probably ask people to provide you with all sorts of personal information. It’s all about give and take. You to ask for as much information as you deserve based on what you’re offering in return. And make it clear that you won’t be giving away or selling their e-mail addresses or other personal info —reassure them that you will respect their privacy.

Remember your manners.

Don’t forget to thank your reader for converting! Thank them for responding to the offer, and thank them again if you close a sale. Politeness goes a long way, and people remember when they’re valued.

Need help creating a landing page that delivers conversions?

Find out about our landing page design services.

Posted by CristiSpahr on September 2, 2010 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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Checklist for the Yahoo to Bing Transition

Aug 6 2010

The momentum is finally building.  It seems like ages ago that the Bing – Yahoo! search merger happened, but we are finally beginning to see the results.  If you haven’t already, it’s time to start getting your accounts in order.

In this post we give you a timetable (best we can) and a short checklist of preparations you need to make. In the next couple weeks, we’ll roll out a couple more posts on organic and paid search transition issues in more detail.

Who does this affect?

Every business that depends on the Internet for visibility in its market and for sales or leads will be affected by this change.  Bing will take over the Yahoo search functions, and as every Search Engine Optimizer alive knows, these two search engines do not return the same results. Your online visibility is about to change, for better or worse.

The (Tentative) Timetable

A few days ago, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, was reported in Softpedia as saying that the integration of Bing and Yahoo would be done by Christmas. This optimistic assessment is bolstered by the fact that the two search giants are already testing some results in their technical merger.  A more comforting cautionary note comes from Yahoo, which recognizes that “the holiday season is important to you,” and that they may defer their goal of final transition to Bing to after the first of the year “if we believe that it will improve the overall experience” (i.e., keep the ad money rolling in).

So what do we know for sure?

The transition on paid search is obviously a bit uncertain, but there’s agreement in both camps that the organic search results will be supplied by Bing by the end of August or in September. Web marketers like EZlocal were already seeing Bing-driven results in tests in late July, so this piece of the transition seems to be on course.

The Natural Search Transition

To get ready for the natural search transition, you need to optimize your website for Bing, and that includes most of the things you are already doing for Google. The natural search results after the merger for both Yahoo and Bing will mirror Bing, so take a look at your results in the two search engines and see your future.  If it’s not a nice picture, get to work.

  • Register your site at Bing’s webmaster tools to begin to get information on how the MSNbot/Bingbot sees your site.  There’s nothing revolutionary in Bing’s guidelines to webmasters, but you should be watching this information for anything specific to Bing.
  • Take this opportunity to go back through your site and upgrade your SEO on-page content and setup.  This is something you should always be doing anyway, but now’s a perfect time.

Paid Search Transition

It’s a good thing the paid search is a little more distant (though we don’t know exactly how much) because there’s more to do.  Now is the time to either set up an adCenter account or link your Yahoo SearchMarketing account to one you already have. There are some specific things to do in the near future.

  • Beginning sometime this month (about mid-month some say), Yahoo will feature a tab in its Searchmarketing accounts that will take you to adCenter to set up or link an account.  Look for it and get started.
  • The editorial and privacy policies going forward will be Bing’s, so review their guidelines and make changes accordingly.
  • The merged Pay Per Click platform will follow Bing’s formatting policies – say goodbye to those relatively long Yahoo ad contents.
  • Your Yahoo Searchmarketing history will NOT be ported over to Bing.  13 months of it will continue to be visible on the Yahoo site.
  • Budgeting will follow Bing policies, including raising the minimum cost per click from one cent to $0.05.

The Impacts of the Merger

The small picture for each of us is that the Bing takeover will shake up our natural search rankings, one way or the other. Longer term, watch for changes in pricing as the larger, merged search operation engages Google competitively.  Recently, the combined Yahoo + Bing share of search touched a bit over 31% in the U.S. compared with Google’s 62% (down a bit).  That’s big enough that search marketers really cannot avoid optimizing for and advertising on Bing any longer, if they haven’t already started doing so.  Bing is getting bigger.

Posted by GlennSilloway on August 6, 2010 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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What’s Wrong With Your Website Lead Generation?

Jun 10 2010

You designed your website to generate leads and sales for your products or services.  You spent several thousand dollars to build a great looking website and now there it is — out on the web for all to see. But wait a minute…where are all those leads??

The culprit can be any number of issues and we’ve outlined the most common issues below. But don’t be discouraged because the good news is, they’re all fixable!

Here are the most common problems we find with websites that are not generating the expected volume of leads:

1. Your website isn’t being found.

First things first: can your target market find your website? And we mean easily, without knowing the name of your company, and without having to go through 4 pages of search results on Google (because really, don’t you usually stop on the first page of results?). This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play.

Not to go into all the details of SEO, you can read more about our SEO services, but the point is that your prospects need to find you so it’s your job (or a company you hire) to make sure your company shows up in search engine result pages (SERPs) for the terms that your target audience is using to find the solutions you provide.

The way you’ll show up on these pages is by having a site that is well structured with relevant content that can be easily indexed by Google (or any other engine) as well as by having high quality inbound links. You need to be mindful of the content on your site because remember, it’s the content on your site that helps improve your rankings. The better and more relevant the content, the better your rankings will be on the SERPs.

2. Your website is too darn difficult to navigate.

Next up, once someone has found you and has landed on your site, can they quickly and easily find what they’re looking for? Part of a great website design is not only that it looks good, but that it’s also easy to navigate. Do your website visitors need a GPS system to navigate through your website? Or can they find what they’re looking for with a simple click of the mouse? Are your subpages easy to find via drop downs? Do you give users crucial information right up front on the homepage?

Part of the whole web 2.0 craze is about making your website user-focused. Having a flash movie that opens up when someone lands on your website is not helping them find the information they want and need in a timely manner.

Figure out what your core offerings are, the reasons people are coming to your site, and put them right there on the homepage so it’s easy for the user to find it, use it, and eventually convert. The fewer clicks it takes someone to get to the right information, the better. If a user is left to click and click, and click some more…chances are they’re going to leave your site out of sheer frustration.

3. Your content is sorely lacking.

Assuming your visitor has been able to locate the information they’re looking for on your website, the question becomes, what do you have to say? Is your website content compelling them to stay and read on, watch on, or look on? Or is it boring, self-centered, and poorly developed?

People need a reason to care. On your website, you need to give them one (or several). Make sure your content is accurate, informative, and try to be exciting. Use lists, bullet points, and images to break up the text, and don’t put too much information on each page – think about 350 words per page – that’s it.  Use video and other content appropriately.

You want your visitor to be able to quickly grasp the idea and be convinced that you have what they’re looking for, and then make it easy for them to convert. If writing is not your strong point, then think about hiring someone to help you write better content – it’s not very expensive, but it is very important. Check out our content writing services to get help.

4. You’re not HELPING your visitors become leads.

What do you want a prospect to do when they visit your website? Helping people to convert largely means making it easy and obvious for them to do what you want them to do. Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter? Request a quote or a meeting? Purchase directly from your website? Whatever the goal is, and it can be different based on where they are in your website, it needs to be obvious.

Create large and/or noticeable calls to action that stand out, tell them to “request pricing” or “download our free guide” or “request a proposal”. Also remember that your visitors will be in different stages of their buying cycle when they arrive at your website. Your site should be responsive to this fact by offering a variety of ways for visitors to “raise their hands” and tell you who they are.

Some people want to pick up the phone and call you, some people want to schedule a meeting, some people just want you to email them the information they’re looking for – you need to be mindful of the different personality types and offer calls to action that are appealing to a variety of personas.

And oh by the way, since we’re talking about leads – don’t forget those feedback forms. Make it easy for prospects to become leads by having response forms built into your website.

Get the help you need to generate more leads on your website:

At Spark Inbound Marketing, we spend all day every day enacting lead generation strategies for our clients. Let us do the same for you by requesting a complimentary website assessment for your business.

Posted by CristiSpahr on June 10, 2010 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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A List of Microblogging Tools for Business

Feb 6 2010

Effective collaboration within a team or business is essential for success. But it is very hard to do.  Sometimes it seems that the growth of the Internet has expanded the amount of information available so much that it’s impossible to see the meaning through the clutter.

Now the microblogging world of 140 character updates has led to some collaboration tools that can really help a business get its act together. Collaboration tools built on microblogging, file sharing and publishing, and social networking are evolving rapidly into always on, always ready productivity boosters for teams, businesses and supply chain partners. These are not all glittering high cost custom installations either – you can get free versions of some software or you can just sign up for Twitter for a really basic version.

Twitter has served as a testing bed for how this strange but powerful form of communication can work.  Twitter, its users and application developers have pushed the Twitter basic model to improve its collaboration value.  In Twitter you can set up a private account or list to define a group.  A conversation can be created by defining and promoting a #hashtag.  Or you could use a 3rd party application like GroupTweet or Twibes to find or define a group.

But these basic tools leave out essential capabilities needed to make collaboration more effective.  Dedicated collaboration tools have progressed to a much more sophisticated level.  Most of the better ones include many features that help groups communicate and collaborate:

  • A method to define a group that is private or limited to members only.  The power of privacy controls varies across products, but all of them recognize the importance of security.
  • Status updates using the 140-character standard are basic. Products vary somewhat in how internal groups can be defined.
  • Most include internal publishing tools like blogs, wikis, discussion boards, and spreadsheets.
  • File sharing is common.
  • Some services are web based; some can be hosted on the client’s server.
  • Services publish to common mobile platforms for on-the-go collaboration.
  • Set up feeds on information streams.  Services vary on the extent of customization permitted.

Here are a few of the more promising microblogging collaboration platforms for business (leaving out SalesForce Chatter and Google Wave for now – they are unfinished products).  These platforms have a free version that offers somewhat fewer services but more importantly, less security and administrative control.  Most are priced on a per-seat basis, with $3/user a common price.

Yammer.  One of the most established collaboration platforms, Yammer was the Techcrunch50 winner in 2008.  This service was instantly popular – and it has spawned a lot of competitors.  Anyone can sign up and invite co-workers to share the social platform, but control over the group and its members requires a subscription.  Yammer has an especially strong security system for paying customers. It is integrated with Twitter, publishes to mobile, and is integrated with Outlook email.

Cubetree.  A web service only, Cubetree is distinguished by its emphasis on integrating the services in its platform and also integrating common social media services like Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce and Google Calendar. Cubetree the elements of the system through email when it’s important for a user to get a specific message.  For example, a status update aimed at a specific @person will also trigger an email to that person.  Cubetree is supported by venture funding.

Socialtext.  Aimed at enterprise businesses, Socialtext offers both a web service and an ‘appliance’-based service.  This service includes all the basic features of a microblog-based collaboration tool, but adds available solutions packages for certain types of business organizations, including HR, sales, field services, partner management, and professional services.  Socialtext has both web based and hosted applications at a slightly higher price point that other platforms.

Jive.  Jive is the David among Goliaths.  It is a small company based in Portland, OR that has grown its service internally.  Jive offers a basic version of its web service for $3/user, but encourages contacting them for custom pricing for larger companies and for the higher security packages.  Interestingly, Jive recently acquired Filtrbox, a social media listening platform.  The value here would be to have the Filtrbox application identify the posts and updates about a company and then distribute them through Jive to the right people for a response.  That’s a complete circle.

Would your business benefit from better collaboration?  It’s hard to imagine anyone saying ‘no’ to that.  These tools might help – and we’d love to hear your thoughts about them.

Posted by GlennSilloway on February 6, 2010 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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Are You an Online Marketing Winner?

Jan 30 2010

I was talking to my good friend and fellow runner the other day about the difference between winners and losers. And let me tell you, she knows a lot about this topic. As an elite marathoner, this gal knows how to win. She said the single biggest factor (other than a dose of natural talent and some crazy mental toughness) is consistency. Taking the steps, day in and day out, that are required to succeed. Ah-ha! This simple piece of advice resonated with me both as an online marketer and as a runner. Being a successful online marketer is a lot like being a great athlete.

My takeaway from the conversation was this:

Winners repeat the right things over and over, knowing the outcomes will improve.
Losers do something once or twice, figure it didn’t work, and never do it again.

Let’s not confuse this with the definition of insanity, which is repeating the same mistakes over and over expecting a different outcome. In online marketing there are certain actions one must undertake time and time again, often over several weeks and months, before a desired result is achieved. Creating content, building links, participating in social media, improving the conversion process on your website, nurturing leads through email, analyzing analytics data, are some of these actions.

To win in online marketing you’ve got to remain steadfastly dedicated to performing the tasks that will eventually build your rankings, increase traffic, and boost your sales. Does that mean you keep doing something that’s obviously going nowhere? Of course not! But don’t assume that because you don’t see dramatic results the first time you try something that it’s dead in the water.

Look for increasingly incremental improvements in rankings, traffic, conversions and as long as that improvement is growing steadily, keep it up!

Posted by CristiSpahr on January 30, 2010 | Comments (1) | Trackbacks
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An Oxymoron: Facebook Privacy

Dec 12 2009

Facebook’s new “privacy policy” is geared to make your Facebook activity less private. John Battelle’s pithy summary is “This is a big deal.  Facebook is taking the final step to become more like Twitter.”

With the new policy you will have more granular control over who sees what in your profile, right down to controlling who sees each update, but you have to act to exercise this capability–it’s not the default.  Also, now for the first time, some of your profile information is now public, meaning all 350 million FB subscribers can search for it and see it.  You cannot change the settings for this public information.

In doing this, Facebook is taking on a tricky balancing act.  On the one hand, they want to make the platform more open because it will be easier for Search Engines to spider the content, more appealing to application developers, and easier for advertisers to get information about you.  On the other hand, the reason Facebook has all that delicious information about you in the first place is that it’s shared only with your network of friends.  Opening that up to the world might not be such a good thing for you.

Full Publicity is the New Default

Let’s get clear about this.  Facebook’s new policy is aimed at making their network more open and more public, more, well, Twitter-like.  The default settings in your privacy controls were reset to the broadest public sharing settings and these are what Facebook is recommending. As ReadWriteWeb puts it,  you have to opt out.  As you’ll see below, it isn’t that easy to figure out your privacy settings option, and the surface options FB gives you aren’t really all there is to it.  A little deceptive.

Most bloggers that have been following the latest Facebook flap are not surprised at this change.  Facebook has publicly announced its intention to develop new privacy guidelines (back in July 2009), having learned a thing (maybe not two) from the ill-fated Beacon experiment.

But more broadly, it’s been clear for sometime that Facebook is struggling to open up its network.   One takeaway from Jeremiah Owyang’s recent post on Facebook’s open strategy shifts is that the big players (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo! and so forth) are all converging on a huge social network platform in which social profiles (your online identity, remember?) are linked and shared across platforms – and opened up more to companies who want to know all about you.  Yes, Virginia, there is a privacy issue.

Civil Libertarians Don’t Like It

The Guardian newspaper published an article focused on civil libertarians concerns about the changes.  From the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the American Civil Liberties Union, watchdogs are concerned about the loss of privacy.  At its core, the problem is that there are now some things that are considered public in Facebook that were not before.

For instance, did you know that some applications that run on Facebook (like polls and most games) get access to your profile information?  They can use this to connect you with people you don’t know, and may expose some of your profile in the process. Or, someone in your Friend list who opts in to one of these applications may expose your information to others without you knowing it. Facebook is now posting an explanation of the new policy. You can link to this (as of right now) from your update box where you select how to distribute the post.

Facebook Privacy Explanation 12 December 2009

In other words, all Facebook subscribers expose at least some information about themselves to the public: “your publicly available information and information you share with Everyone.”  Do you want to?

Facebook Misleads

In Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s December 9th letter posted to his profile and then shared with all of us, he claims the change gives us more control over who sees information we share.  This is partly true.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Whoops!  Not so, Mark!  Now, you can share SOME of my information with anyone.  Coupled with the default option being strongly biased to making all information public, this puts the burden of protecting privacy more on the individual subscriber.

Take Care of Your Information

It’s going to be up to you to manage your information.  Here’s some starter steps, and good luck!

First, this is the image we all saw when Facebook rolled out the changes.  It just asks you to go to the next page to set your privacy settings.

Facebook Privacy Announcement

Facebook Privacy Announcement

The next page looks like you’ve hit paydirt until you read it. You find that the default buttons selected for you are all for the most open, public options.  And your only real choice is the

Profile (ONLY) Privacy Settings

Profile (ONLY) Privacy Settings

You can see I moved mine back to the “old settings” even though I’m a little hazy on what those are.  Rolling over the radio buttons gives you an info box that tells you what the setting means, but it’s not too helpful anyway.  The main problem is that these settings only control the profile sharing.  They do not affect other factors, like applications sharing (many Facebook applications use your profile information, so they collect LOTS of information about you and about people you never heard of and share it around).

You have to go on to yet another screen that is not automatically suggested in this misleading exercise Facebook designed.  Go to the upper right ‘Settings’ drop down and select Privacy Settings – the next screen looks like this:

Facebook Privacy Settings for All Functions

Facebook Privacy Settings for All Functions

This is where you can set the privacy you want, with limits.  As noted above, you cannot keep people from seeing certain information about you if you have a Facebook account.

I’m not sure how the publicly shared information will be used.  Clearly, even knowing your location and gender gives important information to others. But I’m guessing the more potent marketing uses will involve searching and filtering your public information to make targeted lists.  Think about it:  you belong to a network, you live in a certain place, and your friends’ list includes others whose public information is also available.  It’s not too hard to imagine someone collecting and analyzing this data.

What’s your take on the new Facebook?

Posted by GlennSilloway on December 12, 2009 | Comments (1) | Trackbacks
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Where is Content Development on Your Priority List?

Dec 1 2009

Too many companies underestimate the power of content as it relates to attracting more business online. They fail to put the necessary resources toward content development on the web and instead spend all of their time and effort (and money!) on cool designs and flashy features.  Don’t get me wrong, great design is essential but content is the single most important ingredient in a recipe that attract prospects to your website.

If you want your website to work as it should, anticipate the needs and wants of your prospects and produce content that delivers answers and solutions to their most pressing concerns.  Content can take the shape of a blog post, an article, a guide, a webinar, a video, or any number of other variations.  Produce your content in a variety of formats and cover the most popular topics that relate to your company’s offerings.

Tip: When thinking about content for your site or blog, always put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think about how your customers will find you, what their interests are, and what will be entertaining and appealing to them.

In the end, the content you create should be useful, trustworthy, and relevant to the buyer’s place in their purchase process.  Understand how your customer buys then think about the type of content you can create to help move your prospect along their buying cycle toward your product or service — all the while creating content that is completely focused on the user (not you).  This approach will result in more leads and sales for your company and prospects that keep on coming.

Need help with content development?  Check out our content development services or request a meeting to discuss your needs with us.

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Posted by CristiSpahr on December 1, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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How Will New Google Product Listing Ads Affect Your Business?

Nov 24 2009

Google recently announced that it is expanding their product ads within their AdWords listing with a new feature called Product Listing Ads.  This feature is in response to the widespread use of Google as a product purchase tool.  Many people use Google as a shopping tool to research specific products and where to buy them. Google’s Product Listing Ads work within Google Merchant Center where an advertiser can create highly targeted ads featuring rich product information, such as product image, price, and merchant name.

A significant benefit of Product Listing Ads is that businesses are only charged on cost-per-action (CPA) basis. Therefore, you will only pay if a user clicks on the ad and completes the purchase process on the website. Because Product Listing Ads is charged on a CPA basis, it offers a risk-free way for businesses to reach a larger audience on Google.com.

Another benefit of Product Listing Ads is that you don’t have to use keywords or additional ad text. If a searcher enters a query that is relevant to a product in your Google Merchant Center Account, he will automatically see the most relevant products along with image, price and product name. Here are two examples:

Google Product Listing Ads

Google plans to expand the service however, currently the product listing ad is a Beta feature available to a limited number of retail advertisers. Over time, Google will increase number of users who can see the ads as well as the ones who can advertise their product.

Looking for some help with your Google AdWords campaign?  Request a Meeting and let’s discuss!

Posted by CristiSpahr on November 24, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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The 6 “Ins” of Effective Inbound Marketing

Nov 17 2009

The Internet has changed the game in the world of marketing.

nternet marketing strategies, inbound marketing, internet marketing planning, effective internet marketing

Individuals are using the Internet in ways that take the power away from marketers and put it into the hands of buyers.  We believe that the single most effective way to deal with today’s marketing environment is to embrace the idea of inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is essentially another term to describe permission-based marketing.  In a nutshell inbound marketing works by attracting interested prospects to your business by publishing, optimizing, and promoting valuable content online.  That content, which is relevant to what you offer, is “called up” by interested prospects when they’re actively seeking it.

The buying process of today’s customers is enabled by the Internet and allows prospective customers to search, interact, and buy on their terms, not yours.

When formulating your internet marketing strategy to leverage the “inbound” concept, wrap your brain around these six ideas:

1.    Individual – Unlike traditional marketing that involves pushing your message out to a mass group of people in the hopes that someone will be interested, inbound marketing is about connecting with individuals who have specifically sought out information related to what you offer. The individual determines the basis of the relationship they will have with your company – from the initial search on Google down to the method they’ll use to purchase. Recognizing that the power lies in the hands of the individual is something effective internet marketers understand.

2.    Information – Considering that the Internet is formed by information, it’s no wonder you’ll find this word among the keys to effective inbound marketing.  Your prospects will go online in search of information that facilitates their buying process. Sometimes this information is straightforward, such as finding product pricing and specifications.  Other times, they seek information that is further removed from the end purchase.  For example, prospects who visit this website are often looking for information on how to build an internet marketing plan. They’re not necessarily ready to hire an internet marketing agency but if I can be the source of information related to internet marketing planning, then why wouldn’t they consider Spark when it’s time to hire?

3.    Involvement – Effective internet marketers are active in online communities where they can establish a commonality and relationship with their customers and prospects.  Social media websites that involve sharing information, participating in conversations, and publishing useful content offer important ways for marketers to be involved.

4.    Invitation – By this, we mean you’d better follow the golden rule of today’s inbound marketing — wait to be invited.  Don’t barrage unexpecting individuals with unsolicited or unwanted messages. Instead, wait for an invitation.  Invitations in the online world happen when prospects sign up to receive your newsletter, download a free guide from your website, register for your webinar, download a free trial, follow you on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, or otherwise raise their hands and offer up their personal contact information.  These inquiries are invitations of sorts that give you the permission you need to start an appropriate dialogue.

5.    Integration – There is deep level of integration that can take place between inbound marketing strategies. Leverage such opportunities in order to optimize your presence online.  For example, Twitter is not a standalone microblogging website.  It’s a tool that can interact with LinkedIn, Facebook, and your own website. It can be used to share content, listen to your customers, participate in your industry, and build your presence in the search engines. When you build your internet marketing plan to maximize integration, you’ll get more bang for your internet marketing buck.

6.    Intelligence – What good is any type of marketing without the intelligence to measure, analyze, and optimize your efforts? Intelligence tools abound in the world of internet marketing. Google Analytics and other lead intelligence and lead tracking tools offer valuable information to help your internet marketing program generate the leads and sales you seek.   Always be thinking about how you’ll gain intelligence from everything you do online so that you can make it better over time.
When you understand and buy into these 6 “ins” you’re ready to start creating an effective inbound internet marketing strategy.

Need help creating an inbound internet marketing plan that attracts prospects, generates leads, and converts sales?  Request a meeting to discuss your needs.  Also, be sure to download our free SEO Guide or our free Inbound Internet Marketing Guide.

Posted by CristiSpahr on November 17, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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Still Wondering Why You Should “Do” Social Media?

Nov 1 2009

Overcome Social Media Confusion & Generate More Leads

Social media serves an important, yet often misunderstood, role in inbound marketing success.  No doubt, many companies feel that they should “do” social media, yet I find that many business owners and marketers are confused and apprehensive about implementing a social media campaign.

In the business-to-business world, especially, social media conjures up thoughts of posting holiday photos on Facebook, making silly movies for YouTube, or wondering who’s going to write all of those blog posts.  And for many business owners, the blood pressure starts to rise at the sound of the word Twitter.

Relax. It need not be so overwhelming.

Have content.  Will socialize.

Any discussion of social media must begin with content.

From an inbound marketing standpoint, the most effective way to use social media is as a content promotion tool.  When you create and optimize content that your prospects will value and you publish or share that content through social media, you will begin to understand the social media hype.   (Of course you won’t just talk about your own content – you’ll also share other people’s great content, comment on other content, and share ideas that don’t involve self promotion.  Yet, without your own content to add to the mix, you won’t get the social media results you seek.)

What kind of content do you need?

Articles, press releases, videos, presentations, webinars, eBooks, guides, whitepapers, blog posts, free trials, free demos, and just about any other type of content can be promoted through social media.  A video can be posted on YouTube, a presentation can be shared on SlideShare, a webinar can be promoted via Facebook, an eBook can be promoted with an online press release, an authority article can be submitted to any number of article submission websites, your latest blog post can be tweeted on Twitter, and a free trial offer can be promoted to your LinkedIn network.  Use keyword research to explore topics for your content.

Clearly, if you’re going to get serious about social media, you must also get serious about content. Without it you will continue to sit on the sidelines wondering if you’ll ever “do social media.”

3 Reasons to Love Social Media

With content in hand you’re ready to experience the benefits of social media.

For companies looking to build their business through inbound marketing, participation in social media can bring 3 primary benefits:

1.    Social media brings more traffic to your website.
Social media gives you more opportunity to be found by people who are looking for information related to what you offer.  And as more people find you, your traffic will grow.  Probably the best and most common way to build traffic with social media is through a blog.  Your business blog gives you an easy platform with which to create and publish content on wide range of topics.  When built correctly, the structure of a blog is naturally well-optimized for search engines and when you use good SEO practices in writing your blog, you can gain an immediate presence in the search engine results pages.

Create blog posts about a variety of niche topics that are of interest to your target market and you’ll give yourself lots of opportunities to attract high quality traffic to your site.   (Note: Your blog should be built into your website, not a separate domain.)

2.    Social media helps you generate more leads.

If you’re a B2B marketer, you are no doubt interested in lead generation.  In fact, if you’re like most B2B marketers you don’t even want to talk about marketing unless it involves lead gen.  Well, say no more.  When done right, social media can be a powerful lead generation tool.  The key, of course, is to create content that is so compelling that a prospect becomes willing to give up their anonymity in order to access it.  And once you have that compelling content in place, promote it through social media and tie it back to a landing page that captures lead information and fulfills your offer.

A webinar is a great example of using valuable content to generate leads. When you create and promote a webinar that is chock full of free and useful information, you can build a nice list of leads (through the webinar registration).  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, your website, and press release submissions are usually great ways to promote lead-generating content, such as webinars.

3.    Social media helps you build more links.
Links. Perhaps no other word in the world of internet marketing generates more conversation and debate.  Yet, one thing is certain: Links are a critical factor in building your website’s search engine rankings and traffic.  Keyword-rich links from other high quality relevant websites to your website are the kinds of links you want.  The more, the better.

So, how can you build links through social media?

My favorite way is to create content that your prospects and customers will want to share!  (I told you, it all comes back to content.)  When people share your content with others through social media, you get more links. Bloggers can write about your content, Twitter users can tweet your content, Digg users can digg your content, etc.  Sure, not all links will lead to SEO credit, but only good can result from putting out great content that others want to share.  If not for direct SEO credit, how about for traffic and lead generation?  Links can do all of that and more.

There are many other ways to build links in social media, including submitting articles and press releases to submission sites, building profiles on social media sites, commenting on other blogs, and participating in Q&As.

In short, while the social media topic has been played out ad nauseam in the online marketing community confusion and apprehension among business owners is still alive and well.  Only by understanding the role of social media and making a commitment to content can B2Bers experience the positive effects of social media lead generation.

Want to talk about social media for your company? Request a meeting or call me at (800) 474-1573.

Interested in learning more about inbound marketing?  Request our free Inbound Marketing Guide here.

Posted by CristiSpahr on November 1, 2009 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks
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