inbound marketing for business | inBlurbs Inbound Marketing Agency

May 8, 2013May 8, 2013

42 Profitable Reasons to Consider Inbound Marketing Strategy for Business

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:

February 9, 2013

Lead Generation with Inbound Marketing and PPC Advertising done right!

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?

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.

September 6, 2012

7 Easy Steps on How to use Twitter to Reach Your Revenue Goals

New reports show that Twitter beats Facebook in US Mobile Ad Revenues This Year. This is a clear sign that Twitter users could be more engaged that Facebook users. New numbers also show that Photo- and Video-Sharing Popular on Twitter.

Here are some numbers to try to compare the effectiveness of Twitter and Facebook for marketing:

An average Facebook user has an average of 130 friends compared with a Twitter user and his average 300 Followers. Twitter users share 1.5 more times tweets than compared with Facebook users which share wall post messages 0.65 on average. Massages shared on Facebook reach 45k of people there on average compared with 105k reach on Twitter.

These numbers give you a small idea of marketing effectiveness of booth social media platforms.

How can you profit from Twitter’s great opportunity to reach your target audience and increase business leads, sales and profits without spending a truck load of ad money on Twitter?

Twitter is a great tool to do real time communication with your audience. Users expect companies to response quickly to their requests. The quick response and serious reaction to requests or events on which happen is an essential part to profit from Twitter communication which breaks out.

Customers often reach out to brands to learn more about new products and services. If a brand is able to publish important product and services related news exclusively to their Twitter network first, this would help to improve loyalty with their network. This can also result in an improvement of revenue in the long term.

4 Reasons why companies should leverage Twitter:

• Increase brand awareness
• Humanize B2B companies
• Establish as thought leader
• Connecting easy and effortless with customers and prospects

7 Steps how can you profit from Twitter?

1. Start a Twitter presence and complete your profile
2. Research for industry related Tweets, discussions and people. Follow those people
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 audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in Twitter and ask for feedback and opinion for your publication
5. Build landing pages and offer Twitter exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related leads from Twitter
6. Measure your activities
7. Improve your activities and repeat

Infographic: Twitter Marketing

May 8, 2012

How B2B Marketers can connect to Small Business Owners

In March 2012, marketing agency Cargo and Inc. Magazine found the majority (52%) of US small-business owners felt companies did not market to them effectively.

Moreover 43% – 45% of the small business owners said companies made little effort to understand their individual needs and their business.

Most of the small business owners do the business important tasks them self, as they do their financials, marketing, sales and services. Their time is full stuffed with work and they do not sit behind a computer a whole day long. As they are mostly working their job and are with their employees and customers they are perfect to be reached by mobile devices as laptops and smart phones.

When B2B marketers want to connect with them they need to be where those small business owners are around and there where they can be reach and where they can reach out to the marketer.

As an increasing number of small business owners places importance on wireless communications and smart phones for their business this is the way to get in touch with them.

Infographic: Local Mobile Search

So what marketers need to do to reach small business owners with their brand massage?

1. Make your website mobile friendly. As small business owners love to use mobile devices like smart phones and tables, it makes sense to make it easier for them to consume your content
2. Adjust your email marketing, so it becomes and your email massage can be read on the fly. The most email communication is read from mobile devices
3. Become active in social media. As all known social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have mobile Apps; you can reach small business owners there through your communication and attract them to your offers
4. Start to create and publish buyer persona “small business owners persona” oriented content on the web and in social media. This will increase your visibility and grow your trust
5. Respond friendly and professionally to every request, no matter if it comes publicly through social media or by email or support ticket.

March 27, 2012March 27, 2012

Why CEOs and CMOs should join the Socialsphere

BRANDfog found out that consumers and employees regard company leaders who engage on social media platforms positively.

Social media is a great way to showcase a C level executive’s personality and to offer a more personal insight view. C level executives have great opportunities to show personality to attract the right buyer persona and to get in touch with the right new future customer when this one is looking out for products and services.

Five reasons for C level executive’s to engage:

1. CEO participation in social media leads to improved brand image
2. CEO participation in social media leads to better communication
3. CEO activity on social networks influences employees’ faith in their company
4. Employees trust a company more when the CEO and leadership team communicate via social media
5. Buyers are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media

Financial services firm ING Direct Canada is known for its tweeting CEO, Peter Aceto.

Aceto says that using social media helps him gauge how employees and consumers view the company and its products:

“We saw it as a competitive advantage for us,” Aceto said. “There was no science. There was no ROI. We just needed to get going, start to build a community and learn about how we can use it.”

C level executives have the great opportunity to become real “Trust Agents of their Brand” with very less effort and the rewards can be huge!

If C level executives are not willing to listen and to communicate in social media their audience will turn to their competition which is willing, for sure. When brands are not willing to listen and to learn it simply shows that they do not care about their buyers. And why should their buyers than care to spend their money with them?

Infographic: How Executives Are Using Social Media

Click the graphic to enlarge

Marketing takeaway for C level executives:

Start in social media with a Twitter account and begin your communication. It is not time consuming as a blog and video and can be managed from your blackberry on the fly. As simple as that!

Further resources:

CEOs Who Tweet Held in High Regard

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March 26, 2012

How to Decrease Ad Spending, Increase Lead Count and Conversion

Social media has become the most popular distribution channel, this is no secret. But still the most marketers rely on paid advertising nevertheless they can reach their audience in social media with no paid ads for a faction of the costs.

Advertising industry research firm Advertiser Perceptions found out that:

More than half (59%) of US marketers and agencies planned to increase their social media display ad spending on sites like Facebook in the next 12 months.

The good news is that 62% of marketers say that social media is important to critical for their business. And the bad news is that 59% of them want to buy customer attention instead of earning it by a simultaneously decrease of cost per lead up to 62%.

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 most profitable method to gain customer attention in the long term is to offer something of value for the audience. Information which is remarkable and share worthy.

Smart content marketing has proven to be a great way to create brand awareness and to e most effective 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.

A good way to start a smart dialogue is to ask open questions. To ask the audience about their opinion about the published content will open discussions where a brand get the opportunity to respond in a professional, authentic and human way.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report n up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

Publish buyer persona oriented remarkable content. This can be achieved with a corporate blog very quick.

How can your business profit from this?

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.

This can lower your cost per lead up to 62%, increase your lead conversion up to 55% and boost your revenue the smart way.

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March 23, 2012

How B2B Marketers Can do Social Media Lead Generation the Smart Way

Any B2B business can use social media as a source of unfiltered information and as powerful business intelligence tool to predict trends, for support and product development. Social media has proved in the past years that it can bring positive ROI when done right.

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

An increasing number of companies like Intuit, Sysco, Cisco, GE Healthcare and AT&T are using social media for effective business lead generation.

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.

Some numbers about Social Media Lead Generation

“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]

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 connected with social media distribution is definitely a revenue driver for B2B companies.

Infographic: B2B Social Media on the Rise

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March 21, 2012March 22, 2012

Why Marketers should do Brand Massaging in Real-Time

In the past marketers have been dependent on static inflexible campaigns and surveys which took days, weeks or months before companies get an understanding of how consumers are responding to their brand messaging.

To keep up with the today digital pace is a challenge which every marketer is facing by doing brand messaging.

Also it is not necessary anymore to wait for days, weeks or months to get an idea how brand messaging work and if the recent results are going into the right direction.

By taking the advantages of social media into account marketers have the opportunity to get unfiltered real time feedback from their audience about the impact of their brand messaging. Also they have the opportunity to refine their brand messaging in real time by carefully listening to their audience and offer buyer persona tailored information to make their brand outstanding.

This messaging can be improved online in real time and on daily base to lead the messaging towards the company goals.

Brand marketers need to move beyond campaign mode and post campaign measurement and take advantage of real time feedback and metrics on brand messaging performance.

The first question which marketers face to answer is: How far is the reach of my brand messaging?

To get an idea you need to know some metrics about social media and sharing.

LinkedIn
Each LinkedIn user has an average of 60 connection and messages there are shared on average 0.3 times.
Facebook
Each Facebook user has an average of 130 friends and messages there are shared on average 0.65 times.
Twitter
Each Twitter user has an average of 300 followers and messages there are shared on average 1.5 times.

Calculation example “Facebook”

When your company Facebook page has 1000 likes, it means your messages are visible on these 1000 peoples wall as well in the moment when they are published on yours.

We have learned that an average Facebook user has 130 friends.

Your potential brand message reach: 1000 (Likes) x 130 (each one of them) = 130,000 – 1000 (Likes) = 129,000 (possible additional people to see your brand message)

We have also learned that an average Facebook user shares a message on average about 0.65 times. This could increase your visibility to additionally 83,850 people. Your estimated brand messaging reach could be 212,850 people.

Infographic: How Engaged is Your Brand?

You can’t buy a good branding anymore you need to earn it day by day.

To earn reputation and a trustworthy brand to reach an increasing amount of people you need to offer valuable information – content there where your audience is around on the web and in social media. Remarkable and valuable content can be shared from people in the networks and travel on light speed around the globe.

On the web you are what you publish. What are you?

—David Meerman Scott

To take advantage of the real time opportunities the web and social media offer, you need to transform your marketing from static campaign mode to real time mode and make use of daily news, events and the social vibe your audience gives you as a feedback.