Archive for the ‘blogging’ Category
05/08/13 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Content Marketing, Get Found Online, inbound marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Automation, Online Reputation, Real-Time Brand Massaging, Real-Time Marketing and PR, social media marketing | 1 Comment »
The proven and successful inbound marketing strategy is a great way to generate high quality leads.
Therefore inbound marketing is known as the “riskless” marketing strategy because of the activities done which are long lasting and bring an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.
Why is this inbound marketing such a great way to generate leads?
Inbound marketing offers you a strategic and smart approach to be and to stay several steps ahead of your competition.
Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.
With inbound marketing businesses “earn” their way to the customer and his loyalty, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.
Inbound marketing includes: Content creation like blogging, video, photo, whitepapers, eBooks, podcasts, press releases, comments in social media and other blogs and forums, Social media two way communication, lead generation, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.
How can Inbound Marketing help you?
A. It saves you up to 62% of your marketing budget
B. Makes you stand out of your competition
C. Helps to generate a massive amount of leads
D. Gets you up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
E. Increases your customers and sales
Infographic: Inbound Marketing Rising
TOP 42 Reasons to Jumstart your Inbound Marketing NOW!
1. 60% of companies will execute an inbound marketing strategy in 2013.
2. Marketers dedicate 34% of their department budgets to inbound tactics, but only 11% to outbound.
3. 48% of marketers will increase spend on inbound marketing in 2013.
4. 34% of all leads generated in 2013 come from inbound marketing sources.
5. Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound leads.
6. 17% of marketers say traditional advertising and direct mail are less important than they were 6 months ago.
7. Traditional advertising and PPC deliver the least leads of any form of marketing.
8. Only 6% of marketing leads originate from advertising or PPC campaigns.
9. 34% of businesses cannot or don’t calculate overall inbound ROI in 2013.
10. Adopting a marketing/sales agreement saves companies with more than 200 employees $195.84 per new customer.
11. Only 24% of companies have a formal process for marketing/sales handoffs.
12. Companies who test are 75% more likely to show ROI for inbound marketing.
13. Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12% total.
14. The average website conversion rate is 10%.
15. 81% of companies integrate inbound marketing with larger marketing goals.
16. Marketers spend 55% more of their time than their money on blogging.
17. 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basis have acquired a customer through blog content.
18. 57% of marketers who only blog once a month have acquired a customer through blogging.
19. Inbound marketers plan to hire an average of 9.3 people this year.
20. Only 18% of marketers are purely focused on developing quality content in 2013.
21. 25% of marketers cite reaching the right audience as their top priority for 2013.
22. Only 5% of marketers have no integration between inbound marketing and overall marketing goals.
23. 50% of marketers consider their companies primarily customer-focused.
24. 17% of sales teams and 11% of executives fully support inbound marketing efforts.
25. 73% of marketing agencies are implementing inbound strategies.
26. Only 41% of nonprofits report adopting inbound tactics for 2013.
27. Just 21% of enterprises assimilate inbound marketing with their overall marketing strategy.
28. 47% of CEOs and CMOs ignore formal marketing/sales agreement development.
29. Marketing is 125% more likely than sales to provide inbound resources.
30. Increasing total lead volume is the top priority for 21% of marketers.
31. Customers average a total of 9,100 leads after 1.5 years of inbound marketing.
32. 67% of marketers produced a blog last year.
33. Only 20% of marketers without a blog reported a positive ROI for 2012.
34. 27% of marketers report that both social media and email marketing produce the lowest total average lead costs.
35. 15% of marketers say SEO leads have the highest sales conversions.
36. Social media delivers 14% of all leads and 13% of all customers.
37. 52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook.
38. 43% of marketers have found a customer on LinkedIn.
39. 36% of marketers have found a customer on Twitter.
40. 41% of marketers have adjusted their budget due to the success of inbound marketing.
41. 41% of CEOs report inbound delivered measurable ROI.
42. Marketers with more than 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 leads per month.
Source: HubSpot 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Annual Report. FREE Executive Report on Inbound Tactics and Strategy – Insight from 3,339 Marketers
03/08/13 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Reputation, Real-Time Brand Massaging, Real-Time Marketing and PR | No Comments »
Did you asked yourself what future customers will find when they research your industry for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?
Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.
Content and social media have become successful ways to get attention from future buyers.
On the web you are what you publish… What are you?
–David Meerman Scott
Original content builds you trust, customer loyalty and can position your business as trusted experts in your field.
Content marketing has established as a powerful way to engage customers. An increasing number of B2C and B2B marketer are faced with the challenge to produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers to their products and services.
There is no question content is king! And Remarkable and helpful content brings customers and business direct to your front door the smart and cost effective way, this is for sure!
New studies show that companies utilizing the content marketing strategy in a serious manor report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue!
Infographic: A Brief History of Content Marketing
Moreover remarkable and helpful content is also a great way to build trust and customer loyalty. It offers the so called value ad for customers.
An open minded communication culture and authenticity mixed with credibility beats any old school – yesteryear nonsense marketing and saves your business a truckload of marketing cash!
The great success of content marketing is the result of giving away valuable information – remarkable content for free to attract the RIGHT people to your business like a magnet in an ongoing and steady growing stream.
Content marketing works 100% for any industry and business!
Content marketing can also work for you to attract new customers to your business like a magnet is you are willing to do it right!
The best way to start content marketing for business is to start a corporate blog.
But how and where to get the ideas to write remarkable blog articles who drive visitors to your business?
Here are five ways you should use to get blog content ideas:
1. Set up Google Alerts with your industry keywords
2. Search Blog Directories for your industries topics
3. Subscribe to other industry related blogs and on articles there
4. Go through your customers email communication, especially service, product and support questions
5. Participate in industry related social media groups and forums
These five points will bring you a ton of content ides to write helpful articles for your recent and future customers.
And yes, this is additional work but it is worth every minute you invest in your content marketing.
By taking this challenge you can expect these advantages for your business:
- Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
- Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
- Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
- Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads
…and more LEADS mean more revenue! It’s up on you.
02/09/13 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Closed-Loop Marketing, Content Creation Strategy, Content Marketing, Get Found Online, inbound marketing, Lead Generation, Local Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC) | No Comments »
In the past years Pay per click marketing has been a quick and easy solution for businesses to generate leads. But to do paid advertisements is no long-lasting and holistic marketing strategy to depend on!
When you do PPC than you generate leads as long as you pay. When you stop your PPC campaign then you will not generate leads anymore! As simple as that!
Nevertheless PPC are still a great vehicle to get the word out but only when they are incorporated within a smart and holistic marketing strategy.
The proven and successful inbound marketing strategy is a great way to generate high quality leads. Therefore inbound marketing is known as the “riskless” marketing strategy because of the activities done which are long lasting and bring an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.
Why is this inbound marketing such a great way to generate leads?
With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.
Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.
How can Inbound Marketing help you?
A. It saves you up to 62% of your marketing budget
B. Makes you stand out of your competition
C. Helps to generate a massive amount of leads
D. Gets you up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
E. Increases your customers and sales
Example: The backbone of successful inbound marketing is the content creation strategy. To create outstanding in a corporate blog improves the trust, visibility and traffic to a business online. Published articles once done are literally online forever, are indexed through search engines and can be found from future customers.
The more articles you publish the more „digital outposts“which you build for your business and you get an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.
Businesses brand them self by creating and publishing original content. Businesses that create and publish remarkable content on the web and in social media:
• Establish thought leadership
• Elevate brand visibility and buzz
• Boosts SEO
Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:
Blogging companies get up to…
1. …55% more Traffic
2. …97% more Inbound Links
3. …434% more indexed pages in search engines
4. …25x times more business leads
A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!
Infographic: The Rise Of Content Marketing
PCC can’t deliver such results!
But you can incorporate Pay per Click Marketing into your Inbound Marketing Strategy.
Some thought how you could use PPC to increase your visibility:
PPC drives you quick results and you can use it to bridge over the time until your content marketing starts to show effect.
To get a better idea of what your audience is looking for before they hit your website and to adjust you’re SEO, you could start a PPC campaign. Look at the initial keyword data in your Google AdWords account and see which keywords have the highest click through rate (CTR). So you get the most popular keywords and custom tailor your content and your next PPC advertising.
You should bid on your own corporate terms, for example your business name or the names of your products. So when a interested person is researching online for your business, products and services the chances are good even if you are not in the top five Google Search result they will find you through your PPC ads.
Especially for local businesses PPC is a great way to get a targeted location based positioning to attract locals to the business front door. Local businesses can do advertising for a very specific location and do bidding on keywords related to this location. So they get laser targeted traffic from people who are maybe living around the corner in the next street.
There is not only Google AdWords where PPC campaigns can be done to reach the buyer persona in a great way.
Businesses can also do PPC ads on Twitter, Facebook and for B2B on LinkedIn.
One more thing to keep in mind when doing paid adverting!
You should direct your traffic to dedicated landing pages to convert those prospects into leads.
Take care to prepare a great offer on your landing page to motivate those prospects to leave their contact to follow up with them later and to get them into the lead nurturing process to convert them to sales.
08/14/12 by Heather de Wit | blogging, email marketing, Lead Generation, Mobile Marketing | 7 Comments »
VMail is the new Email
Extraordinary results can be achieved using this technology. Video Email can change the world and the way we communicate Vmail by Vmail !
Facts :
- - Google loves Video !
- - Cisco predict –
- There will be a 10 fold increase in the use of Video over the next 5 years
- By 2015, there will be nearly 3 Billion Internet users – more than 40% of the world’s projected population
- Internet Video traffic is now 40% of the consumer internet
- - People retain 10% of what they hear, but 50% of what they see
- - Video is the single, most effective form of communication
- - Companies continue to look for additional creative marketing platforms
- - ‘Old school’ marketing is no longer effective
- - People spend 8 seconds reading a static text email, but retain 85% of what they see in a Video
- - Static text emails are easy to ignore, and at their best give a customer only the vaguest notion of what your business really values. People simply don’t have the time today to read screeds of text and barely get past the third line, before deleting, without ever grasping the gist of the message that is trying to be conveyed.
Practical research has been able to demonstrate the power of video over other forms of communication:
1. ‘Video email marketing reaps 280 percent higher returns than direct mail.’ – Gartner Research
2. ‘63.9% of 5,000 people watched a video sent via email to completion. The average email viewer will only spend 8 seconds reading an email’ – Marketing Vox
3. ‘Good service is not enough. A customer who is ‘emotionally connected’ to your place of business is likely to spend 46% more money than a customer who is merely ‘satisfied’, but not emotionally bonded.’ – Gallup Survey
4. Increased market interest. According to an August 2011 Forrester Research survey: 50% of interactive marketers believed that marketing’s effectiveness will increase with online video over the next 3 years; while 43% said it would with E-mail marketing.
5. Increased clicks. According to David Daniels, former VP and Principal Analyst for Forrester Research, “Video in email can increase click-through rates as much as 2x-3x.”
6. According to a video email case study by Holland America Lines, in-email video produced a 2x higher CTR versus a static image, and 2x higher CTR than their average campaign.”
So what is a Vmail ?
Video Email is simple to use, online, browser based technology, which enables you to create your own personal Vmails. No software downloads are necessary. Bandwidth is not compromised, as the VMail opens on the Internet. Vmail allows full integration with your social networks to share on Youtube or Facebook, etc.
Creating a VMail
- 1. Use your Webcam to record your message or upload a video from your computer, IPhone, Android or any Smartphone.
- 2. Incorporate marketing Videos or something from You Tube.
- 3. Use the Templatefeature –
- Create your own personal template, using your own art or photos, or
- Choose a template from 100’s of designs available
- 4. The system automatically adds your contact information.
- 5. You can also add images, such as printable coupons or hyperlinks to other websites.
- 6. Use the Contact Managerto manage all your contacts –
- Import all your contacts from your phone, email and computer into one spot.
- Organize your Contacts alphabetically or in Groups.
- Select and send to any number of your contacts using the Contact Manager.
- 7. Use the campaign scheduling feature to send right away, or set the day and time that you’d like it to go out.
Why use Vmail ?
Video Email :
- - Is different
- - More powerful
- - More effective
- - Is creative
- - Seeing is Believing
- - Has more impact
- - Grabs the customer’s attention
- - Enables you to literally look into your contact’s eyes and develop a relationship with that person, engaging them on a level that is simply not possible with a static text email.
- - Enables your voice to resonate on a subliminal level.
- - Will replace static text emails, which are easy to ignore, and at their best, give a customer only the vaguest notion of what your business really values
Infographic: Video EMail
Vmail USES are endless e.g. :
- All aspects of Business
- Product launches
- Product or Service info
- CV’s
- Training/Skiling
- Teaching
- Invitations
- Vacations
- Special events
- Weddings
- Anniversaries
- Responses
- Birthdays
- Announcements
Heather de Wit considers herself to be an ‘out of the box’ thinker and is happy to share her knowledge on the merits of utilising Video Email and Conferencing/Webinars. Her experience as a sole Entrepreneur for over 20 years spans marketing, advertising and PR. She enjoys creative writing, singing at functions and is a self-taught artist.
Get in touch with heather :
08/11/12 by Heather de Wit | blogging, General, Get Found Online, Mobile Marketing, social media marketing | No Comments »
This technology can change the world !
Facts :
· Google loves Video !
· Cisco predict there will be a 10 fold increase in the use of Video Conferencing/Webinars over the next 5 years
· Internet Video traffic is now 40% of consumer internet
· People retain 10% of what they hear, but 50% of what they see
· Video is the single, most effective form of communication
· Companies continue to look for additional creative marketing platforms
· ‘Old school’ marketing is no longer effective
What is a Video Conference / Webinar ?
Called by many names a Video Conference, a Video Meeting or a Webinar – all meaning the same thing. It is an highly effective, browser based, simple to use virtual Video Meeting Room, where, at the click of a button with a link, you are able to host large or small online meetings with people locally or globally, to connect, communicate and collaborate.
Access to online meetings is now available on most ‘smart phones’.
Some are saying it is the ‘new’ business card.
Many have not yet fully embraced or grasped the power of this technology, perhaps for fear of losing ‘the personal’ touch or the ‘face to face’ meeting scenario. However, we cannot stop progress and this is where things are headed if you want to see it.
‘Going green’ is what the world is advocating and what better way to save on time, energy, airfares, hotel accommodation, increase productivity and ultimately save money, than by hosting meetings, trainings, launches etc online.
This could be perceived as an adjunct marketing platform, or an additional marketing tool to what you already have in place.
The marketplace has become global and this technology enables you to go global with ease.
General features –
· Attract and drive more people to your business
· Share Powerpoint presentations
· Share ideas
· Share Videos
· Show websites
· Share photos
· Review contracts or documents in a safe and secure environment
· Share your desktop
· Use the white boarding feature, with interactive tools, like drawing and highlighting, to make it simpler for your attendees to collaborate with you.
Creative Uses :
· WEBINAR SERIES
Develop a series of Webinars over a number of weeks, with content relevant to your clients or prospects. In this space, you can educate and demonstrate the value of your products or services. Guest specialist speakers always add value.
· ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEW PRODUCTS or CAMPAIGNS
Invite your media contacts, industry analysts, clients and prospects. Elevate the level of conversation by inviting specialists in your audience to answer questions and provide input.
· GUEST SPEAKERS
People perceive you differently when they know where you are coming from – eg, reducing your carbon footprint. Attract people ‘through the back door’ by hosting a Video Conference, selecting a relevant and current ’green’ subject matter, with the added attraction of a guest speaker, who should be a well-known expert or specialist in that particular field. Your guest speaker will, in their own right, easily attract a large audience – Everyone benefits.
· BOOK LAUNCHES
A book tour can be very costly. Authors can save a fortune by hosting a virtual book tour. This can be co-marketed with e-commerce book companies, online communities and off-line bookstores, that want to drive traffic to their stores and sites.
· The ARTS
For Movie/TV/Radio/Theatre/Music/Dance Promotions, use Webinars to reach large groups of people to interview actors, singers, dancers, poets, playwrights, producers, choreographers, directors etc. These web events can be conducted with the media, through relevant websites, e-commerce sites, TV, newspaper or magazine, radio web sites.
· ART EXHIBITIONS
Artists across all art form mediums, can use Video Conferencing to go global, communicate and show their art to the world. They could even stream a pre-recorded video on a virtual tour of their art from their own studio or gallery. Inviting a well known art expert as a guest speaker, who in their own rights, will attract numbers to the web event, would be an added bonus.
· MEDIA INTERVIEWS
To better assist journalists with their stories, invite reporters or editors to an online web interview to discuss issues, show products, present information and data.
· MARKET RESEARCH
Focus groups can view and research products through audio, chat or text-based questions. Polls and online surveys are also a popular feature in these focus groups and are available features with this technology.
· SPECIAL EVENTS/TRADE SHOWS/EXHIBITIONS
Create a virtual show in a Video Meeting Room, where different companies can participate in interactive sessions, with people interested in learning more about your company’s products and services. Due to budget and time constraints, people cannot always travel far distances to attend an event. CUSTOMER SERVICE
Give E-Commerce customers live assistance when choosing products. Invite them to a product knowledge session. The Video Meeting Room can feature a live individual or be a pre-recorded session.
• CUSTOMER SERVICE
Give E-Commerce customers live assistance when choosing products. Invite them to a product knowledge session. The Video Meeting Room can feature a live individual or be a pre-recorded session.
· DEMONSTRATING PRODUCTS
Web conferencing is a great way to demonstrate the uses of products.
· EDITING on the fly
Edit on the fly in a safe and secure environment, with people from different geographic regions. Everyone can view the same document simultaneously, so edits can be made quickly and efficiently, without costly delays.
· Editing WEB SITES
This is a highly efficient way to review web pages with a group of people.
· SKILLING, TRAINING
Webinars are becoming increasingly popular and convenient as a training tool.
· RECRUITMENT
Companies can easily go global and hire the best from anywhere in the world, using Video Conferencing as an interviewing tool, inviting prospective employees to interact and collaborate. Here they can upload their resumes and review same with them, together with others, who are part of the hiring process, but are located in other regions.
· CONTACT US
Video Meeting Rooms can be used as a ‘Contact Us’ feature. People can request an instant meeting to talk with you and learn more about what you do.
· INVESTOR RELATIONS
Invite analysts, media and shareholders to a Web Conference for quarterly reviews, announcements and appointments.
· COMMUNITY
A great tool for Community forums and groups to connect, collaborate and communicate on :
o Community issues, problems
o Neighbourhood watches can have a better handle on crime and policing
· COMPANY STAFF, COMMITTEE, SALES or BOARD MEETINGS
More and more businesses are seeing the value of using this technology to communicate and collaborate with employees and management nationally or globally on a more regular basis, saving time, energy, travel, communication bills, accommodation bills, etc, increasing productivity and ultimately saving money.
· DISTANCE EDUCATION
More and more institutions are embracing this technology for :
o Distance learning
o Extra mural classes moderated by Teachers
o Students can ‘study together’ without ‘being together’
o School board meetings
o Teacher training
o Academic contests e.g. debates, with other institutions
· CHURCHES, NGO’s (Charities), CLUBS
Institutions using Webinars can :
o Interact with members and constituents
o Conduct remote study with exchange groups
o Conduct Church meetings
o Conduct Board or Committee meetings
o Host Fundraising campaigns
o Host Planning sessions
o Host Remote counselling
Infographic: Video Conferencing
Heather de Wit considers herself to be an ‘out of the box’ thinker and is happy to share her knowledge on the merits of utilising Video Email and Conferencing/Webinars. Her experience as a sole Entrepreneur for over 20 years spans marketing, advertising and PR. She enjoys creative writing, singing at functions and is a self-taught artist.
Get in touch with heather :
08/07/12 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Content Marketing, Get Found Online, Lead Generation, Online Reputation | No Comments »
To get found online when future customers are looking for products and services is one of the major challenges businesses are facing today.
Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.
Businesses need to understand that future customers B2B and B2C primarily do not go online to buy something. First they go online for research. They research for products and services and if they found something of interest they research about information about the company. They ask friends, family and their social networks for recommendations and if they know the company the have recently found.
Did you asked yourself what future customers will find when they research your industry for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?
How many people hit your site and how many business leads do generate daily?
Targeted traffic is a result of many tasks which need to be done before you even get the chance to get found by future customers through Google, Yahoo of Bing search.
Actually the best way to increase visibility is content marketing. With content marketing businesses demonstrate thought leadership; prove themselves Trustworthy and Boosts SEO by increase Backlinks to their website.
Remarkable and helpful content is also a great to build customer loyalty. It offers the so called value ad for customers.
The great success of content marketing is the result of giving away valuable information – remarkable content for free to attract people to your business like a magnet.
Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.
This marketing system works 100% for any business!
Content marketing can also work for you to attract new customers to your business like a magnet.
To empower your content marketing start with a corporate blog!
Blogging companies get…
- …up to 55% more Traffic
- …up to 97% more Inbound Links
- …up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
- …up to 25x times more business leads
The next steps of content creation are to craft further buyer persona oriented content like:
- - Press releases
- - Pictures
- - Whitepapers
- - How-to’s
- - EBooks
- - Video
Include a call to action in each of your content pieces. This ensures that the user exactly discovers what to do next.
Each of your content pieces is an outpost of your businesses which increases your visibility and improves trust and directs more future customers to your business.
The more content you publish on the web the more online outposts you get in exchange and your chances to get found increase. Other sites will find your content valuable and link back to it. People will share and comment on your content, which also will increase reach and visibility. You increase Backlinks and customer loyalty through content marketing. As simple as that.
05/03/12 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Content Marketing, Get Found Online, inbound marketing | 6 Comments »
A MarketingSherpa research found out that creating content is one of the most effective tactics for improving a website’s SEO.
User-Generated Content encountered for Organic search up to 10%, and lead conversion up 125%.
Companies who create content, operate a corporate blog and update it frequently have 55% more website visitors.
57% of companies which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.
Corporate Blogging
Blogging gets companies 55% more Traffic and up to 97% more Inbound Links. Companies who blog get 434% more indexed pages in search engines and up to 25x times more business leads.
Video Content Creation
Business who utilize video content creation, encounter up to 300% more monthly unique visitors, and 100% longer average time-on-site per visitor. The average time spent on pages with videos is 3-minutes. Generating video content increases search engine traffic by 157% and page views by 63% unique visitors by 100%.
User generated reviews on ecommerce sites
Content marketing ways like product ratings and reviews are proven to increase conversion rates on product pages.
Visitors of ecommerce pages should be able to include pictures and videos with their reviews. The way like sited as eBay and Amazon do to provide an overall rating are additional ways to increase website interaction.
The value of reviews increases as they are moderated within a short time period of about 24 hrs.
Also sharing these reviews to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other is a great way to distribute this user generated content.
Infographic: The Rise Of Conten Marketing
All above activities are visible to search engines and can lead to a massive growth in traffic.
Creating content takes time, money and expertise. When you need inspiration on which content your audience is interested in, just ask them and they will tell you.
03/22/12 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Lead Generation, Real-Time Marketing and PR, social media marketing | 2 Comments »
Social Media has proven to be a source of targeted high quality leads for B2C and B2B. An increasing number of marketers see lead generation as their greatest online marketing challenge.
Marketers which experienced the business value of social media marketing know that social media is one of their most successful and cost effective marketing channels.
Studies show that companies which relying on online lead generation are two times more profitable than those who do not. Those companies achieve an up to 62% lower costs per lead.
In social media B2B marketers are focusing mostly on LinkedIn which is the most successful channel for B2B lead generation followed by corporate blogging.
A study from Wildfire Interactive shows that social media helps grow brand awareness, increase sales and partnerships and helped to reduce marketing costs.
How can you profit from this trend?
- 1. Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there
- 2. Research for industry related B2B groups and people. Become a member and invite those people to your network
- 3. Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening
- 4. Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your B2B audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in social media and ask for feedback for your publication
- 5. Build landing pages and offer exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related B2B leads
- 6. Measure your activities
- 7. Improve your activities and repeat
Read this article also: Get social to get found from your future customers
Infographic: Digital Marketing Budgets
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02/24/12 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Get Found Online, inbound marketing, Lead Generation, Online Reputation, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media marketing | 3 Comments »
“Worldwide social network ad revenues are still going strong and set to grow nearly 50% this year, according to eMarketer estimates.” by Emarketer.com
The revenue spending on social networks are increasing this is a fact. More and more businesses discover that social networks are a great communication tool to get in touch with their audience.
B2C and B2B have realized that the business decision makes are active in the social web and try to reach them by paid advertising.
It is a good approach to be visible where your audience is around. But the way how you are visible is more important than a big ad budget.
Moreover a big ad budget does not mean you will be successful with your lead generation campaign. The opposite is more likely the result.
Smart marketers use PPC only for short campaigns, and not as a substitute of a holistic strategy.
Why? Because PPC has no log term value for marketing, when you stop your PPC your lead flow also stops. Another point is that you do not earn any trust in the market with PPC. Anybody can bid for the highest keywords. You can’t buy trust and reputation by bidding the highest price per click!
When it comes to led generation than “nothing beats the inbound marketing strategy”!
Studies from the past five years revealed that a seriously executed inbound marketing strategy results in up to 62% lower cost per lead an in an up to 55% higher lead conversion rate.
Inbound marketing consists of content creation, content distribution, content marketing, Social Media communication, Lead generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Conversion, and Closed-Loop Analysis to refine and improve the activities.
Furthermore companies who execute an inbound marketing seriously build trust, their brand and are recognized as a reputable source on the web. They get found on the web when future customers are looking, instead of pushing them with dump old fashioned sales pitches.
Infographic: Inbound Marketing on the rise
Companies who utilize inbound marketing simply leave their competition behind them in the dust. Inbound marketing is brain versus budget, and in the long term the brain always wins!
What do you think? Did I miss anything?
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02/14/12 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Get Found Online, inbound marketing, landing pages, Lead Generation, Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO, social media marketing | 6 Comments »
Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.
With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.
Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.
Most business has not the resources and the knowledge to execute a powerful and result driven inbound marketing strategy.
They have not good writers on their staff to produce buyer persona oriented remarkable content like blog articles, whitepapers, how-to’s and eBooks on a regular basis.
Also they do not have in-house SEO experts to help them to choose the most relevant keywords to better get found in the search engines.
Moreover the knowledge about social media communication and an effective community management is not in place as well.
But the most important fact is the time to get all the required things done.
Studies show that business who try to do inbound marketing without professional help fail within three months.
What did they win when the do not hire a professional inbound marketing agency? Simply nothing! They waste time resources and money for no revenue results.
If you want to profit from inbound marketing than you should think about to hire professionals who can do the job.
What do you get by executing a professional inbound marketing strategy?
- A. S ave up to 62% of your marketing budget.
- B. Stand out of your competition.
- C. Generate a massive amount of leads.
- D. Get up to 55% higher lead conversion rates.
- E. Increase your customers and sales.
How much does it cost to hire a professional inbound marketing agency?
This is a god question. The same one like how much is a car? What kind of car do you want? Do you want an old car or a brand new Ferrari?
Inbound marketing hourly rates start with $100 per hour, depends what to do.
You can calculate to spend between $2,000/m – $3,000/m for about minimum of six months, depending on the services delivered. Because any serious inbound marketing agency will need this time frame to set your marketing on the right track to help you to reach your revenue goals.
On the end of the day is inbound marketing the most efficient and the most cost effective marketing you can get for your buck.
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01/09/12 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Get Found Online, social media marketing | 2 Comments »
socialmediaexaminer.com has picked under over 570 nominations 20 Social Media Blogs for the Final Winner Selection.
One of those blogs is inBlurbs blog. In our blog we write about Inbound Internet Marketing – SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Landing Pages, Lead Generation and Analytics.
“Social Media Examiner, the world’s largest online social media magazine, is designed to help businesses discover how to best use social media tools like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with customers, generate more brand awareness and increase sales. More than 450,000 people read Social Media Examiner each month.
Technorati and AdAge rank Social Media Examiner as one of the world’s Top 10 business blogs. Our more than 120,000 email subscribers look forward to our daily original content.”
We are very proud to be nominated between those great blogs. Many thanks to all of our supporters.
12/22/11 by Dragan Mestrovic | Advanced Content, blogging, Online Reputation, social media marketing | No Comments »
An increasing number of companies like Intuit, Sysco, Cisco, GE Healthcare and AT&T are using social media for effective business lead generation.
A recent study from Sagefrog Marketing Group shows how companies have learned to leverage social media. Leveraging social media for branding and building awareness helps B2B companies.
4 Ways how companies can leverage social media:
- • Increase brand awareness
- • Humanize B2B companies
- • Establish as thought leader
- • Connecting with customers and prospects
What sites, tactics and strategies are B2B marketers including in their social media outreach?
To do their social media outreach B2B marketers include professional networking sites like LinkedIn which have proven to be an effective way to generate business leads. Furthermore they utilize social networks like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube also which are helping them to reach customers in new ways.
“67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook.” “47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.”
Online Marketing strategies like banner ads have been replaced through proven buyer persona oriented content creation which also brings better ROI than pay per click marketing (PPC).
A corporate blog has become the number one content marketing tool for companies. The importance of blogging is growing and people are adding nearly 3 million blogs per month. [Technorati 2011 State of the Blogosphere Report]
In this report, Technorati shows that 8% of the corporate bloggers which responded to blog full-time as part of their job or are contracted to blog full-time for a company and that 13% of entrepreneurs responded to blog for a company or organization they own.
Studies show that companies who operate and update a corporate blog frequently have 55% more website visitors. From those companies 57% which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.
There is no question content marketing, corporate blogging, is definitely a revenue driver for B2B companies.
To learn how to jumpstart your content marketing read this article: Get up to 25 times more business leads with Content Marketing
Infographic: Business To Business – Social Media
—How do you use Social Media for your B2B?
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12/21/11 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Content Creation Strategy, inbound marketing, Lead Generation, Online Reputation, social media marketing | 2 Comments »
Every business wants to succeed. But not every business is doing what it needs to succeed. As for the past years corporate blogging and social media has increasingly earned popularity because auf its successful use, there are still a majority of businesses which still do not engage in these said marketing opportunities.
During the past years inbound marketing, which consists of strategic and buyer persona oriented content creation and content distribution like corporate blogging, engagement in social media, lead generation and lead conversion through lead nurturing and measurement through closed-loop analysis has grown in popularity.
The increase of inbound marketing popularity is no fad but the outcome of measurable and proven results which studies like the MIT study certifies.
Furthermore it is a proven fact that companies which rely on online lead generation are 25 x more profitable than companies who do not.
Some examples why inbound marketing is so successful:
Content creation
Companies who operate a corporate blog and update it frequently have 55% more website visitors. 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog report to have acquired new customers through their blog.
Social media
67% of B2C and 47% of B2B companies report to have acquired new customers through Facebook. 47% of companies who use Twitter report to have acquired new customer through it.
Lead generation
Inbound marketing has a 62% lower cost per lead than traditional marketing strategies. Inbound marketing way generated leads have an 55% higher lead conversion rate than lead generated through traditional marketing strategies.
As inbound marketing strategy consists of buyer persona oriented content creation, social media engagement, lead generation, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis; it covers the necessary areas for a successfully operable strategy.
Some suggestions to jumpstart your inbound marketing:
- 1. Identify your buyer personas. (Download this free buyer persona sheet)
- 2. Produce remarkable content (blog articles, whitepapers, eBooks, photos, video, press releases and FAQs) for your buyer personas.
- 3. Distribute your content online through your corporate blog and in social media.
- 4. The more you publish and share the better. As you increase the amount of pages of your website and blog articles you get increasingly more digital outpost to get found better online.
- 5. The more articles you publish the more opportunities appear to get Backlinks from other websites and blog who also like your publications and you will be recognizes as a trusted source.
- 6. Build relevant landing pages and clear call to action to generate leads.
- 7. Nurture those leads with important information and not with sales pitches.
- 8. Measure what you do, optimize and repeat.
Infographic: Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
—What do you think about inbound marketing?
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12/16/11 by Dragan Mestrovic | Advanced Content, blogging, Content Creation Strategy, Get Found Online, inbound marketing, Off-Page SEO, social media marketing | 5 Comments »
Content Marketing has become a significant part of online marketing strategy. Content Marketing has proven to be the best and most cost effective way to drive traffic to a company website and convert this traffic to leads and customers.
The most popular ways of Content Marketing are blogging, social media and video. Studies show that 57% of companies which operate a corporate blog get customers through their blogging effort!
4 Reasons to start a corporate blog:
- 1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
- 2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
- 3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
- 4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads
Social Media Marketing has become a powerful tool to spread remarkable content to reach a wide audience.
For companies who engage in social media and show presence in these channels can open wide opportunities to get in touch with their audience. This leads to an increase of credibility and unfiltered feedback of the target audience and can lead to an improvement of products and services.
New studies show that up to 65 percent of today’s consumers expect a brand to listen and to respond on questions, comments and complaints in social media. Studies also show that companies which use social media actively to communicate with their audience are more successful than companies who do not.
7 Reasons to start your social media marketing:
- 1. Increase customer perception in the marketplace
- 2. Build long term relationship with customers and partners
- 3. Can respond to customers in real-time
- 4. Taylor products and marketing campaigns based on customer preferences
- 5. React and resolve on negative buzz in real-time
- 6. Decrease costs of marketing
- 7. Improved time to market for products and services
Most people think they need to be Steven Spielberg to make a video to put it online to get a positive impact for their business. But this is not true.
You do not need fancy equipment. The only thing you need is a video camera and for the beginning it can be the one from your smart phone.
The most successful video examples come from ordinary people who could not even be considered amateurs. To become successful with your video marketing, with video content, there is only one secret: Just go and do it, do as many video as you can. Publish it and let your audience judge.
6 Reasons to start your video marketing:
- 1. 200% to 300% more monthly unique visitors
- 2. 100% longer average time-on-site per visitor
- 3. 3-minute average time spent on pages with videos
- 4. 157% increase in search engine traffic
- 5. 100% increase in unique visitors
- 6. 63% increase in page views
Infographic: Content Marketing
—What do you think about content marketing? Are you doing one or all three or other content marketing strategies?
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11/03/11 by Dragan Mestrovic | blogging, Get Found Online, inbound marketing, Online Reputation, social media marketing, Trust Agents | 2 Comments »
Companies engage increasingly in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other forums and platforms. They go to step into conversation with their audience to offer better service and support and to strengthen the band between actual and future customers.
Social media is a great way to grow brand awareness for the business and to expand the reach to get more customers. But social media can also be a trap for those who are not familiar with managing their reputation online.
Everything a company is communicating on the web and in social media can travel a far way and have an impact on the reputation of the brand.
On social media people are talking about your last blog article, your service, products, about you and your brand. With or without your involvement.
As content which is published on social media also can be indexed by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing the chances are great that also the content you have distributed will appear in the search engines search results too.
For you it is important to know where you or your brand name has been mentioned so you can respond. Therefore your best strategy to keep a good reputation is also to be active where your target audience is talking about you. So you can respond professionally and show your opinion.
You should care about your online reputation as the web has a wider reach than small town gossip. Future business and future contacts will be influenced by what the people find about you on the web.
Your behavior on the web and what other say about you will affect your future for sure.
To keep a good reputation you need to take care of the WHAT, WHERE and the HOW.
WHAT do you publish on the web and in social media?
You should avoid do praise your products too much. Do not make the mistake to use social media as a distribution channel and overload your audience with dump sales pitches.
WHERE do you publish your content?
Publish content topics where they belong and where they are appreciated. Therefore you need to listen carefully to your audience and give them the information they demand.
HOW do you communicate?
Always communicate in a professional and friendly way. Try to be helpful and show expertise and avoid sounding like schoolmasterly.
How you present yourself on the web can win you business and respect. To achieve this you should take the time to establish a good digital branding and biography.
Infographic: Reputation Management
–How do you protect your reputation on the web? Let me know what you think. I am looking forward to your comment.
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