Blog | inBlurbs Inbound Marketing Agency

February 1, 2012February 1, 2012

How to use Social Media for Customer Acquisition

Social media has become a significant part of serious marketers lead generation strategy.

Companies who engage in social media increase their reach massively. And there is no matter if they are B2C or B2B.

Social media is public communications channel where companies can get great unfiltered feedback.

Companies need to understand that social media is not for “pushing your messages out “.

To be successful and to reach a positive ROI with social media, companies need to communicate and to listen to their audience.

It is simply untrue when someone claims that his customers are not active in social media. They are active in B2C and B2B and they research online for products and services.

The only question is: What will they find when they research for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?

Studies prove that B2C and B2B profit likewise from social media engagement.

A study from Wildfire Interactive shows that social media helps grow brand awareness, increase sales and partnerships and helped to reduce marketing costs.

Engaging in dialogue with customers via social media has become an important part of successful companies.

Smart marketers measure the value of social media channels as well. They want to know which one has the best results for their business. One of the most popular channels is Facebook. About 44% of surveyed marketers say that “Facebook is valuable because they help with new customer recruitment”.

Moreover they have stated that Facebook fans have higher conversion rates and they make more frequent purchases.

How can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing?

• At first you can do this by increase of your revenue
• As a second way you can measure are “Likes”
• You can measure social media mentions of your brand

A great way is to add lead capture pages to your in social published articles and to track the traffic, leads, lead to customer rate and revenue per generated lead. So you get a good picture of your cost per lead and adjust activities to increase your profits.

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 cost per lead.

Infographic: Brand Messaging

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February 1, 2012February 1, 2012

Let LinkedIn do FREE Marketing for your business

LinkedIn has updated their privacy conditions.

LinkedIn is now permitted to use your name and picture in any of their advertisements. So they can use this throughout their whole network for their marketing purposes!

How scary, or maybe not…? 😉

See ch. 2 of their privacy policy: http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=privacy_policy&trk=hb_ft_priv

Ok, here are two ways you can deal with this:

First – You can forbid it by change your privacy settings this way:

1. Place the cursor on your name at the top right corner of the screen. From the small
pull down menu that appears, select “settings”
2. Then click “Account” on the left/bottom
3. In the column next to Account, select the option “Manage Social Advertising”
4. Finally un-tick the box “LinkedIn may use my name and photo in social advertising”
5. and Save

Or, the Second possibility – You can use this as an opportunity to let market LinkedIn your business throughout their whole network for FREE! Simply let them do the branding job for your business and paying not a dime for this!

How does this sound for you? 😉

Here is how it works:

You simply change your photo to a branding tool! Use your photo by inserting your brand LOGO how I have done here with my LinkedIn photo. That’s it.

Now LinkedIn is very welcome to use my photo throughout their whole network as long as they want. 😉

I only can say THANK YOU LINKEDIN for this tremendous FREE marketing opportunity and God bless you! 🙂

By the way, you can do this on Twitter, Facebook and other networks as well.

— Let me know what you think and how your results are.

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FREE Report: 8 Steps To Get Seen On LinkedIn 100+ Million User Base

FREE LinkedIn Marketing Report download here!

January 25, 2012January 25, 2012

B2B Decision Makers are Increasingly Researching in Social Media

In the beginning of the internet it was a source of information and today entertainment and shopping have accompanied this attitude. But research is still the main factor when it comes to web use.

Before social media people went mainly to search engines to research and to find products and services. Today in times of social media the products and services find them through discussions, content sharing and recommendations from friends and followers. And even on the road these information are accessible through mobile devices.

This evolution of information technology also arrived to the B2B companies.

The search volume on Facebook has overtaken Google. And there are not only consumers who research there. B2B is also using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social networks to research for products, services, industry related information and new business partners.

Nobody says that a product or service with a volume of hundreds of thousands of dollars has to be sold on Facebook. But the first contact can be made there and the further discussions and negotiations can be took offline to close the deal.

Social media is a great way to showcase a business and to offer a more personal insight view. A company has 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.

All social media sites also have mobile apps; their reach also spreads wider and is working 24/7. Not only teenagers are surfing on social networks through their mobile devices. B2B decision makes do this as well and their number is increasing!

“Research from ad agency TricomB2B and University of Dayton School of Business Administration showed an even higher concentration of B2B influencers researching purchases on mobile devices.”

How can you and a B2B firm leverage this information above for your business?

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.

What do you think? How are your experiences?

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January 24, 2012January 24, 2012

Studies prove Social Media Marketing lasts longer

The Social Media marketing return on investment is a major factor why businesses choose to step into social media marketing and the two communications here.

Social media has proved in the past years that it can bring positive ROI when done right. Some successful examples are Intrepid Travel, Easy Lunch Boxes, SnapRetail just only to name some of them.

As businesses understand that social media is no short term sprint than more something like a marathon they engage with more diligence to plan their steps to reach a long term ROI.

Successful brands look at social media engagement as a plant which needs to be cultivated over the time to grow to an unlimited range.

BzzAgent has discovered that about 61% of brand advocates would buy products up to one year after social media campaign has expired. This proves that social media marketing and two way communication lasts longer than ordinary one marketing blasts from yesteryear.

This does not mean that social media has become a “push the button cash machine”. Not every campaign will be successful. But like everything on the planet the volume of activities and their step by step improvement ensures a growing success.

This does not mean that brands should fire one campaign behind another. This means that a brand should carefully listen to its audience. When they listen carefully their audience will tell them which campaign could be appreciated to become a possible success story.

In the mean time a human and authentic communication should be the priority.

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

No matter if there are critics or praise. Every feedback is a chance to showcase the brands standpoint and get in touch with the recent or future customer.

Brands that listen to their audience and improve products and services to fit their audience’s needs are one step from that to be the long term winners. The growing trend for custom products proves this. The one size fits all strategy does not work anymore this is for sure!

Any 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.

The others who do not will be left behind, and they deserve to vanish because they do not care a shi* about their audience and never have. Social media also points this out and separates the good from the bad once.

In this new world the customer B2C and B2B wins and the brands who care. And that’s good!

Infographic: B2B Social Media Marketing

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January 17, 2012January 18, 2012

Get social to get found from your future customers

Google, Yahoo and Bing increasingly include results from social media discussions in their search results. Especially Google+ results are likely more visible on Google results pages. Bing favors Facebook and also search results on Facebook are also from Bing too.

But how to get into those results the smartest way?

The easiest way to get better found on search engines is content marketing. As content marketing has become the most powerful marketing strategy to increase brand awareness, trust and credibility with the audience.

As content is only a part of an integral marketing strategy there is more part of the marketing puzzle important to be used.

The most powerful internet marketing strategy which also has proven to be successful and to bring guaranteed results for businesses is Inbound Marketing.

Inbound marketing consist of content creation like Blogging, Social Media Marketing, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

Inbound Marketing has proven to:

• Save up to 62% of a businesses marketing budget.

• Make a business stand out of their competition.

• Help to generate a massive amount of leads with up to 55% higher lead conversion rates

• Increase customers, sales and revenue.

Content creation

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!

Social Media Marketing

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.

Lead Generation

Inbound marketing has a 62% lower cost per lead than traditional marketing strategies. Inbound marketing way generated leads have a 55% higher lead conversion rate than lead generated through traditional marketing strategies.

Lead Nurturing – Lead Conversion

Effective lead nurturing increases lead conversion by up to 55%. Which does not mean that lead nurturing consist of sales pitches. Moreover effective lead nurturing is also a communication process with the future client in which the lead receives helpful and valuable information too. This grows the trust and increases the chances that a lead buys when he is ready to do so, because he knows the source as a trusted and reputable one.

Closed-Loop Analysis

All marketing tasks need to be measured to ensure you are walking the right way. During this closed loop analysis you increase successful tasks measure, improve and repeat. This ensures a step by step quality increase and a gradually decrease of marketing costs up to 62%.

Infographic: Content creation

Keep your inbound marketing flexible to react on real-time news! Always keep the news in focus. As news appears they can offer a tremendous opportunity for you to jump on this bandwagon to use it as your own marketing push the piggy pack way! But you must react quickly, in real-time!

Simply be the first who tweets, shares or likes the story and also take into account to write a blog article from your point of view ASAP! This can help to increase your brand awareness.

Did I missed something, what do you think?

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January 12, 2012

Stop censorship

Congress is about to pass internet censorship, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity.

January 11, 2012January 11, 2012

Power your Inbound Marketing with small social networking sites

In the beginning of 2012 the traffic, unique visitors and time on site of some smaller sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Google+ increased and attracted attention from marketers.

The audience of smaller sites can be of big marketing value for marketers as there are not overwhelmed of information like on the bigger ones.

Marketer can gain attention quicker and lead more qualified and quality traffic to their sites to convert them to leads.

This increased lead quality could also reflect in an increasing lead to customer rate.

With better lead quality you save time and money when you convert them to paying customers. Maybe your lead count decrease but the quality increases and you grow your revenue the smart way.

Here is a most actual list of social networking sites from Wikipedia.

Go through and research which one can e most suitable to reach your target audiences the most efficient way.

Register with those networks and complete your profile than start the conversation by distribution your content – publications to these networks.

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Smaller Social Sites See Significant Boost in Usage

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January 9, 2012January 9, 2012

Eight steps to steal laser target traffic from eBay

In the past years eBay is an established platform to buy and sell goods. Millions of people day visit eBay to research and to buy products. Hundreds of thousands of businesses utilize eBay to get new customers and to make revenue.

But there is another side of eBay. Increasing fraud, increasing sales and listing fees and the decreasing image value of eBay.

But there is good news for businesses. Ebay is a traffic machine when it comes to target traffic. Moreover the eBay traffic is laser target.

How can you use eBay to lead a ton of laser target traffic to your business? Because this is the only way how you can profit from eBay in the long term, when you build your brand not theirs!

Here are eight easy steps how you can squeeze out eBay traffic and increase YOUR profits:

First: You should change your mind and not use eBay of your primary source of business. This decreases your sales and listing fees and focuses your audience to your website and the listed offers.

Second: When you are listing your offers on eBay you should ALLWAYS include your website and your blog URL in to your listing, so your audience get the chance to visit your website.

Third: Only list offers on eBay as special offers, do not list them in your website and shop at the same time, so the visitors can’t compare. Use eBay to introduce new products for a short time and then only offer them in your shop.

Fourth: Design your website and shop in greater marketing strategy in mind and build it as marketing hub to canalize your traffic to leads and your leads to sales.

Fifth: Build your own email list to keep your audience updated. Include a call to action to your audience to subscribe to your newsletter on your website, so you own your list.

Sixth: Setup a lead nurturing process to keep your audience informed, but do not bother them only with sales offers. This leads to higher unsubscribe rates.

Seventh: Start a corporate blog to open a two way conversation hub for your audience to build trust, position yourself as a credible source and to publish remarkable content.

Eighth: Start a facebook business page and add Facebook special, especially for your FB fans. Start a Twitter and add special offers for your Twitter followers.

These steps above ensure that you build your brand in the longer, drive a massive amount of traffic to your website, generate a ton of business leads and increase your revenue and sales and decrease your dependence of eBay and your eBay costs.

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January 9, 2012

inBlurbs Blog is nominated as one of the 20 finalists

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.

December 30, 2011December 30, 2011

Why you should carefully listen to social media

Did you sometimes think about how would it be to increase revenue and profits by being much quicker with product and services development than your competition?

When was the last time you and your business have been ahead of the trend curve?

What would you do to have such a tremendous competitive advantage which enables you to produce products and to create services your buyers demand and want to buy, always and repeat this again and again?

Yes, you would appreciate this advantage and do all the best you can to profit from it. Who wouldn’t?

But the fact is that most businesses are not willing to go the extra mile to achieve this kind of long term success. They simple stay in their comfortable zone and think if they do not take advantage of any new opportunities or technologies than they lower their risks. But the opposite is the sad fact.

I know it, because these are information I have discovered from many conversations of which I had with businesses. These businesses will fail in the long term there is no question!

A small percentage of businesses are willing to go the extra mile and use new technologies and opportunities when they appear. These businesses will be the winner in the future for sure!

One important part of success is the ability to listen and learn!

If you are able to listen than you are able to learn and you will develop yourself and your business to the next higher profitable level.

When you listen to conversation you become aware of new information, technologies and what your recent and future customers think about you and your business.

1. Do you know and do you listen what recent and future customers think about you and your business?
2. Where do you listen?
3. Did you improved your support, developed products and services to solve the target audience demand yet?

If not than I give you some good reasons why you should do:

• In social media people discuss open about their needs and are willing to give more personal information [develop buyer personas to better identify your audience].

In blurbs buyer personas analysis sheet

View more presentations from inBlurbs

• They complain open and want to be taken serious and you can show them that you care
• They give you suggestions for product and services improvements
• You can see upcoming trends, the potential volume and tailor your products and services to fit these trends and to reach those customers who are in demand for such products and services

Infographic: Social Media in Small Business

This is like you personal crystal ball which shows you the future. All this is simply done by listening and engagement in social media.

You decide about your business success for 2012 and nobody else, not your competition, not the economy and not your forefathers! No excuses take action and step into conversations on social media.

This is your extra mile which you have to walk!

I wish you good luck and best of success for 2012.

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December 22, 2011December 22, 2011

How B2B Marketers can Embrace Social Media

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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December 21, 2011December 21, 2011

How to save 62 percent of your budget with inbound marketing

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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December 16, 2011December 16, 2011

Get up to 25 times more business leads with Content Marketing

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.

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?