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Introduction to inbound content marketing
This document provides an introduction to content-driven inbound marketing. It discusses focusing content on customer needs, using personas to guide content creation, and using landing pages as the new home pages. It recommends dominating keywords for SEO and writing scannable, objective content. The document also discusses tools for content sharing, email list building, A/B testing, and getting started with free or low-cost tools like WordPress, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics.
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Introduction to inbound content marketing
- 1. Matthew Stibbe www.articulatemarketing.com [email protected] @wearearticulate Introduction tocontent- driven inbound marketing
- 2. What is content-driven inboundmarketing anyway?
- 9. What is itlike for the customer?
- 17. What’s it likefor a marketer?
- 24. How do youdo it?
- 25. Customer focus Talk tothem about their needs and problems in their language (not your products in your language)
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- 28. Landing pages arethe new home pages
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- 30. Find keywords Google AdsKeyword Tool
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- 32. Google’s SEO tips GoogleSEO Guide • Write easy to read text • Stay organised around the topic • Create fresh, unique content • Create content primarily for your users, not search engines
- 33. Concise, scannable, objective ATTRACTIONS In1996, six of the most-visited places in Nebraska were: • Fort Robinson State Park • Scotts Bluff National Monument • Arbor Lodge State Historical Park & Museum • Carhenge • Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer • Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park. • Fort Robinson In the state's Pine Region, Fort Robinson is the place where Chief Crazy Horse surrendered after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Today, with some 50 original structures still standing, this landmark is part of a 22,000-acre state park. Frontier artifacts are displayed in the former post headquarters.
- 34. Additional Advise At this point Commence Consequently Ensure Inexcess of In respect of In the event of Particulars Per annum Persons Prior to Purchase Regarding Terminate Whilst More Warn Now Start So Do More than About If Details A year People Before Buy About End While
- 35. Test the copy 5.95%conversion 2.53% conversion
- 36. A/B Testing Google ContentExperiments in Google Analytics
- 37. Calls to action •Strong verbs • Give instructions • Show what you get • Explain the benefit • Use colour • Make it all clickable • Avoid ‘click here’ etc. • Anti-objection copy (eg ‘Privacy guaranteed’ or ‘no credit card required’)
- 38. Share yourself Bufferapp, Hootsuite,Tweetdeck, If this then that
- 39. Who should doit? (Hat tip SocMedSean.com)
- 40. Build an emaillist mailchimp.com
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- 44. Effective subject lines SubjectLine Open Rate Comment Preliminary Floor Plans for Southern Village Neighborhood Circle Members 93% Timely information. Implied benefit for quick action. Over 50 characters in length Your April Website Stats 92.6% Timely and useful information Idlewild Camp - Important Travel Information 90.1% Information I need now. MotorCycling Magazine Reader Survey 88.1% High affinity to activity/experience Ship's Log #5: Parus Arrives in Phuket 82.1% Personal and timely Nautica in Rutland Opens Soon! 79.9% Valuable information to be first in line. Updated Time Zones & Log On Information 79.1% Required information
- 45. Lousy subject lines SubjectLine Open Rate Comment Final reminder for complimentary entry to attend the West Freelands BCI Cluster Conference 2006 0.5% Reminder and subject is too long Tempting August NUSA Specials! 0.9% Special. Exclamation mark SALE ends soon - up to 50% off all bras at Kara! 1.9% Percent Off Help Baylor create the ideal college experience 2.5% Help - means ignore Printers World Offers 100% Commission Up Front 7.5% Too good to be true 3% Commission For You, $10,000 in Upgrades For Your Client 7.8% Bait & Switch Help Spread The News ! 10.8% Help
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- 47. Why is itbetter than the alternatives?
- 48. Inbound marketing generates 54%more leads
- 49. Calls-to-action promoting ebooks Twicethe click-throughs
- 50. B2B companies thatblog generate 67 percent more leads
- 51. Businesses with 31-40landing pages got Seven times more leads
- 52. Nurtured leads buy 47percent more
- 53. How do getstarted?
- 54. Some free(-ish) tools •WordPress.com for blogging • Mailchimp for mailing lists • CapsuleCRM for customer relationship management • Google Analytics for analysis • Google Content Experiments for A/B testing • BufferApp for social media sharing • (Or all-in-one with HubSpot)
- 55. Stage Actions Technology Plan Align content strategy with business strategy Set SMART goals Create buyer personas Create tone of voice and style guidelines Create document templates Project management and collaboration Reporting dashboard Attract Create editorial calendar Create regular blog posts Create engaging content, such as ebooks and white papers Share and engage on social media platforms Conduct keyword analysis Use keywords to improve SEO on web pages and blog Blog Social media monitoring Social media publishing Engage Create calls-to-action Create landing pages Create resource pages for top content A/B testing Site metrics Convert Create workflows for different personas Create multi-stage email campaigns Link lead nurturing to CRM Emailer CRM software Delight Create content that empowers customers Create FAQ and support desk content Create newsletters Engage users on social media Create customer case studies Blog Social media monitoring Social media publishing Support desk tools
- 56. Start simple • Persona •One piece of content • One landing page • One call to action • Blog post with a CTA link • Manual workflows • (Or, ahem, talk to us!)
- 58.
Editor's Notes
- #2 Or how to attract, convert, close and delight your customers
- #3 The question you’re all asking yourself
- #4 The old zen trick of telling you what something is not It is NOT a hard sell Instead it is positioning your business as a trusted advisor, expert, ally, on your side HOW MANY HAVE SALESPEOPLE
- #5 It is NOT intrusive Instead it’s about inviting people to come to you because you have something valuable HOW MANY GET POP-UPS? ADS ON WEBSITES? UNWANTED EMAIL? IRRITATING, HUH?
- #6 It is NOT advertising (although it can work well alongside traditional advertising) It’s about building a relationship not a transaction It’s about making your website a destination in its own right It’s about SEO not SEM
- #7 HOW MANY USE GOOGLE ADWORDS Problem with online advertising is you pay for clicks not loyal visitors, enduring search engine rankings or anything Google Adwords You can go out on the streets and sell £10 notes for £9 all day long. It’s a bit like that. You buy traffic not leads You compete on price not on value You create value and profits for Google, not for yourself or your customer
- #8 HOW MANY USE OUTBOUND SALES – CALLING, MAILING LISTS ETC. It is NOT outbound cold calling Done right, customers qualify themselves based on their interactions with the business and then they introduce themselves to you when they’re ready to buy It’s also about talking to people as early in the sales cycle as possible – marketing not sales, A before IDA – to create preference It’s about nurturing the right relationships all the way through to the sale
- #9 This diagram is at the heart of the inbound process. It envisages a relationship that extends before and after the typical sales cycle. Think of buying a car Watch Top Gear Browse the manufacturer’s website Get a brochure Build an online customisation Go back to the site Go for a test drive Buy the car Content-driven inbound marketing is way of ATTRACTING strangers to engage with your business, typically through social media, organic search and compelling content that is highly relevant, interesting and useful to potential customers. Key insight: The majority of people who visit your site are not actively buying TODAY. Most website visitors are browsing for information – win that battle and you’re ready to fight the next one. CONVERTING visitors to your website into leads. (MOST PEOPLE JUST HAVE A CONTACT US OR AN ECOMMERCE BASKET) Typically because they click on a CTA, go to a landing page and fill in a form to get a particularly useful piece of information. This lets you start to build a relationship with them. It’s a handshake, an introduction. Buying a kitchen, for example, might start with a ‘Buyer’s guide to bespoke kitchens’ not a pricelist. CLOSING leads into customers. When they are ready to buy, you want them to be AWARE of your business, have a PREFERENCE for it and to TRUST you to do meet their needs. So you send them emails, you monitor their social media activity and engage with them, you tease them with further amazing content so they disclose more information to you. Nudge them through the funnel. Qualify them. Often works with a CRM system. With the kitchens, you might send some brochures, get a sense of the style the buyer likes, send them videos about how kitchens are made etc. Then when they’re ready, the last step might be ‘book an appointment for an design consultation’ DELIGHT customers so they stay loyal, buy more, renew, promote your product. This might mean sending them tips and how-tos, monitoring social media for support issues and feedback, sending out special member-get-member offers etc.
- #21 CONVERT The same with Emails
- #22 Maybe monitor people who meet certain criteria on social media platforms
- #23 CLOSE You’d want to set up lead nurturing workflows where you’d follow up an action on the site with a series of emails. They can get very complex based on persona, site interactions and so on. Note open rates on Workflow emails are significantly hire than batch and blast emails. Why? Because we have a relationship. Get to a BOFU offer – demo, sales call, website checkout
- #24 CONVERT AND CLOSE You would want to be able to drill down to individual leads See what they did Perhaps use it for lead scoring and/or to sync or populate a CRM system SO It’s Customer focused (talking about their issues in their language) Inbound (they come to us) Content driven (because we have great content) Data-led (every action is measurable and testable) Joined-up (as Lenin said, everything is connected to everything else) Marketing (because we’re creating awareness, interest and preference and leading them to a sale) We’ve gone through Attract, Convert, Close (and getting to Delight!)
- #25 Looked at some of the technology and experience from both sides But there’s a deeper philosophy and approach behind all this that works for everyone
- #26 I’m not interested in ‘personal transport solutions’ but I might like a new BMW I’m not interested in ‘financial management solutions’ but I might want an outsourced bookkeeper Articulate’s customers aren’t interested in copywriting for its own sake but they are interested in getting more visitors, leads, conversions
- #27 Everything starts with a persona What do they need What do they want What other media do they consumer, read What is their attitudes to your product and your competitors Fictionalised composite people; but people Helpful for understanding customers, their needs and the types of content they might be interested in 4-6 is enough. How do you go about gathering this kind of information?
- #28 The best damn content on the most important topics for your best potential customers Write really specific pages that you update regularly and which can be hero anchor content for you. Some content you can hide behind a LP, some you can make public NOTE More information, and CTA
- #29 Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7x more leads than those with fewer than 10. (HubSpot) Some content you can hide behind a LP, some you can make public NOTE More information, and CTA
- #30 How much money does Joost have to spend to get traffic this way? None! Dominate a single SEO keyword, e.g. in this case ‘wordpress seo’ The more links, the more credibility This has a page rank of 5/10 – likely to be first for relevant terms 3-4 is average (8 is for huge companies, 9 is for something like CNN or Yahoo.com, 10 is for something like Microsoft, Apple) Lots of plugins rate page rank, including the Google bar (Incidentally, use anon page view to test SEO rankings because Google uses cookies to track what you like)
- #45 Source: Mailchimp: http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/best-practices-in-writing-email-subject-lines
- #47 Bottom of the funnel NOT a contact us form Asks for lots of information Can do lead scoring This triggers a call with a salesperson
- #49 Attract. Inbound marketing delivers 54 percent more leads into the funnel. Content such as ebooks are very effective.
- #50 Call-to-actions promoting ebooks get almost twice the click-through rate as emails promoting webinars. More traffic More leads More click-throughs Bigger sales
- #51 B2C companies generate 88 percent more leads
- #52 Landing pages with persona-targeted copy are a smart way to convert leads into customers. The more, the better. Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got seven times more leads than those with only one to five landing pages. Close. Lead-nurturing emails and a drip feed of relevant content helps to convince leads to buy. In fact, nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.
- #53 Close. Lead-nurturing emails and a drip feed of relevant content helps to convince leads to buy. In fact, nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.
- #56 This is a roadmap for doing it completely BUT you don’t have to do that Can start with one CTA/LP/TY/Form/Email/workflow
- #57 This experiment might take 10 hours – what’s the lifetime value of a customer relative to ten hours of your time? Write the best damn content about the most important damn topic first