E-book - Content Marketing by Sharon L. Hadden

get your Content together GUIDEBOOK

WRITTEN BY SHARON L. HADDEN

TABLE OF Contents WHAT IS & WHY INBOUND MARKETING? PAGE 3

GENERATE BUSINESS LEADS WITH INBOUND MARKETING PAGE 6

CREATING YOUR INBOUND MARKETING PROGRAM PAGE 9

CRAFTING A KILLER CONTENT PLAN PAGE 12

MARKET YOUR MASTERPIECE PAGE 15

NEXT STEPS FOR BUSY BUSINESS OWNERS PAGE 17

If you’ve ever wondered how businesses, large and small make the most of marketing budgets, chances are you’ve never heard of inbound marketing. It’s typical practice to believe that promoting your business to a wider audience should yield a better bottom line. We have big brands and the long held culture of push marketing to thank for that.

CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS & WHY INBOUND MARKETING

If you’re unfamiliar with push marketing, think of it as spam mail. Push marketing seeks to get as many potential customers in front of a product, even if they’ve shown no interest or desire in the promotion. Frankly speaking, push marketing is all about taking, but smart businesses know that in order to succeed, you must give, give, give…and give some more!

So what is inbound marketing? Simply put, when done thoughtfully and strategically, inbound marketing is what helps you generate business leads in your sleep. With the rise of smartphones and easy internet access, customers can easily compare different brands with just a few taps and flicks of a finger. Instead of chasing after customers, inbound marketing allows you to raise brand awareness online so your customers come to you instead – organically and ready to purchase1.

There are two types of business owners in this world: those that mimic the marketing strategies of successful companies and those who commit to developing a strategy that works for their business and customers. This second type of business owner may struggle in the beginning, but once they find that perfect formula, there's no turning back from the six figure revenues their dedication generates. Which business owner are you?

There is a wide selection of platforms for harnessing the full power of inbound marketing, including search engines, social media sites and other content-sharing web pages. All you have to do, is find the perfect mix of each tactic and then brace yourself for the new customer relationships that you build over time. In contrast with push marketing, inbound marketing paved way for the following marketing strategy innovations2:

Don’t worry, no one will judge if you fall into one category or another. All that matters is that you commit to make the necessary change in your business and marketing strategy to impact business results. And give yourself some credit—you’ve already read this far, so you’re obviously already committed. Let’s dive right into the first activity of many. Think about the characteristics of the customers you currently attract. Then, think about how this differs from the customers you long to serve. Take a minute to gather your thoughts and then, write down your answers in the table provided on page four. This book, the guidance it provides and the activities you will complete will prepare you to create a timeless inbound marketing program for your business. It will compel you to abandon outdated push marketing strategy, in favor of methods that boost customer reach and increase conversions.

• Mission – shift from a company-centered to a customer-centered approach • Customer Engagement – shift from demographic mass advertising to behavioral 1:1 targeting • Tactics – shift from point-in-time blasts on isolated channels to continuous relationships on integrated channels Ultimately, inbound marketing influences purchasing behavior by making your business http://boldthinkcreative.com/inbound-marketing-vs-outboundmarketing-whats-the-difference/ 2 https://www.marketo.com/inbound-marketing/ 1

get your Content together

and all its features visible during the customer’s decision-making process. Instead of blindly interrupting random customers, you’ll be able to provide useful content to audiences who become genuinely interested in your products and services. Unlike conventional strategies which often don’t agree with a small business owner’s budget, you won’t need a 6-digit sum to launch your inbound marketing program. Through best practices in social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and word-of-mouth, you’ll learn to position your business as the ultimate solution to your potential customer’s problem. You’ll also quickly notice the additional benefits of inbound marketing, like increased awareness for your business, that drives future purchases.

Inbound marketing takes the fear out of marketing strategy. Because it’s highly targeted, it’s also highly measurable. Think of that ideal customer you’re after. Online marketing campaigns can be tailored to target those people who meet the interests, demographics and behaviors you specify—making your brand’s online presence extremely attractive to all who discover your business.

If you need any more reason to believe in the effectiveness of inbound marketing, take a look at these stats from Voltier Digital3: • We’re witnessing the fall of push marketing, considering that: 84% of people aged 25-34 leave websites due to interruptive ads; 86% skip tv ads; 200 million Americans registered their phone numbers under FTC’s “Do Not Call” list; and 44% of direct emails sent aren’t even opened. • Inbound marketing is 62% cheaper per lead in contrast with push marketing! • Strong Internet presence does raise sales, proven by 57% of businesses who successfully acquired customers through company blogs, 57% through LinkedIn, 48% through Facebook and 42% through Twitter. Now that we’ve covered the basics i.e. inbound marketing is good, push marketing is bad, take some time to familiarize yourself with the terms on the next page. They will be frequently referenced throughout this guide.

http://mashable.com/2011/10/30/inbound-outboundmarketing/#M0.lK_SU9PqD

CUSTOMER PROFILE EXERCISE CURRENT CUSTOMERS

POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS

Demographic Interests Behavior

get your Content together

INBOUND MARKETING REFERENCE TERMS

LEAD

potential buyer of your brand

LEAD GENERATION

sparking customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; interest towards your brand

LEAD MANAGEMENT

collection of methods, systems and marketing programs aiming to attract new customers

LANDING PAGE

the webpage which appears after clicking on an online ad or an SEO search result

CONVERSION RATE

the percentage of site visitors who perform your desired action

FUNNEL

sequence of converting a website visitor into an actual customer

CALL-TO-ACTION

portion of a webpage that provokes the visitor to click-through and learn more about your product or service

KPI

key performance indicators to any inbound marketing program

VALUE PROPOSITION

clear statement which answers why your brand should be patronized

CRM SYSTEM

customer relationship management system which analyzes engagement with customers

CMS PLATFORM

application or site which supports publishing content in a content management system

MARKETING AUTOMATION

automation of repetitive tasks when engaging on multiple online channels

NURTURE CAMPAIGN (EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGN) automated sending of emails to leads over a period of time

CONTENT MARKETING

marketing strategy involving the distribution of good quality content towards a target audience to stimulate interaction and/or purchase

get your Content together

There are two things that will surely make your business successful: solving a problem or providing value. Everyone is so eager to fast forward to revenue generation, that we often forget these two things, and skip critical steps in leading the customer down the path to purchase. These critical steps include building visibility, trust, credibility and brand awareness first, so that when customers are ready to invest in the solution you offer, or the value you provide, your inbound marketing strategy makes a world of a difference. To pursue these brand boosting commodities, a few investments should be made, and the best investments often come in the form of professional consulting, a company website, SEO optimization, email marketing, articles, social media, etc. Each of these marketing tactics push your brand toward the first page of Google search results, making your business highly discoverable. The more authentic your content, i.e. videos, product reviews and personal testimonies, the easier it will be to build trust and credibility with current and potential customers. More trust, equals more leads, equals more sales. There’s an old saying that goes, “Rent the car. Buy the house.” Think of your marketing activities in this same way. Push marketing is so costly because you are essentially borrowing attention from potential customers. You’re renting the influence of that radio show or community website. None of the eyeballs you collect have any loyalty to you, and with push marketing, you really don’t give customers any reason to make your business a priority.

CHAPTER TWO GENERATE BUSINESS LEADS WITH INBOUND MARKETING

And, in order to do so, you must buy the house a.k.a. build, not borrow influence—taking on the maintenance, stability and financial incentives that come along with it. Inbound marketing maximizes the effectiveness of content on two levels4. • Allows you to engage leads on platforms where they gave you permission to communicate (i.e., social media, webinars, subscription-based email marketing and blog subscribers) • Also allows you to answer frequently asked questions and make such answers visible all around the internet (i.e., landing page, blogs and SEO-optimized content) With the right combination of content, timing, and platform, you can easily turn an audience of complete strangers into loyal customers.

Push marketing seems attractive, since you get to skip all the troubles of creating your own network, but is this really cost effective for budding business owners like you? The answer is simple: probably not. While borrowing air time from mass media or purchasing an email list might increase your reach and exposure, in the short term, it leaves relationship building with potential customers on the table. As a business owner, trust that you WANT to play the long game.

4 https://vtldesign.com/inbound-marketing/inboundmarketing-vs-outbound-marketing/

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CASE STUDY

GREEN CIRCLE GROWERS Green Circle Growers5, is a large greenhouse operator in the Midwest that struggled with promoting its Just Add Ice orchids. While the product had a loyal customer base, it lacked visibility to reach customers who had never heard of the brand. Also, almost all branding materials needed updating. The company’s inbound marketing strategy capitalized on the uniqueness of the product: requiring only three ice cubes per week instead of constant watering. They launched a new website with a customized store locator, developed quality content to post on social media accounts, and devised new email marketing strategies. As a direct result, Just Add Ice orchids' sales volume increased by 75%. Over 2010 to 2012, the product's website enjoyed a 100% boost in website visits. Moreover, its Facebook fans grew from a couple of hundred to over 26,000. Just Add Ice’s content piece "Your Personal Guide to Orchid Reblooming" also produced 5,700 conversions within four months. How can I generate more leads for my business? At the peak of its popularity, push marketing emphasized the immediacy and urgency of making a purchase through glaring signs that yelled, “Call us today!” or “Act now!” Over the years, studies have shown that this tactic is becoming increasingly obsolete. Why, you ask? We live in a time where personalization and customized messages are key to winning people to your way of thinking. Just read a chapter of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and you’ll understand why telling, instead of asking, seldom works in anyones favor. Rather than bully your audience with push marketing messages, help them through the decision making process. Give, and give, and give some more. Take advantage of your opportunity to influence and empower buyers. In order to generate more leads for your business, you’ll need to create and place content on the most easily accessible platforms, both digital and social. In addition to this, you must understand the dynamics of the sales funnel (see right). The top of the funnel is the stage of awareness. It’s the widest part of the funnel because it represents a wide group of individuals that have the potential to become buyers. Many business owners consider the top of the sales funnel as the most crucial part of the sales process, but the top of the funnel only touches the surface of the customer journey. A common mistake is to invest the majority of your

Awareness (Leads) Consideration (Prospects) Purchase (Customers) Customer Loyalty (Brand Ambassadors)

marketing dollars generating awareness, while putting little to no effort in marketing throughout the remaining portions of the customer journey. We tend to halt marketing efforts once a customer shows interest, however, this is the time that relationship building and content matters the most. While the typical business owner might ignore a lead who initially appears to be uninterested, savvy entrepreneurs work to nurture that lead over time. Inbound marketing provides the framework for lead nurturing, and allows you to use content to guide the customer through the sales process.

http://www.kunocreative.com/case-study-jai

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WHAT’S YOUR SALES FUNNEL? GUIDED ACTIVITY

Review the sales funnel diagram listed on page seven, and then compare it to your target audience exercise from chapter one. At which stage do you find current customers getting stuck in the sales process? Do you find that they skip a step in the sales funnel altogether?

Use the funnel below to catalog the issues preventing you from making a sale. In the next chapter, we’ll work on mapping the audience and sales funnel activity to an inbound marketing strategy that suits your business.

MY SALES FUNNEL

Awareness (Leads) How do people learn about your business? Consideration (Prospects) Describe your current sale process? Purchase (Customers) How do you convince prospects to become customers? What’s the easiest path to purchase? Customer Loyalty (Brand Ambassadors) What great things do you want customers to share about your business? Which customers are currently writing reviews or sending you referrals?

get your Content together

At its core, a successful inbound marketing program is built on three things: the audience, the offer and the content. Now that you’ve had a taste of the great potential of inbound marketing, let’s dive right into setting your very own marketing plan objectives. To get you going, here are a few examples to consider: • Build meaningful relationships with your target audience • Generate qualified leads for your business • Increase brand awareness or awareness for a select product or service • Nurture your customers into loyal brand ambassadors • Reduce the cost of conversion for business leads Next, consider what steps you might need to take to achieve these marketing plan objectives. Here are a few tools you might want to invest in: • 12-month marketing strategy • Quarterly activity charts including timelines, task lists and budget allocations • Content marketing calendar for each quarter • Customer personas • Keyword analysis • Social media dashboard • Email marketing system • Customer database • Media and blogger database What’s the most important element of an inbound marketing program? It isn’t your budget. It’s not your product or service. It’s your customers! Completely understanding your customer is the single most important element of creating an effective marketing plan, and buyer personas are your secret weapon to achieving that premiere level of understanding. Buyer personas are a theoretical representation of your target audience. They help you understand what captures the interest of your target audience, as well as the unique priorities and goals of your audience, through customer interviews, surveys, demographic research or feedback from your internal team.

CHAPTER THREE CREATING YOUR INBOUND MARKETING PROGRAM

SAMPLE BUYER PERSONA CHRISTINA TRAVIS AGE: 39 OCCUPATION: SENIOR FINANCIAL ANALYST INCOME: $104,000 / YR LOCATION: RICHMOND, VA

CUSTOMER STORY Christina Travis is a 39 year old fitness enthusiast. In her spare time, she takes personal training certification courses and loves attending outdoor concerts. She is health conscious, often avoiding processed foods or fast food restauraunts, in favor of home-cooked meals. Christina is a married mother of two, and values affordable, ecofriendly products and services that help put time into her busy life.

Buyer personas are invaluable for both marketing plans and business strategy. They help you focus on the needs and motivations of your customers and guide the selection of the content that you share. Buyer personas allow you to personalize content and adopt the customer-first mindset necessary for attracting and maintaining highly satisfied customers. Skip back to your audience exercise from chapter one and specifically focus on the interests of your desired customers. What motivates them? What are some factors that might influence their decision to make a purchase from you? Once you’ve identified WHO you want to reach, you’ll need to think about HOW to reach them. Realize that your customers can fall anywhere within the sales funnel, and each step in the purchase journey requires different content.

get your Content together

It’s good practice to refresh your memory of your overall marketing objectives, each time you sit down to create a new content piece. Content can make or break an inbound marketing program so naturally, you must have a strategy behind it. Review the checklist below, whenever you need to make sure your audience, offer and content are in alignment. Have you clearly defined your target audience? It’s better to focus on 70 highly engaged prospective customers, than to cast a wide net to 7,000 who are mildly interested. Zero in on the people who will appreciate the problem you solve or the value your business provides. Use surveys, research and ongoing observations to refine your ideal customer. What will motivate your audience to make a purchase? We’d all like to believe that our business offering is the biggest, best and shiniest in the industry, but accolades such as these don’t motivate potential customers to take action. Consider the spending habits, hobbies and interest of your audience. Then, seek to understand the motivations behind their purchase decisions. This is a key step, as it will determine what content piece to create, and when, where and how to distribute it. Focus on identifying the information your audience needs to get to know your business. Are your content goals aligned with marketing objectives? The goal of every content piece is to eventually convert prospects into buyers, but first, you’ll need to take a step back and think of specific and measurable goals that help you move toward that objective. Make sure your content goals are timely, flexible and relevant to your audience needs.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT CONTENT FOR YOUR INBOUND MARKETING PROGRAM

Awareness – Top-of-the-funnel content focuses on brand visibility and conversion of prospects to qualified leads. These content types may include social media, blogs, videos and infographics, which can all be accessed by a large audience. The goal of top-of-the-funnel content is to provide customers with the information they need to solve a problem or address a need.

Consideration – Middle-of-the-funnel content aims to emphasize the value of the product or service you provide. Content types might include case studies, catalogs, FAQs and webinars. The goal of middle-of-the-funnel content is to help customers learn more about your business and how to do business with you.

Prospects – Prospects at the bottom of the funnel have already expressed interest in your product or service and simply need an added push to close the deal. Bottom-of-the-funnel content types include free trials, product use demonstrations, discounts or complimentary consultations. The goal of this content is to persuade customers to do business with you.

get your Content together

CASE STUDY BLACKLINE SAFETY

Blackline Safety6, is a Canadian technology company that provides products and services to monitor the safety of lone workers. With the help of Kuno Creative, the company took on the challenge of generating quality leads and reducing conversion costs through inbound marketing7. Aiming for increased brand awareness and credibility, Blackline Safetyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inbound marketing program focused on understanding the personality and motivations of its customers. They developed a content strategy using lead nurturing campaigns, social media promotions, SEO optimization and a company website redesign. Over a one year period, the program became successful in generating qualified leads for the company. Use of Google Adwords also boosted conversions from 116 during the first month to 1,882 in the sixth, reducing cost per conversion from $43.80 to $2.04.

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http://www.blacklinesafety.com/about/ http://www.kunocreative.com/hubfs/docs/case-studies/Blackline_Case_Study.pdf

get your Content together

It’s a proven fact that buyers are becoming more independent on their path to purchase, with over 81% conducting online research before buying a product.8 Inbound marketing programs tie together what you’ve learned about customer behavior and motivations, to create relevant content pieces for your customers.

CHAPTER FOUR CRAFTING A KILLER CONTENT PLAN

Strategic use of content marketing can help you decide the best type of content to create and how to distribute your content for maximum impact. In addition to the influence you’ll gain in your customers’ purchase decisions, you can also expect to enjoy increased brand preference, amplified brand awareness and a lower cost per campaign with a wider reach.

community building, success stories or social purpose.

Once you pull together your customer values and select a few content themes, you’re ready to start thinking about the content you will create. Inbound marketing programs thrive by balancing two types of content, gated and un-gated.

Good content ends and begins with your customer in mind. You’ve given some thought to what your customer values most, their daily habits and what compels them to make a purchase. Let’s start building out a content plan to reach your perfect customer.

Gated content is a direct way of generating leads. It’s basically anything that requires customers to provide basic personal information, such as an email address or phone number, before they can download, view or otherwise gain access to your content. Examples include e-publications, webinars, white papers and resource guides.

First, make a list of your customer values. Perhaps your customer values bravery and generosity. Or, respect and trust might be critically important to them. Decide on at least five values and write them down in a notebook for safe keeping. Your customers want to know that you are personally interested in their needs.

Conversely, un-gated content is an indirect way of generating leads. Examples include blog posts, slideshares, Youtube videos, etc. These types of content are available on demand and require no upfront information or form completion to gain access.

When you take their values into account and create content that speaks to those values, your business becomes a credible and invaluable source for information, and not just a hub for products or services. After listing out your customer values, group them into categories. These categories will become the themes for the content you create in your inbound marketing program. Keeping with the customer values mentioned earlier, we’ll use bravery and generosity as an example. Content themes that might resonate with this audience include

CUSTOMER VALUES

Considering its emphasis on generating direct leads, it can be tempting to use only gated content in your inbound marketing program. This is something that content marketing expert David Meerman Scott9 might argue against, given the fact that un-gated content is downloaded 20 to 50 times more frequently than gated content. Balancing gated and un-gated content is an ongoing dilemma. Here are some points to https://www.marketo.com/content-marketing/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/109724content-downloads-vs-lead-generation 8

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consider, so you can maximize the best of both: • Reduce the number of form fields on gated content – the simplest way to overcome customers automatically exiting your gated content is to limit the fields they’re required to fill in. Take note of Imagescape’s experience: the company saw a 120% bump in its conversion rate by reducing its contact form fields from 11 to just 4. • Know when to gate and when not to gate content – There’s no sense in gating a mere blog post, but asking for an e-mail address in exchange for an exclusive tutorial video or resource guide is more than reasonable. The trick is to gate content when it’s of high value to your customers. You may decide to test out gated and un-gated content types by starting with only un-gated content. Once you determine what content has the highest value among your audience, you can start gating it, to see how it performs. It’s good to get into the habit of producing original content, whether gated or un-gated, but busy business owners rarely sustain their inbound marketing programs through original content alone. Curated content can be just as effective in generating leads, driving traffic and establishing a voice for your brand, while also saving you time.

When curating content, be sure to give the original author credit. A few additional things to consider before curating others’ work are: • Don’t reproduce the entire article and make it appear as if it’s yours. Use only the necessary portions (ie. headlines, excerpts) to prove a point or to cite content. • When citing content on social media, include your source’s username or a link to their account. • Make your original commentary longer than the reposted content. Avoid making your curated content appear like a mere paraphrase of your source. • Explicitly identify your content’s references. If possible, provide a clear and prominent link leading to your sources. Don’t bury it at the end of your post! • Never use the no-follow attribute of hyperlinks since it unfairly withholds the SEO credit of their original sources. • Always seek permission to reproduce a full-size image. Without such, share a thumbnail at most. Using the funnel and the calendar on the next few pages, start creating your killer content plan. Fill in at least three consecutive months before moving on to chapter five where we'll discuss a number of tools to help execute your inbound marketing plan and how to evaluate the success of your program.

CONTENT IDEAS FOR MY SALES FUNNEL AWARENESS

CONSIDERATION

PROSPECTS

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JANUARY

MY KILLER CONTENT PLAN

CONTENT THEME:

Success Stories

$100 or Less Infographic

21 Day Millionaire Mindset Guide

JANUARY

FEBRUARY

MARCH

CONTENT THEME:

PROPOSED CONTENT: #1

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

CONTENT THEME:

PROPOSED CONTENT: #1

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

CONTENT THEME:

PROPOSED CONTENT: #1

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

CONTENT THEME:

PROPOSED CONTENT: #1

EXAMPLE

PROPOSED CONTENT: #1 Starting Your Business with

get your Content together

CHAPTER FIVE

What good is audience research, amazing product offers and content plans if you don’t have a place to tie it all together. You’ve set up your own website and social media accounts, so use them to your advantage. Create your gated offer, develop your nurture campaign and set-up your landing page already. There’s money to be made!

MARKET YOUR MASTERPIECE

First, let’s create an irresistible lead magnet. A lead magnet can take the form of an e-book, case study, webinar, resource guide, checklist — the list goes on. Typically, your lead magnet will be offered through a landing page and will take the form of gated content that requires customers to provide certain information before they can gain access. The information that you choose to collect, whether contact details, demographic details or customer preference should help you paint a better picture of your customer and how to target them more effectively in the future. Your lead magnet should be both visually appealing and highly valuable to your customer. Try using catchy headlines, color contrasts and professional yet appealing designs. Be very specific in what the customer will receive after completing your form and paint a sense of urgency and exclusivity for the content that’s being gated. Also, make sure the lead magnet that you create is relevant to the product or service you are trying to sell. You can use email, social and other digital channels to promote your lead magnet, but the single best driving force is a landing page. Generally, a landing page includes a lead-capture form, plus compelling reasons as to why your content is worth the customers’ time. With a single avenue to direct traffic too, you can easily gauge the success of one lead magnet over another, through a carefully crafted landing page. Check out Hubspot’s recipe for an ideal landing page design10: • Clear and concise headline • Brief yet compelling explanation of your offer’s value • Maximized SEO keywords • Social media sharing links • Lead-capture form • Relevant images

EXAMPLE LANDING PAGE The whole point of inbound marketing is to make generating awareness, leads and sales easier for your business. Naturally, there are tools available that make executing inbound marketing programs much easier too. Many of the tools listed below have free versions which you can try before going all out on a subscription. Take a look, and see if any sound familiar to you. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/ bid/32566/Why-Landing-Pages-Arean-Indispensable-Part-of-Marketing. aspx#sm.0000050ut5faku3ji4usadpll 10

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WordPress – powering over 44% of all websites, Wordpress is a free and user friendly CMS tool which allows you to easily change and modify content through its various plugins. There are a variety of free templates available for Wordpress, and this is a great place to start building your first landing page.

Easel.ly – creating and sharing infographics has never been easier with Easel.ly. Just ask the 800,000 users who have crafted over a million infographics using the site's templates and user-friendly dragand-drop tools. Audacity – produce high quality audio content with Audacity’s wide range of features, including: pitch and tempo correction; background noise removal; normalization; and multi-track mixing. Audacity is perfect for creating a quick tutorial or motivational talk for your customers to download.

Hootsuite – can’t handle the stress of managing multiple social media accounts? The Hootsuite platform consolidates your social media accounts into a single dashboard which allows you to schedule posts, as well as monitor and respond to posts and comments.

MixPanel - this hassle free analytics tool supports funnel reports, user segmentation, retention analysis, A/B tests, and even behavior-based messaging for customers. Rather than tracking your audience values and where they respond best in the sales funnel through clunky spreadsheets, use MixPanel to improve your inbound marketing program on a continuous basis.

Google Keyword Planner – this tool allows you to learn how frequent people in a specific area search for a certain topic. You can easily identify high performing SEO keywords to use throughout your landing pages, website and social media channels. LeadIn – in addition to supporting popover email signup forms, LeadIn is a WordPress plugin which can also track visitor behavior on your website.

Atomic Reach - this tool scores your written content through analyzing its potential impact and providing valued advice on how to improve specific areas. Atomic Reach allows you to tailor-fit your article's complexity and substance to a specified audience so that you worry less about whether your content is supporting your inbound marketing program.

Google Analytics – this free tool can monitor your website’s progress through varied metrics, ranging from how many people visited your page down to the geographic location of most of your website visitors. MailChimp – a good place to start building your email list is MailChimp. This simple email marketing system allows you to create, schedule and send email templates. The tool is free for mailing lists of 2,000 contacts or less and can help you market to customers on a consistent basis.

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http://www.sybronendo.com https://www.kunocraive.com/case-study-axis

CASE STUDY AXIS|SYBRONENDO

Axis|SybronEndo11, is an Orange County, CA-based manufacturer of dental supplies and endodontic instruments. In order to market its product TFTM Adaptive, an instrument which allows faster and more precise root canal preparation, the company's marketing team focused on top and mid-funnel content targeted towards dentists. The marketing campaign’s12 highlight was a downloadable guide which used an informative approach rather than a promotional one. This content on root canal preparation attracted endodontists who subscribed to e-mail campaigns and who were further nurtured through content on product specifications and product reviews of renowned dentists. Website call-to-actions and social media advertising were also maximized. The outcome: 42% increase in website traffic; 508% increase in raw leads; 283% increase in marketing qualified leads; 631% increase in sales qualified leads; 421 new demonstration requests; and 55 new customers.

get your Content together

CHAPTER SIX

You’ve realized by now that your efforts must not stop after lead generation. You’ve also begun to understand which content to use for which customer. Now, it’s time to evaluate the overall success of your inbound marketing program.

NEXT STEPS FOR BUSY BUSINESS OWNERS

In any new venture, you’ll want to start by documenting the current state of your business and marketing efforts. Since inbound marketing programs are long term investments which could also benefit you long after they are launched, it’s best to identify key performance indicators (KPIs) upfront, so that you can assess what tactics to continue, improve, stop or initiate. Here are a few KPIs you might want to consider: • • • • • • • • •

MONEY MAKING KPIS

Lead magnet or offer downloads Unique website views Customer satisfaction Customer engagement Impressions on social and digital Customer loyalty and repeat purchases Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) Conversion rates (total number of actual buyers divided by total number of viewers)

When you establish KPIs up front, you can find areas to test the effectiveness of your inbound marketing program. This is where A/B split testing comes in handy. Accurate testing helps savvy business owners understand which, among two versions of a material, is better through simultaneous experimentation. For example, you might consider testing your old marketing mindset of sending zero emails per month against your new marketing mindset of sending one email newsletter per month and decide if email marketing is effective for reaching your customer. If lead generation is your top priority then tracking the frequency of form sign-ups might work in your favor. This tracking might gauge the day of the week, time of month or referral source of your form sign-up. Here’s a list of marketing elements commonly tested13:

CUSTOMER VALUES

2 3 • Call-to-actions (wording, placement, size, etc.) • Product descriptions and headlines • Form lengths • Website layout • Pricing • Landing pages (images, length of texts, etc.) Rome was not built in a day, and neither will your inbound marketing program. It takes time to learn your customer needs and start speaking their language. By following best practices, staying consistent and continually testing, you’ll be well on your way to the six figure revenue you desire.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/the-ultimateguide-to-a-b-testing/

get your Content together