Inbound marketing for beginners

In this eBook, Bill will share with you everything you need to know to start inbound marketing for your business.

For Beginners

Everything you need to know to get started.

Bill is a Certified Inbound Marketing Specialist with Honors with 18 years of

marketing experience Not only is Bill an Inbound Marketing Specialist, but

also has been a successful small and medium sized business owner in multiple

industries since 1994

With a marketing degree from UCLA and a team of

inbound marketing agents behind him, Bill founded

Inbound Marketing Agents to help small and medium

sized businesses close the marketing gap on larger

companies at a fraction of the budget

In this eBook, Bill will share with you everything you

need to know to start inbound marketing for your

business

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 What is Inbound Marketing? 6

2 Why Inbound Marketing? 9

3 Required Resources 14

4 Software Requirements 20

5 Getting Found 26

6 Lead Generation 31

7 Converting Leads to Customers 34

8 Measuring Results 38

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1 What is Inbound

Marketing?

Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing

Inbound marketing primarily uses the Internet to distribute compelling content

that attracts prospects and builds trust with clients within your sales funnel

Outbound marketing pushes marketing messages to prospects via billboards,

television, direct mail, telemarketing, and tradeshows, which disrupt your

prospects daily schedule

Inbound Marketing consists of:

Premium Content (eBooks, Whitepapers) Social Media Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Webinars

Closed Loop Marketing Content Distribution

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Outbound Marketing consists of:

Billboard Advertising Trade Shows

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Rather than doing outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing “inbound marketing” where you help yourself “get found” by people already learning about and shopping in your industry In order to do this, you need to set your website up like a “hub” for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through search engines, the blogosphere, and social media

I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing, and I advocate that those

ratios flip.

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The best analogy I can come up with is that traditional marketers looking to garner interest from new potential customers are like lions hunting

in the jungle for elephants The elephants used

to be in the jungle in the ‘80s and ‘90s when they learned their trade, but they don’t seem to be there anymore They have all migrated to the watering holes on the savannah (the internet)

So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole.”

–Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot

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Marketing?

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Leads generated by inbound marketing cost 61% less than outbound marketing leads.

82% of consumers search the Internet prior

to purchasing a product or service

COST: Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing

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Inbound marketing tactics don’t just

generate leads They generate revenue.

State of Inbound Marketing, Hubspot, March 2012

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Resources

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1 ANALYZE YOUR CURRENT MARKETING

Before you decide to jump into inbound marketing, you need to know where

your current marketing plan stands Do you have a website and can

your team work with it? How many visitors do you generate each month?

How many leads do your currently generate per month and how many

convert to customers? You must understand this so you can understand

what needs to be implemented with your new inbound marketing plan

Inbound marketing is changing the way traditional

marketing departments operate and consists of

numerous components to be successful

You need to identify a few key resources to be sure inbound marketing will

be a good fit your company and your brand

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2 DEDICATED PERSON TO HANDLE INBOUND MARKETING

Inbound marketing consists of multiple marketing channels all being utilized at the same time to increase website traffic, generating leads, creating compelling content, building buyer personas, managing your SEO, measuring success and failures via analytics, and optimizing landing pages

The components above do not include social media, email marketing, lead scoring, press releases, creating video content, and building new web pages

You don’t have to start with all of these components, but it is important to understand that you need a person or a team that can perform all of these tasks

on a regular basis

Most small businesses can’t afford a full fledge marketing department, but it is still critical that you have at least one member of your team that is dedicated to your inbound marketing strategy

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This individual can work with an inbound marketing agency, like INBOUND MARKETING AGENTS, to support, educate,

and teach this person the process and supplement

services that your company can not complete in-house.

3 GOALS

You now know what your business will need and where you currently stand

with your current marketing plan Now you need to identify what your goals and

benchmarks will be for your new inbound marketing plan

How many new leads or customers do you need each month? What

verticals within your current client base do you want to grow? What

decisions need to be made to achieve these goals?

Once you have this information in place you can accurately plan your inbound

marketing strategy to specifically target your goals

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4 BUILDING YOUR CUSTOMER PERSONAS

Many small businesses don’t know exactly whom they are selling too You will want to know exactly whom you’re trying to sell to based on demographic information By defining these personas, you identify potential markets and will know exactly what you need to do to sell to them

You will market differently to a 50-year-old male executive than you will to a 25-year-old female just out of college By having developed your personas you won’t waste valuable time and money sending the same marketing messages to each persona unsuccessfully

Everyone within your company to be able to implement an effective inbound

marketing strategy, as you will be communicating your culture, tone, and

commitment via your content, must share your company goals and identity

Identifying your company brand is one of the first steps that should be taken before implementing your new inbound strategy.

Everyone within your company to be able to implement

an effective inbound marketing strategy, as you will be

communicating your culture, tone, and commitment

via your content, must share your company goals and

identity

Identifying your company brand is one of the first steps

that should be taken before implementing your new

inbound strategy.

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Requirements

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Your software needs will be determined by your

budget and the goals you have set forth previously

Keep in mind that your budget needs to be inline with the

goals that you have set and the software your choose will

play a big role in the efficiency of your inbound marketing

campaigns.

Below are our recommendations for software to execute

inbound marketing, but if you have little or no budget

there are also solutions you can implement to get started

and then work your way to these platforms We will note

these options at the end of this chapter.

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1 INBOUND MARKETING SOFTWARE

There is a big difference between inbound marketing software and Google Analytics or

social media software or apps Inbound marketing software gives you all of the tools to

track the success of your marketing like analytics for traffic, leads, lead conversions, click

through rates, social media, email marketing, and more.

HubSpot brings your entire marketing world together in one powerful, integrated system

Integrating HubSpot into your marketing allows you to reap the benefits that this

software has to offer as the best in the industry.

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2 TASK MANAGEMENT/TIME TRACKING SOFTWARE

Time tracking and task management software is a component

that most beginners neglect to implement, yet it is crucial to

effectively manage your time and projects.

Blogging is a prime example that requires time tracking A 400-600 word blog article

should be written in one hour or less, but it will take a beginner much longer in the early

stages You need to track your time so you can become more efficient and identify the

components that slow you down

Inbound Marketing Agents uses TeamworkPM to manage all

of our internal projects and time tracking for each project.

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3 CLIENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Small companies with smaller budgets won’t need CRM in the early stages, but for medium to large companies this is an essential investment to close the

marketing and sale loop to track your ROI

We use Salesforce.com to manage our sales funnel and customer lifecycle, which enables us to further customize our marketing and track our ROI.

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4 FREEWARE FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

If you don’t have the budget for all of the software

listed above that is ok.

What you need to start with is a manageable platform to host your website

on like Wordpress.com Wordpress will allow you to make in-house changes to

your content and add a blog to your website for free or you can purchase a nice

template for typically less than $200.00

Wordpress is also compatible with hundreds of widgets that will allow you

to integrate landing pages, forms, social media sharing, and much more We

recommend that you consult an inbound marketing agency prior to making any

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How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site

Getting found is the first goal that must be accomplished

within your inbound marketing plan Website traffic is

what converts into leads, and then customers.

Remember, if Google can’t find you, neither can your customers

Increasing traffic is a difficult and time-consuming process that doesn’t

happen overnight If some “Marketing Guru or Ninja” tells you they can

double your traffic in a month you probably want to hang up the phone

It doesn’t happen To properly and safely increase your website

visitors, you will need to implement multiple marketing channels that

are beneficial to gaining visibility.

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1 BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS

Blog Blog Blog We have heard this mantra for the last few years, but do you

believe in it? If you don’t, you better start because blogging is the cornerstone

for inbound marketing and the single channels that creates content to be

distributed via social channels, bookmarking sites, press releases, and most

importantly Google loves it if done correctly

Selecting the right platform is critical This is why we use the HubSpot platform

as it is pre-configured for on-page SEO, subscriptions, scheduling, and analytics

that takes a lot of the hassle out of blogging

2 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Many non-marketers think that social media is just

about Facebook and seeing the picture of what

your friends had for dinner.

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3 VIDEO MARKETING

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet behind Google and

people love to watch video It is very important to communicate your message

in a quick, and succinct message that is visually appealing for your customers to

connect with

Generating visual content for your business will attract

leads and customers while increasing your visitor’s time

on your site which Google loves and is easier to create

than writing a full-length blog article.

We are here to tell you as a business owner that if you feel the same way you are missing the boat

Social media is one of the most crucial elements to increase your following, brand, and traffic to your site Social media also provides you the opportunity to engage in dialogue with your followers, visitors, and fans, which can be used to migrate them through your sales funnel via social nurturing

A press release is a powerful way to get your message out to the masses and

if done right, you can also benefit your SEO and generate immediate leads for under $200

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6 Lead

Generation

1 PREMIUM OFFERS

No, we aren’t talking about deep discounts or coupons

We are referring to offers that appeal to your potential customers Compelling content like free white papers, videos, eBooks, and webinars can dramatically increase your lead generation and build your trust and authority as an industry thought leader

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2 CALL TO ACTION

Now that you have a premium offer ready to go, you must create a compelling

Call to Action that will entice your visitors to click on and get them to your

landing page

Use graphical and appealing call to action that your visitors can easily

identify and connect with to get them to click through to your landing pages

3 LANDING PAGES

Your compelling CTA has driven a visitor to your landing page, now you have to

entice the visitor to give up their contact data to download the premium offer

Using attractive graphics on your landing pages is very important to increase

conversion rates as well as testing your forms to qualify your leads

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7 Converting Leads

to Customers

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Once you’re generating leads, you

now need to make the sale!

By using proven methods such as lead generation and

email marketing, you can effectively push your leads down

the sales funnel and more towards using your company for

your product or solution

This is the process in which your marketing team hands

things over to the sales team, and the sales are made By

having steady communication between marketing and

sales, you can implement your buyer personas in order to

convert more of your leads into sales.

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1 LEAD MANAGEMENT

An effective lead generation strategy is one with clear goals and objectives

The idea isn’t to generate leads and forget about them Instead you want to

focus on pushing your lead further down the sales funnel in order to further

qualify them as sales ready

Once a visitor converts into a top-of-the-funnel lead, you’ll want to engage

in a lead nurturing campaign that aims to work them further down the sales

process Using email marketing best practices, you’ll be able to more effectively

reach and market to these leads

2 LEAD INTELLIGENCE

How well do you know your stats?

One of the key characteristics of an effective inbound marketing campaign is the

ability to measuring everything Mastering your lead intelligence will give you

greater insight into how to execute your marketing

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Where did your leads come from? What offers did they

download? What pages and blog articles are they

viewing?

By knowing this information, you’ll be able to more effectively market to them to

help nurture them further down the sales funnel

3 LEAD NURTURING

Lead Nurturing is an extremely necessary process in which you take your leads

and send them user-specific content that converts them into sales Using your

inbound marketing software, you can analyze the process in which users became

leads, and use this information to send them content that is specific to them

You can create a campaign suited to their specific characteristics, making

them more likely to use your company’s solution Lead nurturing campaigns

can drastically increase your lead-customer conversion rates, and create more

business for your company

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