kick off your inbound marketing right 5 Days of Key Information and To-Do’s For Inbound Rookies
KICK OFF YOUR INBOUND MARKETING RIGHT 5 Days of Key Information and To-Do’s For Inbound Rookies
let’s begin: what is inbound marketing?
........................................................................... Sometimes you hear about an idea that’s so good and seems so logical, that you feel silly for not thinking of it first – especially when that idea is one that’s revolutionizing an industry. Inbound marketing is one of those ideas.
What company wouldn’t want marketing that people actively seek out?
If you’re not already familiar with it, inbound marketing is a fairly simple concept to grasp. Traditionally, all marketing was outbound – with companies pushing messages out using cold calls, TV advertising, billboards – all of the things that an average person thinks of when they hear the word “marketing.” Inbound marketing turns that idea on its head, bringing customers to you. By creating online content – like blog posts, white papers, webinars, and more – that people actually want to consume, you jump a step ahead of competitors who rely on outbound advertising that people want to avoid. Sounds good, right? What company wouldn’t want marketing that people actively seek out? It’s a little more complicated – engineering an effective inbound campaign requires work and commitment on the part of a business and its employees, but it’s all worth it. That’s where Element Three can help – with the right strategic advice and creative development along the way.
Day 1: The power of inbound marketing
........................................................................... Inbound marketing is a potent tool for any business, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small corner bookstore. Increasingly, today’s consumers use the Internet to research products and find ways to solve various problems. They also use caller ID and their DVRs to avoid traditional outbound marketing. If your business embraces the principles of good inbound marketing, you can make your website a destination for potential customers and your business can become known as an industry thought leader – in your community, your country, and even the world. SHARE THIS EBOOK
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Statistics demonstrate the power of emphasizing inbound marketing as well. Of Internet users worldwide, 61% conduct product research online, and 44% start by using a search engine. Paid link placement is not successful: the average click-through rate was 2% in 2010 , with 70% of consumer clicks going to organic links . (For the uninitiated, click-through rate, according to the American Marketing Association, is a way of measuring the success of an online marketing campaign by the number of users that clicked on a specific link.)
61% (of
“
Internet users) conduct product research online, and 44% start by using a search engine.1 ”
Your customers are out there looking for you, but they want to find you – not have your name shoved in their face, even when they’re already looking for something like what you offer. Inbound marketing is a vehicle that enables that organic process to happen more regularly and easily. Your ability to reach customers will be amplified if you have the best tools at your disposal. At Element Three, we work with HubSpot, one of the pioneers of inbound marketing. Hubspot’s all-in-one software platform helps businesses attract leads and turn them into customers. Even more unique, HubSpot lets marketers measure web traffic and page visits – and much more, giving users real metrics around their efforts. By now you’re probably on board with the idea of inbound marketing and eager to get started. But how exactly do you make such a massive change in marketing philosophy? The answer is simple: gradually. The first step to getting where you want to be is to determine where your marketing is now – by baselining your key metrics, analyzing your current website, and undertaking other tasks to help you decide what to create or change.
Day 2: How Google works – and why you should care
........................................................................... Google is such a pervasive member of the online search industry that its name has been established as a verb that means “to search online.” It’s safe to say that if you want to be found in an online search, Google is the best place to start. Google’s software trawls the Internet, crawling through every website,
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collecting information. All of that information is added to a massive database from which Google’s search results are pulled, based upon the keywords typed into the Search bar. These results are ranked by Google based on the system’s perceived relevance to the keywords entered. In the past, Google’s site relevance algorithm concentrated on a site’s inbound links – that is, how many other sites linked to the one being searched. Because that system was vulnerable to cheating,it has since been improved.
“ As of March 2013, Google cornered
88.8%
of the global web search market....”
With Google’s improved system, the actual page content carries more weight than its links, and Google is better at seeing that content. Today, the key to Google’s heart is relevance and volume. To win with Google, your site needs lots of content with organically integrated keywords, lots of pages – each with its own meta tags – plus alternate tags for images. Google is progressively improving its ability to scan and understand page content. That means that consistently producing quality content – rather than just jamming as many keywords in as possible – is key to inbound marketing – and specifically to search engine optimization (SEO). Why should you care about all of this? Why is Google important? If you want to be found on the Internet, you have to go through Google. As of March 2013, Google cornered 88.8% of the global web search market, and 86.3% of the same market in the United States. There were nearly five billion searches a day in 2011 , with 620 million daily visitors and 7.2 billion page views in 2010. If that isn’t enough, Google is the top-ranked website in the world. Showing up on Google will get lots of eyeballs on your website – but only if it’s highly ranked. 60% of all organic clicks go to the top three results on the page , and three-quarters of users don’t scroll past the first page of a search. In other words, the higher your site ranks in the Google results, the more likely it is to be seen – and it can be seen by a multitude of people.
Day 3: Understand and baseline key metrics
........................................................................... By now you’ve probably guessed that a large part of getting started with an inbound marketing strategy will involve evaluating and even SHARE THIS EBOOK
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revamping your website. But before you can start making changes, you need to know where you stand, so that you’re sure of exactly what needs to be changed – and how. A good way to start is by identifying and understanding the metrics that you’ll use to measure your inbound marketing success. This will help you to effectively plan for the future of your website and your business, with all of the information that you need. There’s a wide range of important metrics for any inbound-minded business to monitor at the outset and throughout the process. By monitoring these metrics, you’ll be able to constantly tweak and adjust your inbound marketing to achieve your goals.
A good way to start is by identifying and understanding the metrics that you’ll use to measure your inbound marketing success.
At the simplest level, you should keep track of your site’s monthly web visits. This can include both the overall number of visits to your site as well as the number of unique visitors (that is, the number of distinct visitors rather than the number of total visits), but the former is more important. The total number of pages viewed should also be tracked, as well as the average time visitors spend on your site. Another key metric is your site’s bounce rate – the percentage of visitors to a site who leave it within a certain amount of time, without viewing another page on your site. By keeping track of all of these key metrics, you will be able to observe how many people are visiting your site, how long they’re there, and what they’re doing while there. It’s also helpful to know exactly how people are finding your site, so you should also monitor the distribution of web traffic. This is divided into three segments. The first is organic traffic, which is any visit that comes from unpaid search results through a search engine like Google or Bing. Another segment is referral traffic, which are visits that comes through hyperlinks from other sites – like Twitter, social media, blogs and the websites of companies with whom your company work. Finally there’s direct traffic, which doesn’t involve a search or referral. A good example would be one in which a prospect simply types your web site’s address into their browser bar. You can also measure the rate at which prospects turn into customers. Just measuring leads – that is, the number of new names or emails of possible customers coming in through your website – is a good start, and a rate of leads per month is the most useful related metric. To see the effectiveness of your sales process, measure the conversion rates of web site visits to leads and leads to customers.
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One useful way to measure that process’s efficiency is to track the average length of your sales cycle – that is, the length of time between a lead contacting you and closing a deal. You can also analyze the effectiveness of your inbound marketing spend by tracking your cost per lead and your cost of customer acquisition. Let’s say that your company spends $50,000 on transitioning to inbound marketing and building a website, and that these efforts bring in 100 leads from your website. Then ten of these leads become customers. Your cost per lead is $500 and your cost of customer acquisition is $5,000. If you don’t have access to all of these metrics, that’s okay. You can use the information that you do have as a starting point. Tracking can be put in place to capture the most important data moving forward. Some services, like Google Analytics, are free. HubSpot also offers free trials for its service – so you can try it out.
Day 4: Website audit
...........................................................................
In the 21st century, it’s not just vital to have a website — it’s practically required.
In the 21st century, it’s not just vital to have a website – it’s practically required. Anyone with a business can put up something on the Internet to fill space, but if you want to bring in customers online, you have to optimize your site to attract as many visitors as possible. It’s time for a website audit. Start with a checklist to guide you – like the one in HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing Sales Workbook (included in your download). Some parts of the checklist will help you to create baseline metrics. Other parts are geared toward creating a social media presence. Most importantly, the list primarily gives you an entry-level critique of your website, its current functionality and performance. There are other great tools that you can use to get a more in-depth look at your website. HubSpot’s free Marketing Grader (marketing.grader.com) is a powerful tool that analyzes your site and advises you on possible adjustments to make to optimize it and your other inbound marketing tactics. You’ll receive a full report on how you’re doing with your marketing online.
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One relatively simple change to make is the addition of metadata to the individual pages of your business’s website. Metadata is information that’s built into a website that describes its content to readers and search engines. Page titles are important metadata. This is the title that appears in the browser tab in which the page is viewed, rather than anything that appears on the page itself. But meta tags and meta descriptions are even more important. Meta tags are simple keywords related to a page’s content. They are part of what’s examined by search engines in the process of locating a page. While meta tags are less crucial to Google’s algorithm than they were in the past, they’re still important. Meta descriptions are more visible than meta tags because they are the descriptive sentences that appear in a search engine results immediately under the link to a page. Writing keywords is important for search purposes. Yet creating a compelling verbal teaser to represent the page that will grab searchers and prompt them to click is even more important. A good tool for this process is the SEOmoz Toolbar (seomoz.org). This is a browser plugin (or application) that lets you assess a page’s metadata and decide whether it needs to be adjusted. This is very useful in the initial site auditing process. It will also help you each time a new page is added or an existing one is edited. A site audit is practically required at the start of an inbound marketing plan – and the need for prudent auditing continues for the life of your website.
Day 5: Keyword research
........................................................................... We mentioned that keywords are an important part of what Google uses to determine your site’s relevance to any given search query. We have also discussed how important it is to work your keywords naturally into your site’s content. But how do you decide what keywords are important, and how do you know where to use them so that Google will notice? The first step is simple – develop a thorough list of words that could function as your keywords. Typically, it’s a good idea to concentrate on words that are very closely related with your business, its products or services, and your community. For example, a dry
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cleaner in Indianapolis might try to rank for the keywords “alterations Indianapolis” or “stain removal Indianapolis.” Or it might simply try for “dry cleaning Indianapolis.” It could also consider a variations of themes that refer to the same word:
It is worth pursuing certain keywords – because in addition to attracting the kinds of people you want on your site, they can actually improve your writing.
•
“dry cleaning store”
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“dry cleaning service”
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“dry cleaning location”
Once you have your list of contenders, decide upon the keywords worthy of further concentration. There are a number of tools that are great for this. HubSpot’s Keyword Grader (hubspot.com) and Google’s Keyword Tool (adwords.google. com) are both widely used. Both are good for choosing keywords initially. They can also help you to monitor progress after your site is keyword-optimized. Once you’ve chosen the tool that’s best for you, plug in your potential keywords. The tool will give you thorough ranking feedback to help you decide upon your final keywords. Pay particular attention to the number of monthly searches that your prospective keywords get, the difficulty score related to moving up the rankings for a particular keyword, and where your site already ranks for a particular keyword. If no one is searching for a term, a high Google ranking won’t help you attract the kinds of prospects that you want – and making an effort to move up would be futile. The same goes for chasing a term that’s already cornered by another site, or one for which you are ranked low. In this case, you could expend a massive effort to try to improve your ranking and still fall short. It is worth pursuing certain keywords – because in addition to attracting the kinds of people you want on your site, they can actually improve your writing. It may seem counterintuitive – having a list of words you must include sounds stifling – but it helps focus your site’s content. The right keywords can provide focus for your site and keep you from rambling about irrelevant subjects. They also force a mild standardization, because no matter who’s writing, everyone will be using the same terms for the same things. Rather than referring to a “sales team” here and a “sales force” there, you can pick one to focus on and reduce confusion.
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Now you’re ready to begin your inbound marketing efforts
........................................................................... Once you know the advantages that inbound marketing has over traditional outbound marketing, it can seem like a simple decision to choose to adopt inbound as your primary marketing strategy. But it’s more complicated than simply turning left rather than right. Your business needs to know where it is before it can decide exactly where it wants to go. Once you’ve examined your relationship to search engines, audited your site, laid out key metrics to track, and chosen keywords to focus your content, you’re primed to enter into the world of inbound marketing. It’s time to start in on the nitty-gritty details of reshaping your business’s image and voice, and to start inviting prospects to engage with your brand on their terms.
SOURCES
........................................................................... 1
I nterconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012 (via HubSpot)
2
Convario, January 2011 (via HubSpot)
3
Marketing Sherpa, February 2007 (via HubSpot)
4
http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2006/07/05/ to-google-or-not-to-google.aspx
5
http://www.karmasnack.com/about/search-engine-market-share/
6
http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/
7
http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/24/google-facts-and-figuresmassive-infographic/
8
Marketing Sherpa, February 2007 (via HubSpot)
9
MarketShareHitsLink.com, October 2010 (via Hubspot)
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About the authorS
........................................................................... Lance Schwab is Element Three’s Director of Strategy, helping promote our Business First approach by formulating marketing strategies and coupling them with sales — in turn driving real, measurable ROI. You can connect with Lance @LanceSchwab. @LanceSchwab Camron Humphreys is Element Three’s SEO and social media expert, managing SEO and social strategy for our clients. You can connect with Camron @CCHumphreys.
@CCHumphreys
About ELEMENT THREE
........................................................................... Working with Element Three is like having a marketing department just down the hall; capable of assessing the situation and giving you the right blend of marketing insight, brand clarity and creativity to meet your goals. We are a strategic brand and marketing firm with a strong creative component. We focus on integrating business insights, brand strategy and creative execution to measurably advance your business. When the right elements come together, there is a powerful reaction. If you’re a business leader with aggressive growth objectives, you just might be interested in what we can do to help your business achieve more. We make sure that you spend your resources on the highest impact activities and that you can show results for your marketing efforts. Element Three, business first. www.ElementThree.com
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