Hopefully, your company’s content is read by many types of visitors: RSS subscribers, social followers and first time visitors among others.
And while they’re all important, first time visitors are key to your marketing program because they’re fundamental to spreading your brand and reputation to new markets.
Check out this great infographic from our friends at MDG Advertising on what to expect for the growing Inbound Marketing trend in 2012.
When a marketing powerhouse like Coca Cola announces that content will be the basis for their marketing over the next decade, it’s time to stand up and take notice.
Coca Cola’s Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, announced this week:
“All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”
In these two videos, Jonathan goes on to explain in great detail about their new brainchild for marketing: Content 2020. By the way, we just love these RSA Animate style videos. Enjoy!
Microsoft announced yesterday that next month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will be its last as both a keynote speaker and as an exhibitor.
Frank Shaw, head of Microsoft’s corporate communications said the following,
“Microsoft decided to downsize its role at CES because the company is looking at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories“. 
Shaw went on to cite their website, their social media presence on Facebook and Twitter and their new retail stores as being the marketing avenues they wish to pursue more aggressively.
Wow! Let’s just let that sink in for a moment.
One of the biggest technology companies in the world is quitting one of the biggest technology tradeshows in the world.
Microsoft is basically admitting that inbound marketing is the new tradeshow.
And it’s not just Microsoft. You’ll remember Apple pulled out of the Macworld Conference & Expo in 2009. At the time, Apple’s head of marketing Philip Schiller said,
“Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before” and “trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers”.
Tradeshows have always been questionable investments for many companies.
But as the web has become the dominant means of connecting with potential customers, trade shows are losing their appeal.
A recent study cited by Exhibit News, a UK publication, cited a 2011 study conducted by Vivid Interface that found tradeshow attendance in the UK has fallen an average of 13% every year since 2005.
Source: Exhibition News (http://bit.ly/uvGR2m)
Inbound marketing on the web is a lot like a being at an online tradeshow.
And just as you would create an appealing backdrop, provide educational content and engage in conversations at a trade show, this is exactly what you have to do to attract and convert prospects on the web.
As more companies recognize that traditional outbound marketing just isn’t delivering the kind of results they’re used to, inbound marketing is gaining steam.
Learn more about inbound marketing by downloading the Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing.
Plus, check out our latest inbound marketing infographic to find out why you should work with an inbound marketing agency.
The good people at Eloqua have demonstrated that they totally get where content marketing is today, as evidenced by the second release of their popular content marketing infographic earlier this year. It’s true that more marketers understand the need for content but the challenge has turned to operationalizing it. At Spark, we’ve been working on a similar project to help our clients understand how to connect content and promotions to stages of the customer’s buying cycle so we were excited to see this great example from Eloqua.
The Content Grid v2 makes clear the connection between content type and distribution channel, while tying in the perspective of the buyer, a multi-stage purchase funnel and clear performance indicators.
Here it is:
Imagine your website as your booth at your industry’s largest international tradeshow. Would yours attract enough interested visitors? Would it be filled with engaging content, such as videos, collateral, guest speakers, demonstrations and graphics. Would your visitors be compelled to leave their business card, or speak to a rep at the show? And after the show, would visitors receive ongoing follow up emails or phone calls to nurture the relationship? And if they become a customer would you be able to tie back that sale to the source of the tradeshow?
Many savvy business people have this process down pat. And they spend a ton of money making those trade shows a big success. But then, moseying on over to their website you may find a completely different story. You’ll find a website that lacks quality design, compelling content, engaging offers, and mechanisms to generate leads. You’ll find a process that fails to connect the dots between visits, leads, and sales.
You’ll find missed opportunities aplenty.
The tradeshow marketing process is one that many companies invest in. Unfortunately, it’s also one that many are abandoning due to high cost and diminishing ROI. That’s because the world’s largest international trade show is actually taking place 24x7x365 on the web. Rather than a one-time shot, this tradeshow is happening around the clock. And companies have figured out that participating in ‘the show’ is the way to compete in today’s online business world. These companies are succeeding at a far better rate.
The process involves these key steps:
1. Drive traffic to your website by helping you get found
2. Turn traffic into revenue by converting prospects to leads and leads to sales
3. Measure your results by tracking website traffic, leads, and customers
As more companies recognize that traditional outbound marketing just isn’t delivering the kind of results they’re used to, inbound marketing is gaining steam.
Inbound marketing on the web is a lot like a being at a humongous online tradeshow. And just as you would create an appealing backdrop, provide live demos, engage in conversations, provide relevant collateral material, create compelling offers and devise other interesting ways of attracting and engaging your audience, this is exactly the kind of effort you must put into attracting and converting prospects on the web.
Sound like an approach your business could benefit from? Learn more about inbound marketing by downloading the Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing.
Plus, check out our latest inbound marketing infographic to find out why you should work with an inbound marketing agency.
As you come to grips with setting up an Inbound Marketing program at your company, it becomes clear that the skills and experience needed are quite different from traditional marketing.
Do you have good writers on your staff ready to produce quality blog posts and whitepapers on a regular basis?
Do you have an SEO expert that knows how to get your website found by the search engines?
Do you have a Community Manager dedicated to the care and feeding of your social networks?
Do you have the time, resources, and expertise to do it all yourself?
For most companies, the answer to these questions is no.
That’s why an inbound marketing agency can come in very handy. Inbound Marketing agencies have the skills and experience to get your Inbound Marketing program off the ground quickly without going through a painful learning curve.
Check out our awesome new infograpahic, created by our fab designer Stephanie – Why You Need an Inbound Marketing Agency - that helps explain what we’re talking about!
Inbound marketing is the process of attracting people to your website who actually care about what you have to say. It’s about creating content that people are interested in consuming. It’s about admitting that the old way of marketing – interruptive advertising – just doesn’t work anymore.
It’s marketing and selling your products with authenticity and transparency.
It’s what people want.
You may have heard Inbound Marketing referred to by different names. Some people call it Content Marketing or SEO or Social Media. The truth is Inbound Marketing is all of these things and more.
Inbound marketing is like a puzzle – but not because it’s confusing. It’s a puzzle in the sense that it’s made up of many pieces. Pieces that should not stand on their own, but when put together, make total sense. To truly succeed online, business need to have a comprehensive strategy inclusive of all the pieces in the puzzle. Assembling the pieces together into one, cohesive strategy is the key to marketing success.
In order for your Inbound Marketing program to be successful, it needs to deliver in four key areas:
Generating more traffic for a website is like a recipe: you will need the proper mix of ingredients but there’s no one single formula for success. Rather, it’s a set of strategies and supporting tools working together. Those strategies are Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Customer-Oriented Blogging and Social Media sharing. All three working together will ensure an adequate supply of targeted traffic to your site.
So you’ve optimized your content, your’re blogging regularly and you’re getting some content shared on social media. Great start. But just because you have traffic coming in, doesn’t mean you’re getting any leads.
This is where premium content, landing pages and great calls-to-action come into play.
Lead generation is a tacit quid pro quo between the marketer and customer. You have to convince your potential customer that what they’re getting (information) is worth more than what they’re giving up (their name and email address). Giving away useful customer-focused, problem solving content in exchange for information is one of the best ways to do this. The amount of information you ask of them is directly related to how valuable the content you’re giving away. The more valuable the info, the more information you can ask of them.
Once you have their name and email address, you can begin the process of nurturing leads toward sales.
Would you consider someone who Likes you on Facebook a lead? Would you consider someone who downloads your whitepaper a lead?
The truth is that not all “leads” are created equal.
That’s why managing your leads realistically while taking the long term view is a key part of converting leads to sales. Lead nurturing and segmented email campaigns are your primary tools for converting your leads into sales over time.
One of the great advantages of internet marketing is access to data. With the proper tools such as Hubspot or Google Analytics 5.0, you can track almost everything about your site visitors.
The reports you generate should tie directly back to the goals you’ve set for the business. Is your goal to increase site traffic? Is your goal to improve traffic from social networks? Is your goal to increase conversion of your existing site visitors? All of these can be reported on analyzed.
Remember, data doesn’t lie. It doesn’t matter what your boss wants to do or what some article says you should do. If the data shows that you’re not meeting your goals, change tactics and try again. Your inbound marketing program should be a continuous process of testing, measuring and tweaking.
If your business is looking to consistently and affordably generate leads over time without annoying your customers, Inbound Marketing is something you should look into.
Spark Inbound Marketing is a full service inbound marketing agency that can help you make the leap to Inbound Marketing. We don’t promise overnight success but we do promise a system that delivers results over time.
Drop us a line, we love to talk about this stuff!
Spark Inbound Marketing Agency provides services and consulting to companies that seek to attract more business through results-driven inbound marketing. Follow this blog for tips, strategies, and information about inbound marketing.
