Posted by Carole Mahoney on Tue, May 25, 2010
The term "inbound marketing" is the process of attracting prospects to your company. In relation to today's technology this means using the search engines and social media to drive traffic to your website.
Examples of inbound marketing: 
The comparison is ‘outbound marketing' which is the process of pushing your message to consumers.
Examples of outbound marketing:
- Trade Shows
- Telemarketing
- Direct mail
Hubspot recently conducted a report on The State of Inbound Marketing. The purpose of the report was to understand the current usage and results of inbound marketing to help business owners and marketers. Three of the key findings were:
- 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.
- Social Media and Blogs Are the Most Rapidly Expanding Category in the Overall Marketing Budget
- Businesses Are Generating Real Customers With Social Media and blogs
In my next blog I'm going to summarize the findings and simplify what business owners and marketers need to be doing to generate more leads and reduce their cost per lead. To make sure you don't miss out subscribe to this blog today!
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 !
Posted by Carole Mahoney on Fri, Jan 22, 2010
Yesterday a report published by Nielsen stated that even though people 65 and older still make up less than 10 percent of the active Internet universe, their numbers are on the rise. In the last five years, the number of seniors actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent, from 11.3 million active users in November 2004 to 17.5 million in November 2009. Go Nana!
Not only are the number of seniors on the rise, so is the amount of time they are spending online. According to Nielsen, they spent just over 58 hours per month online in 2009, up from 52 hours per month in November 2004.
Even more interesting is how Nana (or Grandpa!) are spending their online time. You guessed it- they are checking e-mail, sharing photos- just like the rest of us. Not surprisingly, they are also researching health issues, planning travel and checking the weather.
So where might Nana be spending her time you ask? Again- the same place as you are! Google, Facebook...
So while this may not be a surprise to most, we felt it necessary to point out for a few reasons. When considering your web designs and internet marketing campaigns, if Nana or Grandpa are part of your target audience, remember these few tips:
1- Nana has a hard time seeing small type. Keep your font large enough for her to easily read. Black type, white background, no sans-serf typefaces.
2-Nana is not impressed with flashy logos, spinning imagery. She is especially not impressed when it makes the page load even longer (and neither is Google by the way). In fact, she is likely to keep clicking the refresh button because she thinks maybe the computer is not working right.
3-Nana might be impatient. She wants you to get to the point, and get to it quickly. Again, make sure your calls to action are easy for her to find in bold bright colors and clear language.
4- Nana hates long forms. We all do. Enough said.
5-Nana likes assurances and guarantees. She really likes an evident phone number to call if she runs into problems. To delight her, make sure the phone is answered by a person. (Who speaks very clear English and has a lot of patience.)
As we always say, it is not enough to know WHO your audience is. Know what perspective they are operating from, and plan your marketing to delight them.
What suggestions do you have to make the web more Nana friendly?
Posted by Carole Mahoney on Fri, Jan 22, 2010
If you still think that your online marketing success is defined by the number of visitors to your website, your click-through-rate (CTR) for your paid campaigns, or the open rate for your email campaigns then you may be missing a very large piece to the puzzle.
I often find myself telling people that optimization, (whether it is search engine optimization, business optimization, conversion optimization- same concept applies) is a long term strategy and process, not a one time project or campaign. So often I hear clients asking to optimize a web page, a PPC campaign, and they never move beyond that into true online business optimization.
It will not only require careful planning, detailed implementation, measurement, analysis and improvement- it also requires the commitment of the business owner or executives to see and understand the larger picture. Yes, there will be short term successes on the way- but do not stop there to see the real ROI.
Optimization should (at the very least) address these areas:
- Maximize the quality (and quantity) of leads delivered to sales.
- Measure online and offline campaign results based on sales metrics beyond the lead.
- Align sales and marketing so that the messaging matches the customer experience.
- Increase conversion rates on key marketing initiatives.
- Understand not only who did what and where it was done but also why it may have happened.
With average campaign conversion rates anywhere from 2-10 percent, the vast majority of your visitorsare simply not converting to customers. Somewhere in the sales process they bail out- where and most importantly-why?
If you're only measuring visitors, click-through rates, open rates, and the like you have no means to identify and plug these leaks in the conversion funnel. This represents a huge untapped opportunity and money being left on the table. To tap into this opportunity it will require not only the right tools to measure, but also the expert knowledge to leverage the numbers to make improvements through testing and implementation.
What will you optimize for your business? Can you afford not to?
Posted by Carole Mahoney on Wed, Jan 20, 2010
The first step for any internet marketing campaigns is to set your objectives. What do you want your website, email, blog, or pay-per-click campaign to accomplish? Are you looking for new leads, trying to populate a webinar, increase the sale of a certain product or service?
When thinking about your goals, here are a few basic questions you should be able to answer:
- Who are you trying to persuade?
- What are you trying to persuade them to do? (to click on your site, open your email, or post to your blog?)
- What does that person need in order to feel comfortable and confident taking that action?
Sounds simple doesn't it? It is a simple concept, but one that so many marketers ignore under the pressure to drive traffic and increase leads now.
Stay tuned as we explore each of these questions and what they really mean to your online marketing efforts. Post your thoughts as to what you think these three questions mean.