The future of marketing is not going to be about who can spend the most money, the future marketing is going to be about crowdsourcing, remarkable content, and thoughtful data.

Have you ever doubted the power of younger generations today? Just look at the Kony 2012 YouTube video as an example of how quickly a message can be spread around the world. This video which has over 85 million views and growing, was done with a smallish budget, in a brief amount of time, but had an underlying message that resonates!

It is no small feat to create something and spread it across the Internet with hundreds of millions of views. But when you have a massive army of people that are waiting to distribute this content, if it is relevant, meaningful, and has a good message, then it will be shared innumerable times.

The future of marketing is about relevancy, meaning, and timing. I’m a firm believer that the generation growing up now will be some of the most thoughtful humanitarian based thinkers of our time. We are breeding and nurturing an army of people that care more about how things are going to impact our society and world in a positive way over profit and greed. This is why we see many many people responding well to messages that are most important.

Blogging has taken on a new form, with businesses gaining thousands of viewers, and many eyeballs over their content each month, by creating something of use to their target audience. They are creating value beyond numbers, and a permanent resource.

Undoubtedly, blogging in the form that we know it will change over time, and that is OK, we want it to be fine-tuned and improved over time, and that will happen organically. We need to be thoughtful and mindful to remember that not everybody consumes media in the same way. Older demographics may prefer to pick up something tangible like a physical newspaper or book. Some easily transition to using newer technology, like tablets for example. Others may not desire that at all, but I do know that over time the technological impact is increasing, and how we consume media is always changing.

Today’s younger generation are great at consuming media, as most of us are, but they are also great at creating content. From video to artistic photography, to microblogging and long blogging. Most of the stuff that is created is shared with minimal barriers because they know their target audience, their community and what is interesting, and most importantly not boring. They’ve had many many hours of experience of consuming content, so they know what it makes good stuff.

So what can we as content marketers learn from the younger generations? We can learn a lot. We can learn that by leveraging our networks, our friends, family, and colleagues, and those that care about our messages, these stories whether a simple blog post, or photograph, or report, can be shared with thousands, and millions. The key here is no trickery is allowed. No schmucks. No big corporate feeling. We just need a pure unadulterated ‘something’ that is going to impact the world, and that is how it has to be portrayed, otherwise it will be seen as valueless, faceless and cold.

This post doesn’t have all the answers, but as you are creating campaigns, be thinking more about the ‘why’, and bigger picture, and less about the tactics. The tactics are easy, and come naturally to most. Ask strategically, is the thought process being followed really in line with the overall picture?

(photo credit: MoMoNWI)

There are a few things to note, and none of them are overly surprising:

• Google will continue to, and will soon place even more emphasis on quality content
• Aggressively overly-optimized pages will be affected

Read the following quote, which Matt Cutts gave during his SXSW interview:

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

(Quote and recording courtesy Search Engine Roundtable)

This has caused mumbling and grumbling in the SEO world, and business world, with mainstream media like Wall Street Journal covering the Google changes.

But to get a decent look at what some of the top thought leaders in the SEO industry are thinking about this, head over to a comment thread at Inbound.org on a submission of the article that has Matt’s SXSW interview in it.

A couple of highlights of the comments:

Tad Chef: We all need keyword density checkers again, to find out whether our keyword density is too high.

Dr. Peter J. Meyers: Seriously, can’t believe this fell under the radar. Little coverage of “Venice”, too. Are these monthly algo announcements by Google making us all lazy (except Barry)?

Ross Hudgens: Haven’t they always been hammering over-optimization? Maybe they’re turning it up a notch. But definitely will be checking the density and internal anchor text.

Willy Franzen: From the language he used, it sounds like they’re going to algorithmically penalize sites for over-optimization instead of taking away the benefits of over-optimziation. That seems odd to me. Why not just make those practices less effective? If spammy stuff didn’t work, there wouldn’t be a need to “level the playing field.”

Key Takeaway

I think that the key takeaway here is that if you are using less than favorable methods to optimize your content and pages than shake in your boots because Google is about to slap you a little more, post-Panda.

If you are focusing on truly quality content, however Google and Matt defines it (would be great to hear some insight into this by the way), and certainly optimizing (would be dumb not to do it at all) but making it relevant and logical keeping in best practice, don’t stress it so bad. Just don’t let it fly under your radar. Stay on top of it.

This is probably a greater impact than most developments in education in at least the last 100 years. From a marketing perspective all of these things are made possible by crowd sourcing and using free social media and networking tools. This is no small feat Salman Khan completed.

If we think back to some of the greatest innovations of time, we would find on the list the printing press, and then if we jump forward farther into the future, we’d find personal computers on the list, and a little further ahead, the tablet computer. Now we have the ability to have technology at our fingertips! With the Khan Academy, and other open educational models, anyone in the world, for free, can learn things from relatively basic history lessons, to complex macroeconomic lessons, and all the way up to learning about human biology and cell structures.

What more can you ask for then free educational content when you are a student, or a lifelong learner, as many of us are, to use something like the Khan Academy to learn on demand.

Brought to market by remarkable content and crowdsourcing

How were all these things made possible by Sal Khan, originally as a solo person who started this whole thing as a way to help out his niece who lived many miles away? It was made possible purely with a few things that are important in disrupting a marketplace. Number one he had good intent and an idea, with a clear objective, which was to help others, in this case his niece. That was his marketplace.

Eventually, what happened next was an organic, natural phenomenon. As he listened to how others responded, as he put this educational content out in public view, and learned, by listening, that there was a thirsty market. This was free market research usable to identify an open gap that needed to be filled. Amazingly enough as Khan identified this need, he was simply doing, tactically at this point to bring to the table highly useful educational content to this market. His intent was to educate those, for free, with very helpful lessons and practices.

All of this was made possible by crowdsourcing and the free market research he was able to do, by listening and responding to those who raised their hands and said ‘thank you!’, with the help of social media and social networking. In this case Sal Khan, realizing an opportunity, and that his good intentions and mission could continue to be built upon and the snowball effect is now 3000 videos later, thousands of hours of content, and growing, he has created something that is remarkable!

A mission changing the world, one lesson at a time

The Khan Academy’s mission is a goal of “changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere”. This sounds vaguely familiar doesn’t it? Wikipedia completely disrupted the academic based knowledge bases called Encyclopedias, and Khan Academy is on a mission, with much clout to do the same with education.

This is a whole new level of disruptive innovation in education and the way we can teach, mentor, educate, coach. Clayton Christensen, defines an innovation that is disruptive as, “allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill”. That phraseology largely applies to a business world, however, can apply in this case. Sure we have public education systems, private educational institutions etc., and each innovate and develop over time, but what we are on the cusp of is a larger thing, a more open and connected world.

Khan Academy and others such as TED Education, Paul Andersen, MITx, and iTunes U, are innovating the way education is delivered are overturning the traditional way we think of learning. Plato can remind us that learning and knowledge is beautiful. ”The object of education is to teach us love of beauty.” – Plato, 427 – 347 B.C.

My friend Mark Riffey recently reminded me of the sentiment that, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” He also links to an interesting article in a blog post ‘cult of done‘. The article, ‘cult of done manifesto‘ by Bre Pettis points out to us that we need to banish procrastination, be keen that there are three states of being, not knowing, action and completion. He nicely summarizes it with, ‘Done is the engine of more’. Amen, and amen.

It is easy to be a perfectionist. In some cases it acts like a security blanket. While it is easy to be this, the results and impact aren’t easy. Unnecessary stress, and many back burnered projects and irons in the fire become evident.

How do I know this? I’ve been there many times.

You could call me a convert to the get stuff done crew. Having realized the implications of an overly perfect approach to business and life, I’ve taken the action to move over to the side of getting things done crowd.

You can’t make progress unless you are taking action. If you are doing too much study then you aren’t doing enough hitting the pavement which is the actionable part of life and business.

Real Life Example in Business – Sales

I once had a sales development coach share with me an important lesson using an example from his families own experience. His son works for a very successful software company and was one of the first hires and was hired to help sell the product and services to the first round of customers.

He did everything he could to develop the perfect systems, the right messaging and getting prepared, which is necessary, but one day the CEO came to him and said, It is time to start selling.

This meant get it done, make it happen, take the research, process building, and whatever else and put it into action.

The Positive Implication

I will conclude with a thought… if you were to take the next 5 minutes and think about those un-done projects, long forgotten tasks and huge mountains of “I wish I coulds” and wrote down a few actionable ideas to help you take the first step towards done what are the positive implications for you?

(Photo credit: Kellan)

Three key takeaways from these infographics covering marketing automation, inbound marketing, and word of mouth marketing:

1. Use marketing automation to improve your prospect’s experience and increase conversions
2. The days of annoying marketing and advertising tactics are certainly numbered, and inbound marketing is more than just a cool ‘new kid on the block’.
3. People rely on each other for recommendations on purchasing decisions whether passive or outright. Earn credibility.

Enjoy the following infographics:

1. Understanding Marketing Automation

via HubSpot

2. Inbound Marketing Now and In The Future

via Voltier Digital

3.  Word Of Mouth Is Influential In Purchasing Decisions

via WOMMA

It is fun and inspiring to do what you love. Better yet to find what you love and then keep doing that. I have been blessed over the years to have a pretty broad exposure to many areas of business, the good and bad, high and low. My expectations and goals when I set out to be an entrepreneur were pretty high, but I didn’t realize beforehand the great positive impact it would have on me.

It is so true when people say, you can read things in theory, but putting it into practice is what really counts. Book smarts vs. street smarts. Doing vs. not-doing. Action vs. inaction.

Building Keenpath as an inbound marketing agency has been fun. The clients, relationships and networking opportunities I will carry with me forever. Time now to embrace the opportunity and change by joining the great team of seasoned entrepreneurs and business people at FullQuota. Excited to learn from this team, as I do what I can to bring to the table my experience. I am looking forward to collaborating to make big things happen.

My business and entrepreneurial mindset will be with me forever.

The most important lesson I have learned in business? People do business with people.

Keenpath is in the process of transitioning client accounts to partners, and will continue servicing some existing clients until the end of this year.

“I am excited about the opportunity to join the talented FullQuota team and to grow personally, professionally, and technically; while at the same time allowing me to bring to the table what can help with the company’s mission and objectives, and clients,” said Mark Mathson.

—

For those interested in contacting Mark Mathson you may contact him at http://markmathson.com/ or by emailing him directly, or by phone (406) 205-4040

Because enterprise inbound marketing is dependent on high-quality verbal, visual or text communications, this is essential in today’s market.

The concept of blogging to interest potential clients has everything to do with touching a person at a deep personal level. Before when sales representatives received training– trainers would say “relationships, relationships, relationships.”

This is still true, yet today we have vastly differing tastes, cultures and markets online.  It’s even more important to understand connection to interests, needs and emotional responses.

When people are online searching for something important to them, how do you discover what word combinations will pull them into your site? How do you keep them coming back? Human nature tells us it matters not what country they come from, or what language they speak as long as an emotional connection can be made you can have a chance at establishing loyalty and camaraderie with that person.

This is the reason social networking has become such a phenomenon. This is the secret to finding and keeping the connections with clients and potential repeat buyers. One way to verify this is simply watching the political campaigns in any country. Emotional and physical need is the product. Change for the better is the driver. The candidate who impresses the masses most wins. He who’s got loyalty of the crowds gets money in their pockets.

Building The Connections

With enterprise inbound marketing the world is looking for you. You as the provider of the emotional or physical need have the job of discovering what will hold and return that seeker to your site to get that need met. Really smart company managers put teams of competent communicators onto LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and other social connection sites to connect with clients around the need for what you offer. You know – making friends, personal connections. Finding sweet-spots and working with those needs/wants for potential buyers.

If sales teams online working social networking sites actually have authorization to offer deals and negotiate prices while in the field having conversations in this way through personal contact online sales for that team will soar. Not only that, but those workers will discover the tone, site and place where those clients and customers are talking about their need. This gives them words and sentence combinations the client is already using.

Content, connection, meeting emotional and physical need. This is the only way it has ever been done successfully when supporting integrity for the customer.

How close are you to clients today? How well does your company track repeat buyers and how well do you survey or do outreach to identify what keeps the repeat customers coming back? This is the answer to the dilemma. Loyalty through friendship. You know – relationships, relationships, relationships.

(photo credit: Gary Cope)

Internet provides one great advantage – a target audience. Only people holding specific interest in a topic will pay attention to your message. Discovering the right marketing niche is the best way to make sure that the right audience for your business message is approached.

Do you know how to find out the best business marketing niche?

Finding Your Inbound Marketing Niche

You probably have various products and services for sale. Niche marketing focuses on one of them or a specific group of products. Niche marketing allows you to occupy a smaller sub-sector within a larger segment. Discovering the right niche will help you beat competition and position yourself better on the respective market.

It may seem like a difficult task but discovering the best business marketing niche is a relatively simple task.

Simple website analysis will help you determine the right business marketing niche for your promotional needs. Which are the pages that attract the biggest number of visits? What is the product or service that website visitors spend the longest time looking at?

The behavior of potential customers is the first type of indication you need to use when choosing a niche for corporate promotional purposes. Website visitors will let you know what interests them and what they will be willing to purchase.

Go for a business marketing niche that features relatively limited competition. It will be difficult to achieve popularity in a niche that already benefits from the presence of several important players.

A simple online search will let you know which niches generate the most intense competition. You will then need to start looking for the niches that only feature several websites competing against each other. This is the business marketing niche that you should be making use of.

Competition research plays an important role in your marketing strategy. Knowing what others are doing and how to dominate the sector is of vital importance for the success of a business marketing niche campaign.

Selecting the right niche for your online promotional efforts is a smart way to quickly establish your positions and to increase your website traffic. Higher traffic will naturally mean more potential sales. Take the time and know how to choose the correct marketing sector. A good strategy is a guarantee of success in the intense and dynamic online business world.

(image credit: Fieldstone Alliance)

Create a Holiday Discount

One great way to leverage your inbound marketing plan for holiday business marketing is to create a seasonal holiday discount or special offer. If you already have an email marketing list thanks to your inbound marketing activities, you can send that offer out to your list. If you don’t, you can integrate the offer in your other marketing activities.

Create a Free Gift

The holidays are the time for giving, right? So why not incorporate that in your inbound marketing plan, and your holiday business marketing plan.

Create a free report, ebook or trial offer that you incorporate into your marketing. It’ll ensure that you’re growing your list over the holidays, and it’ll keep your existing clients and prospects happy. There’s nothing people like more than a gift, so give your clients one – you’ll be very glad you did!

Let People Know You’re Working

One of the reasons business tends to slow down over the holidays is that most people just assume that you won’t be working. If you aren’t, that’s fine, but if you are, you could find that being available when your competitors aren’t is a great way to gain new customers!

Use your existing inbound marketing channels to create awareness that you’ll be available over the holidays, and you might be surprised at how many people get hold of you!

Automate

Even if you’re not working over the holidays, that doesn’t mean that your inbound marketing plan has to stop working, just because you do.

If you don’t already have one working for you, now is the time to get an autoresponder, and write a series of holiday messages for the people who do respond to your inbound marketing strategies. That way, even if you’re not working, your holiday business marketing will be – working hard to build relationships with prospects!

Never Too Late

Even if you’ve never considered inbound marketing as a viable strategy, you should remember that it’s never too late to start. You still have time to incorporate inbound marketing into your holiday business marketing plan, and to make sure that even while you’re taking time off, your marketing network is working for you.

Start today, and you should find that while you’re enjoying some time off, your inbound marketing plan is hard at work, capturing leads and prospects, and that when you get back, you have a long list of people who are just waiting to buy from you.

(photo credit: Jeremy)

One of the very best ways to do that is to use inbound marketing sales as a core factor in their sales and marketing plan, but let’s look at that in more detail.

Quick and Easy to Set Up

Finding a great sales representative can take time – months of reading resumes, interviewing candidates, and making offers might, if you are very lucky, result in a rock star sales representative for your team.

Inbound marketing sales, however, are driven by the internet, and by technologies and platforms that already exist – from your website to article directories and more.

That means that unlike hiring a rock star sales professional, creating and implementing an inbound marketing sales campaign can take a matter of days or weeks, and because it’s cumulative, it allows you to build on what you’ve already done, for months and years after the initial setup.

Never Takes a Day Off

Because your inbound marketing sales plan will use technology, rather than human beings, to work it’s sales magic, there’s never a day (or a minute of any day for that matter) that it’s not working for you.

It’s like having a vast sales network that never sleeps, never takes lunch, and never gets poached by your competitors working for you, and the best part is that the network costs a fraction of what it would to hire a sales team that achieved the same results!

Sell to People Who Want to Buy From You

The best inbound marketing sales plans are based on strategies like long tail keywords, list building and other clever technological tricks, that firstly allow you to market to people who already want what you’re selling, and secondly allows you to build a relationship with the people who do connect with you.

It’s like casting your net on a part of a lake that has guaranteed great fishing every time, rather than angling in an area that no fish ever visit!

Low Cost, High Impact

The truth is, inbound marketing takes a little time, effort and money to set up correctly. Once it is set up though, you’ll find that your cost of sales drops through the floor, and that potential clients find you – rather than you having to look for them.

It’s the marketing plan of the future, and it’s one that makes it possible to find new customers in your area (or around the world) quickly, easily and cheaply. There are strategies that allow you to capture prospects details voluntarily, and most good inbound marketing plans rely heavily on automating sales, which leaves you more time to focus on your business, and less time worrying about sales!

(photo credit: Tom Magliery)

What Is Local Inbound Marketing?

Local inbound marketing uses the same principles as any inbound marketing, SEO or SEM strategy, but it adds a geographical element to the techniques. It helps to ensure that real world businesses get traffic and leads from people in the areas they operate in, who may actually buy from them. It’s a method of narrowing the funnel that inbound marketing creates even further, so that you’re focused on your exact target market. But how do you do that? There are several tried and tested strategies.

• Local site directories. These are internet directories that are geographically limited by country, state or province. They’re a great way to get links from locally focused sites, which not only increases your inbound marketing overall, but also your local presence.
• Google Places is another must for companies or individuals who are focused on local inbound marketing. It’s a cheap, easy and guaranteed way of ensuring that a brick and mortar business finds the customers they want, int he areas they want them.
• Adding geographical references to your keywords and phrases for SEO and SEM is another great local marketing idea. So instead of using words that are only related to what you do, use words that are related to where you are too!
• Local article directories are another great way to funnel people in your area to your page. They work exactly like the bigger article directories, but they’re limited geographically.

In a nutshell, local inbound marketing strategies use all the same principles, to achieve the same goal (getting people who already want what you’re selling to your site), but they add a geographical reference to all of those methods.

It’s a quick, easy, cost effective way to use inbound marketing strategies for businesses who have a limited geographical footprint, and like any other type of inbound marketing, it’s one of the most cost effective strategies out there.

As you most certainly know, Halloween has come and gone. Ghosts, goblins, and other ghoulish figures were either at your door, or at your side as you knocked on doors. Bags upon bags of candy changed hands during the course of one night. One thing is for sure, at the end of the night, many kids and adults (you know who you are) were clutching their stomachs in what has become the traditional post-Halloween stomachache. This is the gut-wrenching pain where you know you have consumed more than you should have, and you think over your poorly made decisions. Hopefully, this pain has subsided by now. However, this entire experience creepily resembles outbound marketing.

1. Once you start you just can’t stop

The much awaited moment has arrived. Whether it’s a bag of leftover candy or your trick-or-treating treasure trove, once you take the first bite, the second comes that much easier, and the third. Soon, you’re surrounded by wrappers unaware of what has just occurred.

It is the same with outbound marketing. You start up with the expectation of “merely” boosting this one metric. A year later you look up and discover, you have poured Mounds (candy bar joke) of money into outbound marketing with no real clue of where it has all gone.

2. Costs just keep on rising

Was the scariest Halloween sight this year the prices of individually wrapped candy? Does it seem you said the last thing last year? It is not a localized trend; these prices have been creeping up progressively year after year with no end in sight (costs at Willy Wonka’s factory have to be passed on somehow).

Have you noticed the same trend with outbound marketing efforts? Ad spaces are getting increasingly expensive across the board. Whether it is internet, print, TV, or even (gasp) radio, the prices seem to be climbing with no end in sight. If only there was a way to invest in our own marketing…

3. People keep coming… till you run out

Have you ever wondered how kids discover you are out of candy? There has to be some audio or visual nationwide signal between kids, because once that candy bag runs out (and all you have left are popcorn balls) your visitor count plummets. Somehow they know, and you are now just a regular, old, boring neighbor.

Does “boring neighbor” describe your company once the fancy ads have run their course? Do you place another ad just to get some attention? This is the recurring cycle with outbound marketing. You are living the dream, until the ad dollars run out. Then you are left with only the memory to hold onto.

4. It is one way communication

Oh sure you try. You comment on the costumes or how big the kids have gotten since last year. However, you know there is only one thing on everyone’s mind, CANDY! No one really cares what you are saying, focusing instead on the sweet, chocolate treats you have in store for them.

Does this sound like your company? Do you feel like people only come for your store promotions or sales? Still, you talk at these customers instead of with the customers. You need to really learn about them. Do they have feedback which could lead to positive changes? How will you ever know if your communication merely spoon feeds them sugar rush after sugar rush.

That pain in your stomach may go away in time. But the costs of outbound marketing will continue until you make a conscious effort to make a change.

What other ways does this “Post-Halloween stomachache” resemble outbound marketing?

About the Author: Darren Terpstra is the lead marketing agent at Matrix Product Development. He runs the company’s inbound marketing efforts including a recent website optimization and redesign. You can follow MatrixPD on Twitter @KristieMatrixPD or on MatrixPD Facebook Page.

Before you panic too much though, let’s look at what inbound marketing is, and how you can leverage it in your marketing efforts.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a term that describes a marketing system where your customers find you, instead of you going out there, knocking on doors, looking for them.

The system is based on the fact that the Internet is a vast, sprawling information ‘landfill’ rather than a superhighway, and the concept that you can funnel Internet users onto your website by implementing an inbound marketing strategy.

It’s a system that allows you to create content that captures the very market you are looking to enter or retain, and to channel internet users who are looking for the very services and products you decide to your website, or through your front door.

How Does Inbound Marketing Work?

When people and companies develop an inbound marketing strategy, the first thing they do is sit down and think about what their customers and potential customers are likely to be looking for when they are online. In most cases, that will be some form of information, and that’s why a large portion of inbound marketing is based on information marketing.

The next step in inbound marketing is to develop content that answers the questions your customers and prospects are asking, and creating a ‘network’ of that sort of information on the Internet – on your website, on site directories, article directories and elsewhere.

There are technical aspects to the average inbound marketing plan, such as deciding which keywords and phrases to target, and how to go about it, but the crux of any good inbound marketing strategy is to answer the burning questions your prospects are asking. That results in them visiting your website, and from there, they go from being an anonymous Internet user, to a real potential client.

Then What?

Most people can wrap their heads around the first part of the inbound marketing strategy – getting visitors to their site. Many, however, struggle with the next step, which is to keep them in contact with you.

The secret to good inbound marketing is not to get the most unique visitors to your site, it’s to get a large, steady stream of repeat visitors. That means giving your visitors a reason to stay in contact. Maybe you host an interesting blog about industry news. Maybe you offer a free newsletter, or perhaps you send out special offers.

Whatever it is that you do, a successful inbound marketing strategy relies on finding people who are already interested in what you are selling, channeling them to your site, and then keeping them coming back, over and over again.

To make things a little simpler, we’re giving you the very best inbound marketing tactic ideas, so that you can streamline your plan, and focus only on what’s important.

Focus On Your Visitors

Too often companies that want to try inbound marketing focus on the old ‘sales’ idea of telling your prospects what you want them to know. Successful inbound marketing, however, works the other way around. It’s based on giving your visitors what they want to know. Inbound marketing is information marketing, and if you tell people what they want to know, you will see results.

Give Something Away If You Want to Get More In Return

One of the biggest problems most business owners have with the fundamental inbound marketing tactics at first is the notion of giving something away. They struggle to work out how paying good money to create a free product or offer will result in sales. However, customers love a freebie – even if it’s a digital one, and giving something high quality away for free is the quickest way to build traffic and a loyal prospect base.

Quality Trumps Quantity

If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet at all, you will have noticed that there are plenty of sites out there that are serving up half baked content. They may succeed in the short term, by building keywords and possibly even page rank, but anyone who lands on their site will quickly realize that they are being short changed. It’s always better to spend a little more, and build your online content slower, whether on your site or elsewhere, than it is to serve up recycled, badly created content.

Have a Strategy – But Don’t Be Married to It!

Another hurdle that those new to inbound marketing tactics struggle with is the notion that unlike conventional marketing, inbound marketing strategies change all the time. They’re supposed to. In fact, if you’re doing a good job of tracking results, and monitoring conversions and customer contact, you will probably find that your inbound marketing tactics change very regularly indeed.

The fact is that inbound marketing is the one form of marketing that lends itself to rapid evolution. It makes it possible to change your strategy at a moment’s notice, without spending a fortune. It’s cumulative, so you can start small, and build from there. It’s interactive, allowing you to get feedback from your prospects every step of the way.

One could almost say that there’s no such thing as the wrong inbound marketing tactic – as long as you’re doing something, you’re taking a step in the right direction, so whether you’re looking to test the waters, or dive right in, why not start today?

Action is the foundational key to all success. -Pablo Picasso

The greater the distance, the greater the payoff once traveled, right? For most of us, this is true. For some, it is only a passing glance to where they really want to be.

As I think back to some of the road trips I’ve taken that could be considered longer treks than the usual, one sticks out in my mind as unique, the time I drove from Minnesota back to Montana with my mom.

Now keep in mind, living in Montana affords me the blessing to be able to drive long distances just about to get anywhere. If I want to visit a friend or family member in some of the nearby metropolitan areas it is usually a 3-4 hour drive one way. So some people, like truckers, might think a 15 hour drive from Minnesota to Montana is nothing, but to me, at the time, it seemed like a chore.

Thankfully by being in the moment and just driving, we were able to do it in one day and as I look back I think how easy it actually was. Tell that to my friend who drove all over the country a few summers ago with his family and easily put 6,000+ miles on their vehicle.

Driving isn’t the only kind of analogy that includes a set distance and a payoff at the end, the destination. Things like goals, objectives, and hopes are similar. We have to travel that distance first, to get to where we really want, or need to be.

What are the distances that you need to travel… in life, in business?

(photo credit: Trey Ratcliff)

I’ve noticed an interesting trend however, that many people are obsessed with the idea of having their website rank #1 on Google (search engines). Is this always a good strategy? Not really. The following is why.

Ranking high on search engines never “guarantees” new business leads

Little side disclaimer here: One of my ‘sweet spots’ is being able to help clients rank very high on search engines, particular when we concentrate on the ‘low hanging fruit’ that their competitors are overlooking. So ranking high on search engines, is a viable strategy, when used correctly.

What happens when someone does a search and clicks on one of the first few results (usually in the top 5)? They are looking for something very specific and if what they are looking for isn’t there they hit the back button.

I’ve seen it happen where people focus on ranking high for very general search terms and the pages where their searchers land are on very generic and general landing pages. Nuh uh, doesn’t work. Watch the bounce rates, which indicate how quickly the visitor is apt to back out, sky rocket.

What is the goal then, sir?

The goal is relevancy. If you can “get into the mind” of your future client and think like they do, imagine yourself sitting there looking for an answer to your problem. After all, your prospects have a real business problem they are trying to solve, right? If your content, images, and layout speak to them in a simple and impactful way, you have their attention. Now it’s their turn to tell you if they are truly interested or not in learning more and perhaps getting more information from you: a new sales & marketing lead.

Take a step back for a minute, really evaluate

Are you getting way lower results than you were expecting from your website? If so, there is a reason. Usually its right there before you.

Here are three ways to evaluate, rather quickly what step to take next to improve it so you can start generating the kind of results you need:

• Take a step back and look away from your screen – get out a whiteboard or piece of blank paper and right out what your ideal prospect is likely to look for. You probably even know some of the exact things since you have had conversations with past clients before they became a client.
• Ask for an objective perspective – you probably aren’t a genius with everything right? Why the heck then would you expect yourself to know everything about sales and marketing? Ask a 3rd party for their opinion.
• Survey your community – Your community consists of your social reach, being social media followers, blog subscribers, email newsletter readers, leads and more. Ask them as well for their opinions. They know and can help. People like to be asked their opinions. Call them on the phone too for a personal touch.

Stop thinking and start doing, but don’t be reacting

I am the king of over thinking at times. When you consistently over-evaluate a situation, or try to overly-perfect something to the point it’s starting to blur, that is when you need to be doing.

Sales and marketing results don’t happen with in-action. Especially in the real time, Internet speed PR world we live in. David Meerman Scott could tell you all about the fast paced way news and public relations (blogging, social media, press) happen. Oh wait, he wrote a book on this I think.

There are times to be cautious, but try to be a little more daring, more human, less corporate, less ‘big business’. Heck most of the conversations I have with managers at large businesses, they are trying to figure out how to make their messages more personal and less ‘boring’.

Most of all question the status quo. If something online isn’t giving you results, look at it and do something that will work. Keep trying, but keep measuring.

Learn to love the data that is available to you. Breathe it in. Use it to your advantage.

A recent chart from MarketingSherpa (see below) shows analysis from marketers and their top barriers to overcoming B2B marketing challenges. Let’s discuss the information and how to overcome the challenges.

Barriers vary from external forces, but many are internal

Some of the key takeaways from the chart and survey from MarketingSherpa:

• 62% of all marketers surveyed identify lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time as the greatest barrier to their marketing success. What are these hard working marketers to do?
• Media and publishing sector didn’t view content marketing as a barrier as they already have much content to use! What have they missed? 
• Large organizations while usually sitting comfy on the resources side, said they lack strategic vision and flexibility in their marketing efforts, a spot where smaller more flexible organizations excelled, mostly due to their entrepreneurial nature and culture.
• Marketers who have been around a long time and learned strategic perspective over their trial and error marketing style cohorts, value best practices in content development and gathering insights on their target audience.

In the conversations we have with many different organizations, whether size or resources, the ones that ‘get it’ are the ones that take the time to put in the necessary resources and budgets necessary to hit their goals.

What goals? Sales and marketing aligned goals. Without sales and marketing becoming unified and aligned what is the purpose anyways?

Overcoming the sales and marketing barriers

There are a few things that sales and marketing teams whether in a one person shop, 25 person shop, or 500 person org, can do now to help get going on the right track:

1. Talk to each other – No not just another meeting, set revenue goals together and reach them
2. Work together on the target audience profiling – Sales might have one ideal target audience while marketing may have another. Stop that! Get together and put the same target audience together and go with it.
3. Embrace inbound marketing – Inbound marketing is a sales and marketing person’s dream come true. While it does not solve all of the selling and marketing issues, it does give you a fresh new approach to selling and marketing. Learn more by clicking around on some of the top articles on this blog.

A little bonus here, check out the graphic below which MarketingSherpa made earlier this year. It covers the top 5 most effective demand generation tactics which are:

1. Website design, management and optimization (31%)
2. SEO (29%)
3. Email marketing (26%)
4. Content marketing (23%) (watch this one go up this next year)
5. Tradeshows (20%) (last on purpose?)

Jump the Barriers

The good things (thinking optimistically) about barriers is that they can be overcome.

 Through the use of blogs, social media and websites, companies can attract highly coveted sales leads. By providing relevant and engaging content, a company’s site gains favor with Google and ranks higher on the page. The higher the Google ranking, the greater the likelihood that a customer will click on your site.

Blogs Blogs offer an attractive marketing option for identifying inbound customers. Since blog content changes frequently, it is ranked higher and considered more relevant than more stagnant websites that are updated less frequently. Not only does Google rank blogs higher than a typical website, a blog offers incoming traffic the ability to share information with others and to comment on content, which also also improves a company’s ranking. Interactive sites rank higher with Google.

Google constantly changes the criteria used to rank information, so it is important for marketing managers to stay abreast of these changes for best results. Smaller companies may decide to turn over this marketing task to a specialist company. Other companies decide to hire marketing staff who specialize in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and social media.
SEO Content and Ranking  Feeding the inbound marketing sales funnel requires a mastery of SEO strategies. Using mixed media impacts a company’s Google ranking. It is no longer enough to rely completely on keyword selection as was popular theory until recently. These days, videos and photo images need to be utilized on blogs and websites to garner top rankings.

Another technique for ensuring a higher ranking on Google is to use social media for sharing the information on your company blog or website. Social media benefits a company in two important ways. It generates leads directly through the extended audience provided by followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook, plus it elevates website rankings through SEO.

Content is still king when it comes to driving traffic to your company site. Nothing fills up the inbound marketing sales funnel like relevant content. Anticipating what customers want, and how content will be ranked by Google is a challenge. Posting interesting content is a creative endeavor. One technique used by some companies is to post counter arguments to criticisms already posted on the Internet about the company.

These days it is very likely that any highly exposed company has some negative feedback on the web. By posting your company’s side of the story, you stand a chance of recovering prospective clients. Blogs and question and answer content are the perfect forum for practicing damage control to tell your side of the story against critics.

Four Inbound Marketing Strategies

Start a Blog

Blogs are great for local inbound marketing. They help to provide your visitors with informative, valuable content, giving your visitors reasons to come back to your blog for more.

You should link your website to your blog, and vice versa. Providing great content that gives your visitors reasons to trust your company increases the chances that these visitors will also visit your website.

Google and other search engines give higher rankings to sites that continuously change and provide unique, SEO friendly content. As your blog becomes more popular, your blog’s search engine rankings will rise, raising your website’s rankings, as well.

Webinars are seminars conducted online. Because they are directed towards a targeted audience, your viewers are already interested in your product or service. You just need to convince them that you are the company to provide it.

They are helpful with local inbound marketing because they can be used as an online sales commercial, or another way of providing informative content.  They should link to your website and its individual pages, as well as your blog and its individual blog posts.

Provide free eBooks for download from your website. Online visitors like free downloads, especially when they are related to what they are searching for.

Publish paid eBooks that provide extensive informative content, along with links.  Your eBooks should be marketed through all of your online media, including your blog, forums, social networks, etc.

Social Media Marketing is one of the most popular niche inbound marketing tools of today. When it comes to business local inbound marketing, the top three networks are:

• Facebook – Get a Facebook Business Page, not a personal profile page. Facebook Pages are more very efficient because, unlike personal pages, they are optimized by Google and other search engines. When  back-linked to your website through your profile and posts Facebook Pages can help to increase your website’s SEO rankings.
• Twitter – Every business should have a Twitter account. Twitter allows you to find followers and people to follow using keywords related to your industry. Case studies have shown that the more tweets that link to your website, the more that sites’ search engines rankings will increase.
• LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a social network created with businesses and networking in mind. It focuses networking users from similar industries. By completing your profile, you give others a way of finding you using keywords related to your industry.

Produce Webinars

• Webinars are seminars conducted online. Because they are directed towards a targeted audience, your viewers are already interested in your product or service. You just need to convince them that you are the company to provide it.
• They are helpful with local inbound marketing because they can be used as an online sales commercial, or another way of providing informative content.
• They should link to your website and its individual pages, as well as your blog and its individual blog posts.

Publish eBooks

• Provide free eBooks for download from your website. Online visitors like free downloads, especially when they are related to what they are searching for.
• Publish paid eBooks that provide extensive informative content, along with links.
• Your eBooks should be marketed through all of your online media, including your blog, forums, social networks, etc.

Be Active in Social Media Marketing

These four local inbound marketing strategies can be implemented by you and your entire staff. With enough dedication and time, these techniques can help raise your SEO rankings substantially, increasing lead generation efforts, and helping to increase your online sales by closing more deals.

Professional business marketing is shifting to an inbound strategy; the foundation of which is using the Internet to draw potential customers to your business.

Becoming increasingly obsolete is outbound marketing, where marketing methods were focused on reaching out to customers through traditional forms of media; i.e., print ads, television, telemarketing, etc.

Today’s customers actively work to block marketing messages through the use of methods like caller id, spam filters, and the recycling bin for junk mail; so often your message is lost before the customer gets a chance to see it.

Using the Internet, an inbound marketing professional business strategy makes it possible to position your business in such a way that customers find you instead of you trying to find them. Today, approximately 85% of all business transactions start online, with the customer already actively engaged in looking for an answer to a specific question.

A successful inbound marketing professional business strategy can capture the customer at a point where they are already ready to make the purchase by following these ‘starter’ steps:

• Spend the money to have a website designed that is original, easy to navigate and lands on the first page of all the big search engines for your key terms, and if possible at the top of the page. A website that doesn’t land on the first page of a search engine is very unlikely to be seen by anyone.

• Place links to landing pages where your potential customers are likely to search. If you are an IT company, for instance, craft your landing page to not only be compelling but is promoted around the Internet using inbound techniques.

Consider this typical scenario: a potential customer is researching the Internet to answer a business related question. He types in a query, lands on the desired page- hopefully yours! Or they land on their desired page, but realize they need further related services. There is your link, in the perfect strategic location. They click on it, learn about your product or service, realize you are a good fit, and proceed to make the purchase, or better; realize that your company will provide everything they are looking for, and buy a complete package from you.

This is the power of a great inbound marketing strategy; using your customer’s natural curiosity and needs to drive your sales by simply using the Internet to allow your customers to find you!

Today, the inbound marketing professional business strategy is the cornerstone of a successful marketing plan due to its sheer efficiency in both time and cost. Your business eliminates or greatly reduces expenses for physical products like print ads, commercials, mailings, etc.

You are guaranteed that your message has reached your target audience; and lastly, you have greatly expanded the scope of your audience, thanks to the unlimited reach of the Internet.

This post summarizes some of the top questions I get asked on a regular basis by prospects, current clients, past clients, those who are curious, etc.

If you wonder what an inbound marketing agency does, hopefully this will give you a better idea.

A bit of inbound marketing history first

Inbound marketing is much more than a “buzz word” today. The pioneer in inbound marketing software, HubSpot, has done more to educate the marketplace about the inbound marketing methodology than anyother company.

If you look at how the landscape of how online marketing, social networks, buyer mentality and behaviors have changed over the last 5-10 years, you can easily understand how we arrived where we are at today.

Are more traditional forms of advertising as effective today as they were 10 years ago? You can read all the data you want, of course, but what is a better litmus test? Talking to the people directly who are making the decisions to buy advertising and marketing services.

The daily conversations I have with decision makers from very seasoned business men and woman, to senior level sales and marketing directors tell me the shift has definitely taken place. (see the eBook The New Commerce Shift – no registration required)

Common Questions & Answers

How does inbound marketing work?

Inbound marketing helps your company get found by more in your target market, convert them into leads (prospects), and give a measurable ROI on your sales and marketing activities. (Generic answer, I know. Read the next paragraph)

Inbound marketing is attracting your ideal customers to your services and products by providing them first with information that is useful to them (great blog posts, social media engagement, resources, newsletters), and converting them into an interested party in your company.

They might not be, and probably won’t be 100% ready to buy from you right away, but through the process of nurturing them and educating them with content and resources that provide real value, you can more effectively walk your lead along the inbound marketing sales funnel, giving them what they want and solving their problem.

How much does inbound marketing services cost?

What kind of results or expectations do you have? Maintain a steady course, increasing growth, or high octane?

An inbound marketing agency’s responsibility is to go through the discovery process with a prospective inbound marketing client to find out what results and expectations are needed and wanted.

Let’s face it, what company doesn’t want to grow? While every company is at a different growth and maturity stage, most of the conversations we at Keenpath have are with companies that are in the increasing growth stage. They need to increase their revenue, but the current way of doing things aren’t or haven’t been cutting it.

You can categorize the pricing by the growth and objectives:

Maintain a steady course

Businesses that want to begin the process of building a solid inbound marketing campaign to generate leads and meet business goals. Ideal for businesses that have the available resources to produce basic content, such as blog posts, regularly, and semi-frequent advanced content (eBooks, white papers). Increase in traffic and leads expected in 6-12 months.

Maintaining a steady course requires a minimum investment of around $1,000-$2000 a month, or $12,000-$24,000 a year.

Increasing growth

Fueled by a mid-octane inbound marketing campaign to boost lead generation and conversions to meet business sales and marketing goals. Built on a strategic system, but put into full throttle through tactical means with content marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing. Boosted increase in traffic, leads, and conversion rates expected in 6-12 months.

Increasing growth will require an investment between $2,500-$5,000 a month, or $30,000-$60,000 a year.

High octane

Driven by a high-octane integrated inbound marketing campaign that leverages premium content to push to the max lead generation and conversions to help aggressively meet marketing and sales goals. By putting extra focus on the strategic planning process, the tactics of using advanced content marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing are ultra refined to provide results. Electrifying increase in traffic, leads, and conversion rates expected in 3-6 months.

High octane is a heavy hitter and requires a minimum budget of $8,000 a month, or $96,000 a year.

These are ranges. These prices reflect the current marketplace, and the actual strategy and tactics vary for each company, but usually the overall big picture is relatively common.

How will inbound marketing help me grow my business? I don’t get it.

Inbound marketing agencies are equipped and designed to effectively become an outsourced marketing department and lead generation channel partner.

Your success is your inbound marketing agency’s success.

Some of the largest inbound marketing agencies have built highly scalable models, built to service their clients from a ‘maintain growth stage’ to ‘high octane growth stage’.

As Keenpath continues to grow, we leverage, and reach out to our network when necessary to get something done for a client, particularly in an area we can’t claim to be an industry expert. This is habit #4 of the 7 habits of a highly effective inbound marketing agency.

There is a ten step process that is really involved to going from start to cruising altitude:

Step 1: Align with goals
Step 2: Website meet objectives
Step 3: Benchmark metrics
Step 4: Establish objectives
Step 5: Buyer personas
Step 6: Benchmark competition
Step 7: Campaign tactics
Step 8: Milestones & Resources
Step 9: Launch campaign
Step 10: Measure and shift*

(*Measure and shift is the regular meeting, strategy, team and communications that happen to measure results: ROI, effective channels, lead acquisition, revenue changes and shift as necessary: focus more on one channel, invest time in another area etc.)

While these ten steps guide along the strategy and tactic process, it in no way is the same for every situation. The inbound marketing plan is going to look different and have varying goals and objectives based on the company, budget, and current market outlook.

Takeaway

If anything, take away this key point: inbound marketing is really a way of thinking, a methodology.

How you get along the path to reaching your business growth goals and objectives may vary. Embracing inbound marketing and transforming how your sales and marketing works and thinks, is a positive change agent to continue to grow while keeping the pipeline full.

You can continue doing what you have always been doing and put off inbound marketing without a second thought, but how will it work out? The decision makers with the “real stats” show that in many cases the status quo isn’t cutting it anymore.

Remember, measure and shift.

I have increased my productivity by at least three times over the past couple of months by making a decision to be more active.

There are a few things that drove me to this decision.

1. Vanity – When I looked in the mirror I didn’t like what I saw.
2. Tiredness – I was tired and irritable.
3. Just felt sluggish – Think of an old truck trying to start but the carburetor keeps sticking.

A bit of personal athletic history

At one time I was an avid sportsmen. I played sports: baseball, basketball, and football. Baseball has always had a special place in my heart, however. I remember the feeling of hitting a home run, man that is the best feeling ever.

During and after high school, I got into more ‘personal challenging’ sports at the time as I liked to call it: skateboarding and snowboarding. I wasn’t “in” to the team sports thing any more as I was thinking so out of the box that it sickened me to spend many hours a day to train for something that I wasn’t purely passionate about.

Don’t get me wrong. I support sport programs and encourage others to participate. But this is my story.

After high school and into college, I continued my ‘personal challenging’ sports taking on rock climbing for a time, mountain biking, hiking etc.

I was in good shape, felt great, was at a prime.

Then it all stopped.

Somewhere, I don’t know where, I had made a decision to stop taking care of myself, to stop caring. This isn’t an evaluation of my psychology at the time, or what led me to this, but I have a few ideas:

• Wasn’t happy with the current career path – I felt like I hit a ceiling and my ambitions couldn’t take me any further. (Thankfully entrepreneurship solved this for me.)
•  Too busy – Now I know this is a myth, but at the time I honestly believed I was too busy to keep up on the “sports” and exercising. I tried for a time, but failed, because I got “busier”.
• Lack of motivation – I was being lazy. I think too many people are lazy. I know because I have been the king of lazy at times.

The necessary change

There are thousands of resources, books, videos online and many of them are great, but what it took for me was a little encouragement from a friend, who said face to face to me, have you ever tried running? Now right about this time a couple of other friends of mine had been training for marathons and half marathons. Yes, I was the lazy man hanging out with brutally fit gentlemen.

Inbound marketing has found it’s place in the hearts of many business owners, managers, and marketers. By lowering the average cost per lead, and helping businesses grow while improving their sales and marketing processes, inbound marketing has “arrived” if you will. Where is inbound marketing headed? Great question.

Check out this new marketing infographic that answers the question and shares some interesting insights.

(Source: MDG)

Marketing Takeaway

Whether you are just dipping your toe in the waters of inbound marketing, or have done enough to know that it is one of the most effective methods of marketing and lead generation, and are increasing your budget, the data in this graphic show in the future budgets will continue to become more inbound centric than outbound.

By focusing on developing a well rounded strategy in your business leveraging inbound marketing using content marketing, blogging, social media, search engine optimization and real marketing analysis, you can fully glean the benefits from online marketing while growing your business and gaining a competitive advantage.

1. Your Customers Come to You

Inbound marketing strategies are all about funneling your customers to your website, and into your front door. It’s about allowing people who are looking for your products and services to find you, and making it easy for them to make a buying decision.

2. There’s No Better Way to Target Your Message

The Internet, and inbound marketing strategies that work online, are the single best way to reach your exact target demographic. You can narrow your scope by geographical location, interests, and other factors, depending which platform you use, and by using long tail keywords, and other strategies, you can make sure that the customers you want are the ones visiting your website.

3. Inbound Marketing Is Scalable

One of the best things about inbound marketing is that it is completely scalable. While your company is small, you can start small, but as you grow, your marketing strategies can grow with you. Content marketing, for instance, allows you to post content online, which stays there as long as you want it there, and you can add to it all the time, creating a marketing ‘network’ that will never disappear!

4. Lead for Lead, There’s No System More Cost Effective

When you compare the reach, and ROI of inbound marketing to any other traditional form of marketing, there’s simply no other marketing technique that offers a better return, for the same investment. There are strategies to suit every budget, and you can start with very little, and still see phenomenal results.

Inbound marketing agencies are adept at creating tailored, targeted online marketing campaigns for businesses of all sizes, which have budgets of all sizes. If you’ve used these arguments already, and your CEO is still unconvinced, then it might be time to contact an inbound marketing agency, and ask for some more specific information.

Ask them to tailor a package for your company that meets your budget, and your specific marketing goals, as well as some more information about what kind of results you can expect.

Faced with the facts and figures to support an online, inbound marketing campaign, it will be very hard to ignore the potential that this type of marketing offers your company. Whatever you do though, don’t give up on inbound marketing – it really is the way of the future!