The importance of blogging in a social/inbound strategy can't be overstated. If you can do only one thing - BLOG. Why?
You're in control of what happens! Even the smallest companies can appreciate the value of controlling your message.
Very strong for SEO. According to “Introduction to Business Blogging” by Hubspot, blogging increases site traffic by 55%. No other social or SEO strategy can boast numbers that strong.
Blogging builds credibility. You’re more than just a pretty face, right? Let the world see that you know your stuff and blogging is a great way to do that.
So you want to blog or maybe you've already started. Here are a few quick tips that will help you get the most from your blogging efforts.
Buy your domain. Choose a name that allows for growth and change. You might not always be focused on your current industry or selling just your current products and services. Unless you create separate blogs for different segments (great if you have the resources), stick with a domain name that will serve you today and tomorrow.
Keep it simple. Your platform, that is. Utilizing a tool like WordPress means you can get the help you need and won't need to rely on a single person who has the “secret key” to updating your blog. It also helps with SEO and will keep you on top of the latest blogging trends and widgets.
Optimize it for SEO. Just like your website, make sure you use keywords in your blogs (and category names) and use long tail keywords in titles and content. Also, try interlinking related posts on your blog.
Make it easy to share. Use PROMINENT RSS and social “follow” buttons. Make it easy for people to sign up, get updates, share and comment.
Blog frequently. Try to blog once a week (or at least twice a month). Can't keep up? OUTSOURCE. Remember that 55% increase in SEO traffic? Investing in a blog writer may be one of the most effective use of inbound marketing dollars you can find.
Have a blog tip to share? Comment below and let us know what you think!
When talking to our clients about social media, one of the most frequent questions we hear is, "How can I integrate social media into my marketing?" Even those more experienced with social tend to look at their marketing in silos with social strategies and traditional campaigns separate and apart. When the two strategies ARE combined it's usually at a very superficial level - adding a post about an upcoming webinar for example. This approach does very little to utilize the unique elements of social media which can help you:
Engage – Listen – Extend
Let's take for example a typical outbound marketing campaign: In this case our client is doing a six-step email campaign around the topic of relationship management tools for healthcare providers. During this campaign, they will be offering a white paper and a webinar with an industry expert. Their original thought was to post details of the webinar on their Facebook page. It's a start...but not much of one.
Let’s apply the Engage – Listen – Extend model.
Engage. Social media is a platform to ENGAGE. Instead of just posting an invite to the webinar, ask questions that relate to the webinar. What are your prospects biggest challenges in managing their relationships? What relationships are most critical to them to manage – patients, providers, etc. Users of the Nurture Butterfly tool have easy access to polls – if you don’t have the ability to use polls, just ask questions. How about bringing in the expert who’ll be speaking? John Smith recently published an article outlining the key challenges for health care providers. Are you facing these challenges?
Listen. What are your prospects saying in their communities? Address these in your webinar, emails, landing page - all your messaging. Let them know you are listening and respond when you can help.
Extend. Extend the value of your materials and extend the campaign itself by let's say dripping out webinar or white paper tidbits. Keep the conversation going even after the campaign. Share webinar questions and recordings, and add PowerPoint presentations to Slideshare.
And one final tip – Drip! When you’re looking at how to bring social into your campaigns, use the medium. Don’t limit this to a few messages though. Make it rich and compelling and utilize the unique properties of social by using polls or asking questions. Drip out facts too. Like I mentioned above, a white paper can have 30 or 40 “tidbits” you can use – find the best and share them.
In the spirit of all things social, we want you to share your best social tip for a chance to win one of three $25 Amazon.com gift cards!
In this month's NurtureNotesnewsletter we teased our subscribers with five important things you should know about inbound marketing and I want to continue that conversation here because inbound marketing is important people!
With a reported cost per lead at 62% LESS than outbound marketing you should be paying close attention and working on inbound marketing strategies right now (after you read this blog of course). Without further ado, let's get right to the list.
1. What is Inbound Marketing?
In simple terms, inbound marketing is a set of strategies and tactics you use to make it easy for prospects to find you. It’s a pull model instead of a traditional push model. Inbound tactics include things like search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social media, blogs, websites and landing pages. An effective inbound strategy also includes the thing you find us preaching about all the time – valuable content. Not your company brochure or one single article but a steady flow of articles, tips, infographics, white papers and videos. Make content accessible – don’t hide your brilliance behind a form or make your prospects work to learn more about you.
2. Why do I need to worry about Inbound Marketing?
One of the main reasons you need to adopt inbound marketing is that we are on average bombarded with 2,000 messages a day! Inbound marketing creates an environment by which someone who needs your service can easily find you. Need a better reason? Hubspot’s recent 2011 report on the State of Inbound Marketing shows that the cost per lead for inbound marketing is 62% less than outbound. Now that’s a reason to get you pulling in the right direction isn’t it?
3. Should I abandon Outbound Marketing?
No way! In spite of what some are saying – inbound is not a replacement for outbound marketing such as direct mail, email, trade events, advertising, etc. The two should go hand in hand. Because inbound generally has a lower cost per lead than outbound, you can start shifting your budget to the inbound side, but don’t slow down your outbound marketing just yet. Inbound marketing takes time and patience and isn’t the answer to fill your pipeline or get leads – at least not right away. Let it build momentum before you drastically alter your outbound model.
4. How can I use my website for Inbound Marketing?
Socialize it! Getting people to your site is only the first step. Once they are there, how do you keep them there? Offer stuff they care about and share it without a bunch of forms. Engage with your visitors through videos, polls, articles, tips, blogs and fresh content. Take a look at the copy on your website. Is it inviting or is it overly technical or stiff. Make sure your site is easy to navigate so people want to stay awhile. Most of the time the inbound path leads directly to your website so make sure it’s ready to greet your guests.
5. How do I know if it’s working?
Inbound marketing is totally depending on automation. Get yourself a good marketing automation platform that gives you the ability to track visitors, score leads and nurture visitors with automated workflows. This gives you the flexibility to remove some of those intimidating forms without losing the intelligence that you need. If you would like to learn about the marketing automation tool we use every day, please email Eric Rabinowitz or call him at 732-636-10014 (x27). He’s pretty passionate and knowledgeable about marketing automation so it’s worth a call if you get a minute.
6. Link baiting is good.
It may sound like a “black hat” practice, but link baiting is a good thing. Link baiting refers to anything on a website that encourages links from other websites. It can include content like blogs, online tools, downloads, or anything else that another site owner might find compelling enough to link to. Link baiting is important because most search engines use backlinks as a major factor in determining ranking.
7. Blogs RULE!
According to another great report by HubSpot, sites with blogs gathered 68% more leads than sites without one. If you can only invest in one content type – make it a powerful blog. Not a writer? No problem. Hire someone who can help you not only come up with some awesome topics but write your blogs for you. We have a talented team of blog writers here at Nurture Marketing if you need some help.
8. Long Tail is More than a Keyword Concept.
You’re probably familiar with the phrase “long tail keyword” and in case you’re not – long tail keywords are those search terms people will use that are later in the sales cycle or focused on a niche market. For example – if you are estate lawyer in Hoboken you might think “estate law” is a good phrase to focus on but you’ll face a lot of competition for that phrase and your local prospects might never find you so why not dig deeper with something like “estate lawyers in Hoboken, NJ”? The concept of long tail is something you can bring into your entire inbound strategy. What offers resonate more with people later in the sales cycle for your services, what issues are most compelling in to your prospects? Keep the concept of long tail top of mind when creating offers and messaging and you’ll see higher responses. Another example: “Best Practices in ERP implementation” is nice – “Best practices for automotive manufacturers ERP implementations” is better.
9. The Importance of Anchor Text.
Click here for more info. How often do you see some variation of that phrase? Why not use descriptive text in your links for maximum SEO impact. For example: Download our free report on B2B Nurture Marketing Best Practices. Now you have some SEO power.
10. Measure the right thing.
If you use typical outbound marketing metrics to measure your inbound marketing you’ll be disappointed. A different tactic calls for different measurements. At the same time – the metrics you use to measure inbound need to change as you build your inbound engine. Early key performance indicators (KPI) such as clicks and followers will now be joined by metrics like conversion rates and PPC ROI as your methods mature. For a list of what you should be measuring with inbound marketing, download our Quick Tips for Inbound Marketing KPIs.
This year one of my resolutions is to get through the pile of business books on my desk and to revisit some of my favorites. I thought I would highlight my top 4 and invite you to share yours.
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug. Although the latest edition is 2005, this is still very relevant. I was given this book by my favorite webmaster as she guided me through a new website for a previous company. It gave us a common language and me a lot of insight into why she recommended certain approaches. If you’re thinking about an update of your site, grab this book. It’s a quick read. TIP: I prefer this one in paperback (as opposed to my beloved Kindle) just because of the layout and great images.
The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More, Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen. It’s here!! I’ve been waiting for this book for a while and pre-ordered via my Kindle months ago. I just received it and I can guarantee I’ll be finished with this one quickly. There are thousands of social media experts but few focus solely on B2B and even fewer with the expertise of Bodnar and Cohen. If you don’t recognize their names – you probably still have read their stuff through the http://socialmediab2b.com/ blog. I will go out on a limb and completely recommend this without even reading past the first chapter. Not convinced? Read some of their blog posts first, then buy the book (and a highlighter).
Deliver Magazine by the US Post Office. YES. That Post Office. Although not a book and technically not sitting in my desktop pile, I read every issue of Deliver from cover to cover. Far more than just a direct mail “advertisement” - Deliver (and its accompanying website) is a treasure trove of ideas and best practices. It goes way beyond direct mail to include articles on new technologies such as QR codes, and integrating email and direct mail in winning campaigns.
Are any of these on your list too? What else should I be reading? Leave a comment and let us all know about your favorite must-read business books.
P.S. I couldn’t write a list of amazing business books without mentioning,Nurturing Customer Relationships, by our own Jim Cecil and Eric Rabinowitz. It will absolutely change the way you approach marketing and customer relationships. You can pick it up in our Store today.
If you're the kind of person that appreciates professional honesty, read on. If not, read on anyway because you might need to hear this. Most of the time we are a really friendly bunch around here and our clients are pretty awesome if you ask me. But, every once in a while there are things that just drive us crazy so I thought I would share a little inside info.
In this month's NurtureNotes, we give our Top 5 marketing trends to watch in 2012. But, we didn't have space for everything, so our editors cut out these four marketing trends I would love to see END in 2012.
1. Questions like, "What works?" (Translation: There must be one thing I can do for more sales – and I really only want to do/have the budget for this one thing – so what is it?)
Just like a physical trainer would tell you if you asked him what latest diet you follow or pill you should take to drop 50 pounds this month - there is no magic potion! Consistent, integrated, professional and PERSONAL marketing (to human beings) works. Yeah, it’s boring, unsexy and we’ve heard it before – but there’s a reason for that.
Make this the year you worry less about the latest fad and more about what’s proven. The answer to what works is what everyone knows and no one wants to hear – consistent, integrated touches that provide value and build a “relationship” with the prospect.
2. Shotgun Marketing (a/k/a: I need leads like yesterday, how fast can we get a campaign in market?)
Hmmm... so let’s get this straight. You have no pipeline, you haven’t done any consistent marketing (or any marketing for that matter) for quite awhile and your sales team is clamoring for leads. Shocking! If your answer is to buy a list and drop some emails – you are shotgun marketing.
Consider that the average person is touched by about 2,000 messages per day. Add the fact that it can take 10-15 touches to get the attention of a contact in a B2B sale and you’ll see that the numbers just don’t add up. Save your dollars, take a step BACK and think about how many times you’ve been in this situation. You don’t need a campaign – you need a change in “behavior” and a marketing plan to back it up.
3. Sales people, students, your cousin doing your marketing.
By all means you should bring all hands to deck to help with your marketing - but make sure the leader of the ship knows how to steer. Watching your budget? We get that. Use a consultant to build the plan and then use outsourced resources for specialized tasks (like writing and web design). Save the unskilled labor for the execution only.
4. A $5 million revenue goal with a $10,000 marketing budget.
We often find the lack of correlation between revenue goals and marketing budget starts with not knowing how to really measure marketing impact. You can offset your budget needs with lower cost activities such as social marketing but there’s no free ride: Lower cost activities can still require a much higher investment of time.
Although it varies by industry, B2B marketers should be spending 2-7% of their total revenue on marketing – not including marketing salaries. You may even need more than 7% depending on how strong (or weak) your foundation is such as your website, case studies, lists, etc.
On behalf of all the marketing professionals in the world, thanks for listening. Got your own marketing trends you want to see end in 2012? Sound off below!
I don't play the lottery, but in many ways, I believe I've won the lottery many times over. I am very lucky to have ended up living at this time in history, in the United States, with an incredible family, with a fantastic company, partners, and business associates. I learned a long time ago, that a person is not only measured by what they make, but what they give back.
Many believe the spiritual benefit of giving to the poor is so great that the recipient of charity actually does the giver a favor by giving a person the opportunity to give. It's no accident that many business, media, and political leaders share their expertise with a charity they have a passion for. There is a high correlation between giving of your time and success in life, no matter how you define that success.
Every Principal of Nurture Marketing has a charity that they are committed to, and all of our employees and associates are encouraged to be involved in giving to the less fortunate in their communities. Some examples include women's cancer awareness, religious organizations, micro-lending, and a Children's Center.
Barbara Pfeiffer is Vice President of FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered, and serves on the Board of Directors. FORCE is a national non-profit helping advocate for, educate and support families at risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Barbara also started Annette's Angels, an on-line boutique selling awareness items and jewelry. 50% of the proceeds from Annette's Angels are donated to FORCE.
Nurturing relationships and nurturing little ones is top of mind for the Lois Bronz Children's Center in White Plains. Here is where Jennifer Garcia has helped to identify ways to increase community involvement and donations to the Center through the development of a comprehensive marketing plan, camp, and center brochure. She continues to help the Center as they go forth to achieve their fundraising and volunteer goals for 2009-2010 and into the future.
Since 1988, Jim Cecil's passion for entrepreneurism led him to support, personally serve and contribute to micro-lending organizations like KIVA, Heifer, and the Grameen Foundation, combining the power of microfinance, technology and innovative solutions to defeat global poverty, as well as Heifer Intl. and to KIVA International. All focused intently on alleviating poverty. Jim presents webinars and live seminars to entrepreneur-groups worldwide explaining micro-lending concepts, some achievements and goals, and encouraging entrepreneurs to get engaged in this vital, humanitarian work.
Eric Rabinowitz is on the Executive Committee and serves as Co-Executive Vice-President for a 600 family Jewish Center in central New Jersey. On the executive board, he serves as VP of Marketing and Membership, and he has utilized his skills to help launch a new era in the life of this religious community. He has served as a member of the Rabbi Search, Long Range Planning, 92nd Street Y simulcast, Purim Gala committees, and served as Men's Club President. Eric is currently responsible for press relations, event marketing, membership strategy, and events.
A company like Nurture Marketing is made up of people, and we are so proud that they h ave passions outside of our business dedicated to making life better for everyone.
Woodbridge, New Jersey (September 17, 2010) Nurture Institute LLC, a respected marketing organization known for their educational programs and products teaching the principles and tactics of nurture marketing, announced today the company has officially changed their name to Nurture Marketing.
Along with the name change, Nurture Marketing boasts a new visual brand including a new logo and extensive new website (http://www.nurturemarketing.com) which features several free marketing resources for visitors to read and download. "The name change reflects our continuing evolution of the Nurture Marketing concept. From an educational marketing organization to a company that provides a wide array of marketing services, always adhering to the Nurture principals we created over 25 years ago." says Jim Cecil company Chairman.
The company has also restructured their marketing programs to offer an expanded set of services including channel marketing programs, content development, custom campaign creation and management, accelerated demand generation programs as well as their well-known educational and training programs, professional speakers and an online store to purchase marketing books and products.
"These changes simply reinforce our dedication to the principles of nurture marketing and will bring our full range of services to the forefront alongside our educational programs. We are fortunate to have grown substantially and, in the process of developing the most effective ways to deliver results for our clients, have developed some very exciting marketing tools and an exceptional team of talented professionals. We wanted our branding to reflect this renewed energy," says Barbara Pfeiffer, managing partner.
The concept of nurture marketing was originated more than 20 years ago by Nurture Marketing senior partner, Jim Cecil, along with managing partner, Eric Rabinowitz, both co-authors of the popular books, Nurturing Customer Relationships and 101 Business Love Letters. Joined by managing partners, Barbara Pfeiffer, formerly with Microsoft Corporation, and Jennifer Herold-Garcia, from Hilton Hotel Corporation, the company works with an impressive list of clients, including global companies like Microsoft and Nokia, along with small to medium-sized businesses across nearly every industry.
?One of the main principles of nurture marketing is to 'give before you receive,' and we practice that rule every day around here. On paper, it's truly mind blowing the level of talent and experience we can offer our clients. More importantly, every person that joins the Nurture Marketing family must have this special 'above and beyond' personality too. It really shines through in our work and the relationships we build with our clients," adds Jennifer Garcia.
More About Nurture Marketing's Name Change:
Nurture Marketing's new name celebrates the company's transformation from an educational organization sharing the principles and tactics of nurture marketing, to a full-service marketing partner offering a comprehensive and progressive set of marketing services, programs and products.
About Nurture Marketing
Nurture Marketing is a full-service marketing group headquartered in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Details about the company, their programs and services, and free marketing tips and resources can be found online at http://www.nurturemarketing.com or by calling 732-636-1001 (ext. 27).
If you're the kind of person that appreciates professional honesty, read on. If not, read on anyway because you might need to hear this. Most of the time we are a really friendly bunch around here and our clients are pretty awesome if you ask me. But, every once in a while there are things that just drive us crazy so I thought I would share a little inside info.
