UNR Extended Studies Inbound Marketing CLASS 1

Principles and Practices


A SHIFT FROM OUTBOUND

Inbound Marke-ng Principles and Prac-ces © Mike McDowell. Not to be reproduced without permission.



• More simply, Outbound Marketing is “Interruption Marketing.”

• It tends to be purchased intrusion into our lives

• Often difficult to target

• Often difficult to track success

• The message is pushed



IBM forecasters are predicting a greater disruption in communication in the next few years than we’ve seen in the past 50 years combined.



• 40% of households have a DVR

• 86% of TV viewers don’t watch the commercials



• Print ad revenue is down more than 50% in the past five years

• Newspaper circulation is down 30%

• Magazine circulation has declined for three consecutive years



• 200 Million Americans have added their phone numbers to the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list



• National and local ad revenues are down

• Public radio being replaced by paid options (satellite) and personal devices (mobile, iPod, etc.)



• 44% of direct mail never gets opened



We are more and more in control of the communication we consume. You can’t just buy your way in anymore.



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Simply, it’s a marketing strategy aimed at getting found by customers (as opposed to finding customers).

The idea is to create content that pulls customers in like a magnet, rather than create ads that interrupt.

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“Audiences everywhere are tough. They don’t have time to be bored or brow beaten by orthodox, old-fashioned advertising. We need to stop interrupting what people are interested in & BE what people are interested in.”

– Craig David – CCO, J Walter Thompson (one of largest agencies in the world)

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A couple of years ago we moved into an ideal alignment of technology and widespread use.

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• 80% of American adults use the internet

• 78% of internet users conduct product research online

• 10.3 billion searches on Google every month

• Avg US internet user views 2750 pages each month

Data courtesy of HubSpot

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• 1/3 of US internet users spend 3+ hours online every day

• 25% have posted a review online

• 9/10 users visited a social networking site at least once a month

• 1 of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook

• 90 Billion tweets per DAY on Twitter


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“Search engines, blogging & other Internet trends have fundamentally transformed the way people and businesses purchase products, but most small businesses still use outdated & inefficient marketing methods – like print advertising, telemarketing & trade shows – that people increasingly find intrusive and screen out.”

- Brian Halligan, co-founder & CEO of HubSpot

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• More than 1/3 of US companies use blogs for marketing • Companies that blog get 55% more website visitors • 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. • 67% of B2C companies and 41% of B2B have acquired a customer through Facebook • 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. • 42% have acquired a customer through Twitter • 51% of Facebook fans are more likely to buy the brands they “Like”


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Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional/outbound marketing

$373 (per lead)

$143 (per lead)

Outbound

Inbound

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Understanding inbound marketing basics is easy:

Step 1: Get found online

Step 2: Convert visitors to leads

Step 3: Analyze and adjust

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Create content that has value to people

- white papers - ebooks - how-to videos - planning tools - answers to common questions - trends - access to something exclusive

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Give, give, give.

- Give more and get more

- Build your reputation as a provider

- Giving more content give you more opportunity with search engines

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Live your keywords

- Use your keywords in all that you do

- All content can incorporate strategic keywords

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Make it easy on people

- Relevant landing pages

- Clear call to action

- Relevant and legitimate offers

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Spend your budget wisely.

“It no longer makes sense to send an advertising message to the many in hopes of persuading the few”

- CMO, McDonalds)

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QUESTIONS?


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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is really at the core of Inbound Marketing. It’s all about being found.

SEO is the practice of optimizing your website/pages to be found by search engines and gain favor for specific words or phrases.

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Search is the #1 online activity.

Will you be found?

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• 350 million searches per day

• Most never go past page 1

• 90% never go past page 3

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INTRO TO SEO


• 70% Google

• 16% Yahoo

• 9% Microsoft

• 3% Ask

• 2% Others

Image by A

gentGenius

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Spider food

• Text

• Titles

• Headers

• Tags

• URLs

• Links

• NOT images

Google to spider: “Crawl, eat and report back.”

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INTRO TO SEO


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• SEO has great value, but often a long-term value that may not be realized for months

• SEO is not an ON/OFF switch

• A #1 ranking cannot be guaranteed

• Search engines use an algorithm to decide ranking. Optimizing to that algorithm helps you compete with other sites for ranking.

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• Only goal is to return most relevant results

• Fresh = more relevant

• Keep content fresh

• Once every couple of weeks

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• Consistent with marketing messaging

• People will try to find you with the words and images you give them

• Taglines, service lines, images, descriptors

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It’s critical to know your unique advantages and what your audiences honestly think of you and how they’d describe you.

If you don’t know, you could make a mis-step in trying to figure out what to focus on in your SEM (and other marketing).

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So… how do you find out what your customers think of you and how they’d describe you? Ask them!

Either directly or indirectly.

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Indirectly you can research what has already been found out by research done by your industry about clients, prospects (professional associations, web searches, conferences).

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Ask customers directly with many different types of surveys: personal interviews, focus groups, online surveys like Survey Monkey, phone or mail-back surveys.

If you do customer satisfaction surveys, consider adding 1-2 questions for brand perceptions.

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Each type of research method has its pros and cons. Some are better for some types of decisions than others.

So therefore: ask, ask often, ask in different ways, ask the right people.

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You and your team are usually internally oriented, or have their own agendas as to your marketing priorities. Ask your prospects and clients (and past clients or lost clients). Clearly define what you need to know and develop the questions to test it.

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After you initial research and a review of how people search for your type of company now, note your starting point.

Continue to monitor and benchmark to see how your marketing has impacted performance.

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• URL

• Keyword/phrase research

• Meta data

• Text formatting

• Image Alt text

• Content strategy

• Linking (interior/exterior)

• Social media

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• One of the more important components

• Keywords in your URL

• Name pages in URL

• Registration length a factor

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STOP thinking like you.

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START thinking like them.

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• What words/phrases would your clients use to describe what you do?

• What words/phrases would they type into a search engine to find you? (not your name)

• Don’t know? Ask them.

• Or do some research.

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• Google.com/trends

• Google.com/adwords

• Google.com/sktool

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• It’s OK to have “boring” headlines

• Don’t outsmart the spiders

• Headlines and Titles should describe what’s on the page. Makes sense.

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Image by elliance.com

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• High volume, high competition

• Less volume, less competition

• Which words or phrases can you “own?”

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WORDS % of SEARCHES 1 25%

2 25%

3 20%

4 13%

5 7.5%

6 4%

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• Invisible to visitor

• Code that helps spiders make conclusions

• Meta Keywords

• limit to approx 12 keywords

• Meta Description

• limit to approx 120 characters

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• Headlines and sub-heads

• Tag in HTML

• Easier for human readers and spiders alike

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• Name your photo files with descriptors

• Tag your photos with keywords

• Remember: spiders only see words

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• Brainstorm 6-12 topics than include the keywords or phrases you selected.

• Post something new once a week.

• Keep the content timely, relevant and engaging.

• Post to blogs, social networks, video sharing sites, etc.

• More next week…

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• You are judged by the company you keep

• Who do you link to?

• More importantly, who links to you?

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• Engage an audience

• Let them share link to your site

• Your content has to be interesting enough to share

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QUESTIONS?


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Put this information to practice

Refine your 4 - 6 keywords or phrases for you/your business that you think you can “own” to improve search results

• Do research • Ask questions • Use online tools

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Tuesday, November 15th, 6-9pm • Content is King: Creating Content that Gets Found and Shared • Using Social Media for Inbound Marketing

Tuesday, November 29th, 6-9pm • Converting Leads to Customers • The Full Inbound Marketing Cycle • Course Conclusion


Business

UNR Extended Studies Inbound Marketing CLASS 1