Internet Marketing- It's Still Marketing

Using Inbound Marketing to Market Smarter Online - Part II

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In my last Inbound Marketing blog I talked about Hubspot's State of Inbound Marketing Report, which had the following three key findings:

1. Organizations using Inbound marketing strategies to generate leads have a 60% lower cost per lead than organizations who use traditional outbound marketing strategies to generate leads
2. Social media and blogs are the most rapidly expanding category in the overall marketing budget
3. Businesses are generating real customers with social media and blogs

What you need to be doing to generate more leads and reduce your cost per lead.

1. The two most cost effective ways to generate leads are:
1. social media
2. blogs.
2. Inbound marketing budgets are increasing whilst outbound marketing budgets are decreasing.
1. Inbound marketing channels are defined collectively as: PPC, social media, seo and blogs.
2. Outbound marketing channels are defined collectively as: trade shows, direct mail and telemarketing.
3. Inbound marketing channels were identified as more important than outbound, and compared with 2009's report social media, blogs and seo were identified as more important in 2010 than 2009 as a marketing channel.
4. The one inbound marketing channel that decreased in importance is PPC.
5. Email marketing which can be either inbound or outbound was also rated as an important marketing channel for 2010.
6. The major factor for businesses increasing their inbound marketing budget in 2010 is because of past success with inbound marketing.
7. Small business is more likely to spend more of their budget on inbound marketing than medium or large firms. This is the same for both B2B and B2C
8. The top most important social media channels for business in 2010, in order are:
1. Company blog
2. Twitter
3. Facebook
4. Linked In
5. YouTube
9. On average 40% of companies reported getting a customer from; company blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
1. B2B was higher with LinkedIn at 45%
2. B2C was higher with Facebook at 68%
10. Frequency of blog is directly linked to customer acquisition.
1. 90% of companies that blog daily acquired a customer, compared with:
2. 38% of companies that blog monthly acquiring a customer
3. A weekly blog is the most common frequency and is up in 2010 compared to 2009.

The take away for business owners and marketers. 

If you're looking to increase leads, remain competitive and decrease your cost per lead you have to:

1. Get started with a company blog, LinkedIn (B2B), Facebook (B2C) and Twitter (B2C and B2B)
2. Blog as often as you can, at least weekly

If you don't have the time, or you haven't seen results spend some money and hire an inbound marketing consultant to help you.

If you're interested in learning more about this research: The State of Inbound Marketing

This was a guest post from Stacie Chalmers an Inbound Marketing Consultant and HubSpot  partner. She has been involved with marketing since the dinosaur and has graduated from the Inbound Marketing University as a Certified Inbound Marketer. You can read her blogs at Stacie's Inbound Marketing Blog.  Originally from Australia, Stacie spent 2 years living in Maine before recently moving to the warmer climate of Florida. However she still maintains her support for Red Sox, Patriots and Bruins !

Part 3 of 5: How to Harness the Dynamic Power of Internet Marketing

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Step 3: Implementing the Plan

Harnessing the herd without going over a cliff.

"If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute solving it." ~Albert Einstein 

Unfortunately for many business owners and marketers, this is the stage where they start. There is a distinction between strategy and tactic. Step 3 is all about the using the strategy as the guide book for the tactical.

Your investment in steps 1 and 2 will more than return to you in the  amount of time saved going back and forth with design, copy and functionality changes.

The implementation phase of your internet marketing is where you take the 'how' and turn it into the 'what'. With step 1, you have identified the influences your competition, business and industry have on your prospects as well as how they go about their search. In step 2, you have figured out how to navigate the landscape, tied it into your business goals, set the plan of action and figured out what you need to make it happen.

How to keep a clear head during your internet marketing implementation.

Purpose of Implementation

Well that seems rather obvious doesn't it? Or does it? Inbound marketing is a fundemental shift for marketers and business owners. It means that your prospects are voluntary participants in your sales process and studies have shown that they more likely to buy. Being in the right place, at the right time, with the right message has been made all that much easier with the internet.

The tactics you use for your inbound marketing is likely to be a combination of things, such as:

• Web Design & Development
  
• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay-per-Click Advertising 
• Social Media
• Email Marketing

Process for Implementation 

1-Identify the necessary elements of your persuasive copy. Taking what you know about your prospect's buying mode and your sales process, your goal here is to align your sales process with their buying process using all of the inbound marketing tactics available to you.

2-Create the mock-up. How does the layout come together visually? Elements to consider here are navigation (UI), branding, page titles (SEO), header graphics, etc. Each element should have a function and priority in the conversion process. By giving elements priority it is easy to decide which ones need the most emphasis and where they should belong on the page.

3- Design without color. I know of some designers who will spend weeks deciding on just the exact shade of blue to have the right emotional impact. That is fine, however at this stage you want to be able to look at the mock up to decide without emotional influence. If it looks good in black and white, it will be fantastic with color. This will make your design decisions easier and faster.

4-Add color. I leave this to my designer experts. It is an art and a science all of it's own. The right use of color should create consistancy and a positive emotional response.

5- Development. It's alive! Now begins the HTML development. (Again, something I leave to the experts!) Things to consider here are download time, compatibilty with multiple browsers, CSS that is compliant with Web standards and fonts that can be easily read on a screen.

6- Testing! Before your site or campaign goes live- test that links go where they should, forms work, copy is proof-read, etc. Even though a website will always be a work in progress, it doesn't hurt to put your best face forward.

By first creating a persuasive wireframe that lays out the processes that are fundemental to your business goals and to conversion, you create a structure that your designers and developers can work within and support.

Imagine cowboy Joe and how much time he would waste (and cattle going off a cliff) because he did not know the landscape, where the preditors lurk, or ended up on a route that was impassable. He just trotted out and followed all the other cowboy's paths, because they must know where they are going right?

Now imagine cowgirl Nellie with a GPS, topography map, and a heat sensor to see where animal activity is happening. Which one do you think is more likely to make it to their desitination (goal) safely, on time, and within budget? Does this mean that Nellie won't encounter issues and dangers? Of course not, but she is less likely to be overwhelmed by them, is able to keep her sanity and cool, and deal with issues  swiftly and decisively when they arise.

Does internet marketing overwhelm you? Do you feel like part of the herd headed straight for the cliff? Download the presentation I did with the Maine Marketing Association where we will talked more about how you can take the reigns of the internet for your business.