This document provides an introduction to content-driven inbound marketing. It discusses focusing content on customer needs, using personas to guide content creation, and using landing pages as the new home pages. It recommends dominating keywords for SEO and writing scannable, objective content. The document also discusses tools for content sharing, email list building, A/B testing, and getting started with free or low-cost tools like WordPress, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics.
32. Google’s SEO tips
Google SEO Guide
• Write easy to read text
• Stay organised around the topic
• Create fresh, unique content
• Create content primarily for your users, not
search engines
33. Concise, scannable, objective
ATTRACTIONS
In 1996, six of the most-visited places in Nebraska were:
• Fort Robinson State Park
• Scotts Bluff National Monument
• Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum
• Carhenge
• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer
• Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park.
• Fort Robinson
In the state's Pine Region, Fort Robinson is the place where Chief Crazy
Horse surrendered after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Today, with some
50 original structures still standing, this landmark is part of a 22,000-acre
state park. Frontier artifacts are displayed in the former post headquarters.
34. Additional
Advise
At this point
Commence
Consequently
Ensure
In excess of
In respect of
In the event of
Particulars
Per annum
Persons
Prior to
Purchase
Regarding
Terminate
Whilst
More
Warn
Now
Start
So
Do
More than
About
If
Details
A year
People
Before
Buy
About
End
While
37. Calls to action
• Strong verbs
• Give instructions
• Show what you get
• Explain the benefit
• Use colour
• Make it all clickable
• Avoid ‘click here’ etc.
• Anti-objection copy (eg ‘Privacy
guaranteed’ or ‘no credit card
required’)
44. Effective subject lines
Subject Line
Open
Rate
Comment
Preliminary Floor Plans for Southern Village
Neighborhood Circle Members
93%
Timely information. Implied benefit for
quick action. Over 50 characters in
length
Your April Website Stats 92.6% Timely and useful information
Idlewild Camp - Important Travel Information 90.1% Information I need now.
MotorCycling Magazine Reader Survey 88.1% High affinity to activity/experience
Ship's Log #5: Parus Arrives in Phuket 82.1% Personal and timely
Nautica in Rutland Opens Soon! 79.9% Valuable information to be first in line.
Updated Time Zones & Log On Information 79.1% Required information
45. Lousy subject lines
Subject Line
Open
Rate
Comment
Final reminder for complimentary entry to attend the
West Freelands BCI Cluster Conference 2006
0.5% Reminder and subject is too long
Tempting August NUSA Specials! 0.9% Special. Exclamation mark
SALE ends soon - up to 50% off all bras at Kara! 1.9% Percent Off
Help Baylor create the ideal college experience 2.5% Help - means ignore
Printers World Offers 100% Commission Up Front 7.5% Too good to be true
3% Commission For You, $10,000 in Upgrades For
Your Client
7.8% Bait & Switch
Help Spread The News ! 10.8% Help
54. Some free(-ish) tools
• WordPress.com for blogging
• Mailchimp for mailing lists
• CapsuleCRM for customer relationship
management
• Google Analytics for analysis
• Google Content Experiments for A/B testing
• BufferApp for social media sharing
• (Or all-in-one with HubSpot)
55. Stage Actions Technology
Plan Align content strategy with business strategy
Set SMART goals
Create buyer personas
Create tone of voice and style guidelines
Create document templates
Project management and
collaboration
Reporting dashboard
Attract Create editorial calendar
Create regular blog posts
Create engaging content, such as ebooks and
white papers
Share and engage on social media platforms
Conduct keyword analysis
Use keywords to improve SEO on web pages
and blog
Blog
Social media monitoring
Social media publishing
Engage Create calls-to-action
Create landing pages
Create resource pages for top content
A/B testing
Site metrics
Convert Create workflows for different personas
Create multi-stage email campaigns
Link lead nurturing to CRM
Emailer
CRM software
Delight Create content that empowers customers
Create FAQ and support desk content
Create newsletters
Engage users on social media
Create customer case studies
Blog
Social media monitoring
Social media publishing
Support desk tools
56. Start simple
• Persona
• One piece of content
• One landing page
• One call to action
• Blog post with a CTA link
• Manual workflows
• (Or, ahem, talk to us!)
Or how to attract, convert, close and delight your customers
The question you’re all asking yourself
The old zen trick of telling you what something is not
It is NOT a hard sell
Instead it is positioning your business as a trusted advisor, expert, ally, on your side
HOW MANY HAVE SALESPEOPLE
It is NOT intrusive
Instead it’s about inviting people to come to you because you have something valuable
HOW MANY GET POP-UPS? ADS ON WEBSITES? UNWANTED EMAIL? IRRITATING, HUH?
It is NOT advertising (although it can work well alongside traditional advertising)
It’s about building a relationship not a transaction
It’s about making your website a destination in its own right
It’s about SEO not SEM
HOW MANY USE GOOGLE ADWORDS
Problem with online advertising is you pay for clicks not loyal visitors, enduring search engine rankings or anything
Google Adwords
You can go out on the streets and sell £10 notes for £9 all day long. It’s a bit like that.
You buy traffic not leads
You compete on price not on value
You create value and profits for Google, not for yourself or your customer
HOW MANY USE OUTBOUND SALES – CALLING, MAILING LISTS ETC.
It is NOT outbound cold calling
Done right, customers qualify themselves based on their interactions with the business and then they introduce themselves to you when they’re ready to buy
It’s also about talking to people as early in the sales cycle as possible – marketing not sales, A before IDA – to create preference
It’s about nurturing the right relationships all the way through to the sale
This diagram is at the heart of the inbound process. It envisages a relationship that extends before and after the typical sales cycle.
Think of buying a car
Watch Top Gear
Browse the manufacturer’s website
Get a brochure
Build an online customisation
Go back to the site
Go for a test drive
Buy the car
Content-driven inbound marketing is way of
ATTRACTING strangers to engage with your business, typically through social media, organic search and compelling content that is highly relevant, interesting and useful to potential customers. Key insight: The majority of people who visit your site are not actively buying TODAY. Most website visitors are browsing for information – win that battle and you’re ready to fight the next one.
CONVERTING visitors to your website into leads. (MOST PEOPLE JUST HAVE A CONTACT US OR AN ECOMMERCE BASKET) Typically because they click on a CTA, go to a landing page and fill in a form to get a particularly useful piece of information. This lets you start to build a relationship with them. It’s a handshake, an introduction. Buying a kitchen, for example, might start with a ‘Buyer’s guide to bespoke kitchens’ not a pricelist.
CLOSING leads into customers. When they are ready to buy, you want them to be AWARE of your business, have a PREFERENCE for it and to TRUST you to do meet their needs. So you send them emails, you monitor their social media activity and engage with them, you tease them with further amazing content so they disclose more information to you. Nudge them through the funnel. Qualify them. Often works with a CRM system. With the kitchens, you might send some brochures, get a sense of the style the buyer likes, send them videos about how kitchens are made etc. Then when they’re ready, the last step might be ‘book an appointment for an design consultation’
DELIGHT customers so they stay loyal, buy more, renew, promote your product. This might mean sending them tips and how-tos, monitoring social media for support issues and feedback, sending out special member-get-member offers etc.
CONVERT
The same with Emails
Maybe monitor people who meet certain criteria on social media platforms
CLOSE
You’d want to set up lead nurturing workflows where you’d follow up an action on the site with a series of emails.
They can get very complex based on persona, site interactions and so on.
Note open rates on Workflow emails are significantly hire than batch and blast emails. Why? Because we have a relationship.
Get to a BOFU offer – demo, sales call, website checkout
CONVERT AND CLOSE
You would want to be able to drill down to individual leads
See what they did
Perhaps use it for lead scoring and/or to sync or populate a CRM system
SO
It’s
Customer focused (talking about their issues in their language)
Inbound (they come to us)
Content driven (because we have great content)
Data-led (every action is measurable and testable)
Joined-up (as Lenin said, everything is connected to everything else)
Marketing (because we’re creating awareness, interest and preference and leading them to a sale)
We’ve gone through Attract, Convert, Close (and getting to Delight!)
Looked at some of the technology and experience from both sides
But there’s a deeper philosophy and approach behind all this that works for everyone
I’m not interested in ‘personal transport solutions’ but I might like a new BMW
I’m not interested in ‘financial management solutions’ but I might want an outsourced bookkeeper
Articulate’s customers aren’t interested in copywriting for its own sake but they are interested in getting more visitors, leads, conversions
Everything starts with a persona
What do they need
What do they want
What other media do they consumer, read
What is their attitudes to your product and your competitors
Fictionalised composite people; but people
Helpful for understanding customers, their needs and the types of content they might be interested in
4-6 is enough.
How do you go about gathering this kind of information?
The best damn content on the most important topics for your best potential customers
Write really specific pages that you update regularly and which can be hero anchor content for you.
Some content you can hide behind a LP, some you can make public
NOTE More information, and CTA
Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7x more leads than those with fewer than 10. (HubSpot)
Some content you can hide behind a LP, some you can make public
NOTE More information, and CTA
How much money does Joost have to spend to get traffic this way? None!
Dominate a single SEO keyword, e.g. in this case ‘wordpress seo’
The more links, the more credibility
This has a page rank of 5/10 – likely to be first for relevant terms
3-4 is average
(8 is for huge companies, 9 is for something like CNN or Yahoo.com, 10 is for something like Microsoft, Apple)
Lots of plugins rate page rank, including the Google bar
(Incidentally, use anon page view to test SEO rankings because Google uses cookies to track what you like)
Bottom of the funnel
NOT a contact us form
Asks for lots of information
Can do lead scoring
This triggers a call with a salesperson
Attract. Inbound marketing delivers 54 percent more leads into the funnel. Content such as ebooks are very effective.
Call-to-actions promoting ebooks get almost twice the click-through rate as emails promoting webinars.
More traffic
More leads
More click-throughs
Bigger sales
B2C companies generate 88 percent more leads
Landing pages with persona-targeted copy are a smart way to convert leads into customers. The more, the better. Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got seven times more leads than those with only one to five landing pages.
Close. Lead-nurturing emails and a drip feed of relevant content helps to convince leads to buy. In fact, nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.
Close. Lead-nurturing emails and a drip feed of relevant content helps to convince leads to buy. In fact, nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.
This is a roadmap for doing it completely BUT you don’t have to do that
Can start with one CTA/LP/TY/Form/Email/workflow
This experiment might take 10 hours – what’s the lifetime value of a customer relative to ten hours of your time?
Write the best damn content about the most important damn topic first