Archive for the ‘Inbound Marketing’ Category

Shopping in the digital age is a smorgasbord of options. A few years ago, Google created what they call “ZMOT,” which stands for Zero Moment of Truth, to capture the concept that you have multiple chances to connect with a consumer, and cannot predict when among all those interactions the “moment of truth” will occur and the shopper makes a purchase or raises a hand to self-identify her or himself as a lead.

If you click on the logo to the right, you can find the handbook that Google issues to explore their ZMOT concept and how you might apply it to your business.

Understanding evolving shopping behavior was also the focus of recent research by Lenovo that winkled out the different uses of smartphone vs. tablets:

• The study found that research is the primary function of both devices during the purchase process.
• By device, 65 percent researched only on a smartphone while a third (32%) researched and purchased. For tablets, almost half (47%) researched and the same percent both researched and purchased via tablet.
• But looking at the findings by the function of research, about half (49%) used a smartphone while only 20 percent did so on a tablet.

I suspect that the purchase percentages for smartphones are lower because the shopper may be using the device in a store, and go on to purchase the item in question offline (that is, at the cash register!) Read more about the study here.

I also found a nice presentation on buying habits that is focused on home buying, but has application for all businesses hoping to better understand where to put their marketing focus:

Study Digital House Hunt 2013 01 by REALTORS®

I love this description the author adapted from ZMOT’s evangelist of a typical consumer’s approach to shopping in the 21st Century:

Jim Lecinski, Google’s ZMOT expert, writes “at the Zero Moment of Truth, today’s shoppers bounce back and forth at their own speed in a multi-channel marketplace. They switch devices to suit their needs at any given moment. They search; go off to look at reviews, ratings, styles and prices; and then search again. They see ads on TV and in newspapers and online. They walk into local stores to look at products. They talk to friends, over the back fence and on social media. Then it’s back to ZMOT for more information.”

The challenge: Be There for the ZMOT!

The Caveat: Don’t chase every possible customer out there. That’s too many ZMOTs to cover. Craft a mix of marketing channels that you can actively manage well, and put all the other interesting options aside until you fully master the two or three channels which seem most likely to product great leads (B2B and big-ticket B2C) or sales (most B2C). Whether those few channels are Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook or SEM is what you have to sort out by what you already know, what your consumer research tells you, and what you test going forward.

 

[Programming note: I wrote about this topic just a bit ago, but recent client discoveries motivate me to do so again!]

With the huge demand for fresh, relevant interesting content the key SEO success factor in 2013, the temptation to “re-purpose” the content of others gets quite tempting. The advantages are obvious:

• You get to choose really good stuff that is well-written
• You don’t have to spend your precious time creating it yourself

This is especially true with images, which we all use to add visual appeal to our online content, but is still also true with written material. (An online search found an in-depth article about the whole issue, and after snooping around for something pithier, a nice article on LegalZoom.com that focuses on good standard advice to follow.)

Here’s the problem:

• It’s unethical
• You can be caught, which increasingly has a fiscal downside

By ‘caught’ I don’t mean by the owner of the original content. I mean by Google, who has decided to make serial copyright infringement (as defined by them) a negative score as part of their ranking algorithm. And by image owners like Getty, which trawls the web looking for unauthorized uses of its images, and sends $600 invoices to those it finds!

So, if you currently re-purpose content, change your ways:

• Buy images or source them from a site that clearly gives them away for free. Never borrow an image from another site, or use Google’s image search function as your direct source.
• Write your own articles. Even when you base your article on another person’s article, you must clearly label the parts you used from the other person’s work.
• Use full quotes with attribution, and a link to the source wherever possible.
• If you paraphrase, say so, and attribute ideas that you share to the idea owner.
• Add to the conversation by giving your opinion of their idea. Find ways to disagree with the original author (they got this part right, but not that part. They glossed over this very important caveat, etc.)

I bet, if you are currently generously borrowing content, you don’t have a solid content strategy in place anyway. A good content strategy that clearly defines your value propositions and supporting point leads easily to a keyword/phrase strategy. This underpins your writing assignments for blogging or other social media initiatives, by driving the creation of a good content calendar.

• If you cannot write well, hire a writer. Good content drives inbound marketing leads, so invest in the proper resources:
• If you write decently, but don’t have the time to organize a content calendar, hire a research and editor to keep you moving forward.

You get the idea. Resist the temptation to short-cut the creative process by using other people’s creations. It is really going to dent your SEO campaigning now that Google is emphasizing infringement issues as a ranking factor.

 

From my Forbes blog, a short take on the true news behind Facebook’s ballyhooed announcement about their efforts to upgrade their internal search functionality:

The BIG NEWS in online marketing circles this week has beenFacebook‘s introduction of their Graph Search service. It is still in “beta testing, “ which means it is not fully available; they are still refining the underlying code and winkling out the bugs. Down the road, you will want to know more about Facebook Graph Search. Even then, for most businesses my advice may stay the same:

If you want to make Facebook an effective source of business, invest the time to keep your Facebook page active, interesting and well-liked.

Period. You may now tune out all the furor amongst marketing tradesters about the intriguing subplots that may or may not be underlying this Graph Search introduction.

Read more on Forbes.com.

 

Content marketing has become the foundation of lead generation, as inbound marketing has proven its worth as a lead-generation tool and is grabbing a bigger share of marketing budgets and personnel time.

Not surprisingly, generating good content consistently has become the biggest burden for inbound marketers. To keep it flowing, the temptation inevitably creeps in to “repurpose” content that someone else created that seems relevant to your mission or value proposition. This saves time and energy! And lots of people do it…

Sharing values the creator, and you, if you share properly.

It is OK to borrow stuff, but do it respectfully. This keeps your nose clean, protects your image, and helps out the person who actually did all the work. I use ezinearticles as a publisher on behalf of a client, and their editors have a handy list of cautions that you should review regularly to keep you on the right side of the law:

Top 7 Repurposing Content SNAFUs to Avoid

I use two definitions of “re-purpose” with clients, because the second requires considerable cautionary attention:

1. Take an article that you wrote for a newsletter, and also post it on your blog. Convert that article into an e-book for posting on slideshare.com or other sharing services. Or do the reverse of each of these. Moving your own creative content around to hit multiple mediums is completely OK, and highly encouraged. It maximizes the value of each bit of content you create.
2. Take content someone else created, and use it as a foundation to create your own content.

The second approach is allowable, and useful, if:

• You attribute the source of the original content, with a link to it.
• You surround their work with your own take on the original content.
  • Explain why you found it useful or insightful.
  • Add your own thoughts or examples that support your opinion.
  • Disagree with aspects of the original content.

In effect, if you are going to “borrow” content from some other source, it has to be a starting point from which you share your own expertise, in your own words. Never pass off another writer’s work as yours if you want inbound marketing to work for you long-term.

Content marketing is a real boon to smaller businesses who cannot hope to compete on budget with larger competitors. It offers a small businessperson a real chance to present his or her own expertise and personality, and connect with prospects in meaningful ways.

Just don’t steal stuff from other people to save time. Dedicate the energy to do it correctly, create your own online presence and personality, and the benefits (leads!) will flow that justify such a big investment of time.

 

I am pleased to share a link to my most recent Forbes.com article, which offers brainstorming advice on how a small-business person should make the most of the remaining days of the holiday season. Here’s why:

As of Dec. 12, Rasmussen Reports released these two data points:

• 32% of Americans have not yet begun to shop for Christmas/Holiday gifts.
• 64% have started, but two-thirds of those have not finished.

Upshot: Two-thirds of your customers are still out there shopping!

Get creative with your holiday deal-making and get your messages and promotions in front of them! Digital marketing makes last-minute marketing easy and effective.

Click here for some ideas. Then go out and make some holiday noise in your marketplace!

 

As we get into the holiday season, retailers and other B2C companies are gearing up to grab their share of the discretionary spending that washes through our economy between now and early January. (And this year looks to be a decent year for spending!)

And who has the most money to spend discretionarily? Baby Boomers! Here are some data points I keep handy when talking about with clients about whom to target:

Consumers ages 47 – 66 (Baby Boomers) Facts: 

• Dominate 119 out of 123 CPG categories
• 40% of customers paying for wireless service
• 41% own Apple computers
• 53% are on Facebook
• 40% most likely to use an iPhone
• Over age 50 spend $7 billion online annually
• Purchase 62.5% of new cars
• Purchase 80% of luxury travel
• 70% show up to vote in elections
• Boomers spend more money each month on technology than Gen X or Gen Y – an average of $650 per month
• Spend most on health care
• Spend most on pharmaceuticals
• One in 7 boomers care for a parent or family member
• 71% of Boomers go online every day
• 66% of Boomers send text messages

Find more on this data on MediaPost.

For the holidays in particular, the key point to factor into your holiday promotions is “Gifts for Baby Boomer Grandchildren”. Talk about a source of discretionary spending!

“The new crop of baby boomer grandparents is also doing more with, and for, their grandchildren, opening up their purses and wallets, and spending a collective total of $35 billion a year on their grandkids. On average, they spend $500 a year on grandchildren, up from $320 in 1992.” (ABC News)

Do you think such sums of money are a worthwhile target for your business? If so, inject some messaging in your marketing that makes clear that your offerings solve the ‘gifts for grandkids challenge’ for Baby Boomer grandparents:

• Educate them on the latest trends for each age group, which allows them to look savvy without having to ask. This is particularly true for Baby Boomers, who really do want to appear “with it.”
• Suggest which products or services fit a typical gift budget of $25-$100.
• If appropriate, position your product or service as having educational or developmental value for young people, which could allow the grandparent to feel they are materially contributing to the positive development of the child. This is more appropriate for Boomers with younger grandchildren, but could provide a supporting message for tech products for teenaged grandchildren.

In sum, be there to help, and to make them look good/with-it/smart while expressing their love through gifts.

 

When exploring content marketing with clients, I always stress quality as a starting point: You have to be relevant and interesting to the reader if you want to engage them.

That said, one great article gets you nowhere. Lots of great content (however defined) is what get you attention online. And one of the leading “inbound marketing” vendors has just released a batch of data that gives you an idea about just how big that quantity has to be.

Be interesting over and over again to attract opted-in leads

HubSpot has aggregated the results of the 7,000 businesses that use its analytics software, and present strong evidence about how frequency does make a big difference in getting content marketing (they call it “inbound marketing”) to generate leads. This isn’t surprising, but the actual quantities are. Check these out:

• Websites with less than 50 pages got a lot less traffic than larger sites, especially those over 1,000 pages in size. Such large sites got close to 10x the traffic of a 50-page site.
• The large-site advantage was more pronounced for small companies, perhaps because building such a large site was probably a big percentage of their total marketing budget.
• B2C companies had more to gain from creating large batches of website page than B2B companies.
• Inbound leads rose significantly once 200 pages were amassed, and dramatically once 400 were passed.
• Regular use of landing pages (which count towards total pages, I assume) really start to have a positive impact on lead generation once their inventory reaches and passes 20, with a huge jump for B2B over 40. Worth dedicating time to having a fresh landing page for each online campaign!
• Blogging seems to have steady incremental value, with two or more each week a real goal to achieve to convert visitors to leads. (Larger companies seem to get more bang for their buck out of active blogging, unfortunately.)
• Facebook pages with over 1,000 likes perform significantly better than company pages with under 1,000. That’s a clear goal to shoot for!

Look the material over yourself, but the message is clear. You need to dedicate your organization to creating lots of great content consistently over time if you want to make inbound content marketing work.

 

The social media services vendor Compendium released some great guidelines this month about how to time and structure your social media content releases through the top three social channels of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. They also break out the differences between B2B and B2C, making the information about 1,000x more useful. And they put all the information into a very nice graphic.

(If you are less visual than textual in how you absorb information, click here.)

Here are a few items I found either confirming of my previously held thoughts, or enlightening me about stuff I had not considered important:

• LinkedIn and Twitter activity clumps at the top and the bottom of the hour during the day. The inference is that a person’s meeting schedule affects when they check into their social accounts. This makes sense, but had not occurred to me as I went about targeting day-parts for my posts.
• Question marks and exclamation marks in posts diminish click-through rates.
• Hashtags improve click-through rates for B2B, but not B2C. I wonder if this is because Twitter/LinkedIn topic searches are more focused for B2Bers, and generate highly relevant results that raise CTRs.
• Sunday is the day when most B2B LinkedIn click-through activity occurs. This makes sense, too. Lots of busy businesspeople catch up with less urgent tasks that day.
• Wednesday is tops for Twitter for B2B posts. This seems random, but Compendium data is built on a big enough sample set that I have to believe it.
• B2C clicking peaks on Monday for LinkedIn and Twitter, with Wednesday hanging in there for Twitter just as it does with B2B activity.

You may find other insights that will help you use timing and grammatical structure to better break through the dense clutter in most people’s social “inboxes.” I encourage you to explore this interesting report!

Let me know if you find it useful. I did.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I have never done business with Compendium, but have had a few very nice chats with their representatives by phone.]

 

Too many B2B companies still rely almost exclusively on direct sales (phone calls, e-mails, trade shows…) to push their products/services to market.

This is increasingly troublesome, as their buyers are going online to “vett” their potential vendors. And if they don’t find a vendor online with more than just a website, said vendor drops down (or off) their shopping list.

“B2B buyer behavior has been changing dramatically over the last few years as buyers become more sophisticated, find new ways to gather information online and (via) social media. 90% of business buyers say when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you.”

~DemandGen Reports

Your reputation is built online in this 21^st Century, and content marketing is the most effective way to do it:

• Positions you as an expert
• Gives you the chance to add value immediately by sharing useful information with no strings attached
• Keep you top-of-mind, as YOUR outgoing messages (e-mails, keyword ads, etc) always come with that gift of free information!

Don’t take my word for it: Here is a link to free (!) research that explores the value of B2B content marketing in more detail.

The report is a survey of B2B marketers, not their customers, but their rankings of which types of content to use are based on experience, so this report does provide a useful guide to other B2B marketers about where to focus their time, energy and dollars.

Never Swim Alone!

You will notice that well-edited writing and professional writing are cited by well over a third of the respondents as a key to success, after originality, great story-telling and custom content.

This is important: You have to create your own content ‘frame’, not simply borrow someone else’s with your cover note. And amateur efforts get you graded down, limiting the potential impact of your content execution. If you cannot write, don’t try. Hire a writer to help you polish the content you want to share.

I blog for my clients, I write their e-mails, I plan and execute their online ad campaigns. They get on with creating and providing great customer value.

Put your own frame around “re-purposed content”.

You will notice that I am reusing someone else’s content, but with my own angle and spin to make the post itself represent me, not the originators of the content (in this case, Optify).

For more advice on “content” or “inbound” marketing, click here.

What do you think? How do you approach content marketing? What lessons did you learn from your early efforts?

 

Too many small businesspeople get the relationship backwards between creative design (logos and other “identity” graphics, for instance) and “brand.”

I wrote about this on Forbes.com recently, but let’s review the proper relationship:

Brand ≠ Logo

Brand = Reputation

If you successfully build a reputation for delivering top consumer value for the dollars they spend with you, you will build a strong brand. And you can slap just about any logo on it you want (tastefully), and that logo will become representative of the value you deliver.

I am being a bit flip here: “Just about any logo” is certainly hyperbole, as everything you do has to reflect well on your business. But as a small businessperson, you must create a basic, enduring creative look for your business, and stick with it. Distracting yourself (and siphoning scare money) into a constant overhaul of your “look” is wasteful, and actually confuses your target audience.

Most consumers care little about logo design, and a lot about the quality of your product and service. So, if you had to spend one extra dollar on something, which should it be?

The next time any marketing guy tries to sell you on the idea that you need to “rebrand yourself” with a “new look” to “relaunch” your business, politely show them to the door. That is the last step in a “relaunch,” not the first, and may prove unnecessary at all if you fix the problems that may be hindering your value delivery!

Let me know in the comments if you disagree with me on this!

Here is another link to that Forbes article. Follow me there if you like it! (Share it, too.)