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Joshua Claflin

Josh Claflin, as the President of Garrison Everest, specializes in assisting businesses related to outdoor activities, hunting, adventure, and shooting sports. He focuses on developing effective messaging, branding, and digital marketing strategies that can help these businesses expand their brand presence, increase website traffic, build a larger contact list, and grow their customer base.

Mar 28
Hunting-Outdoor-Firearm-Distribution

6 Considerations When Choosing Wholesale Firearms Distribution

By Firearms and Hunting

It’s come time to take your hunting, outdoor or firearms company to the next level.

You’ve gone to great lengths to prove your product is a winner and have a validated sales case study. You’ve figured out your inventory and fulfillment dilemmas and have the right people in place to scale your operation.

The next step is to generate more revenue, reach a broader audience and grow your brand.

Choosing a distributor for your custom tactical rifle, tree stand, hunting knife, optic or accessory can be a somewhat complicated process. When looking at expanding your business, you basically have three options in getting your product to your customers: Sell direct, use distribution or a combination of both.

A distributor— the proverbial middleman—maintains an active network of retailers and becomes your outsourced sales department leaving you to focus on your brand, operations and running your business. By utilizing a distributor, you ship your product to them and in most cases, they handle the rest.

In this article, are six considerations for new or emerging hunting, outdoor or firearms/accessories manufacturers considering distribution.

1. Know your customer

Believe it or not, one of your hardest questions to ask as a business owner is: Who—specifically—is our customer? I think most of us will admit we don’t know our customers as well as we should. By neglecting to have an accurate and well-defined customer or—buyer persona—you hinder the potential and effectiveness of your marketing and branding efforts once your product(s) goes mainstream.

Marketing is about knowing your customer better than anyone else. A strong marketing and branding program will entice and attract distributors and wholesalers. Communicate the specifics of your customer to your potential distributors (and/or dealers) for maximum sales and branding effectiveness.

2. Understand your product

A lot of times, you can loose focus on how your product will fit into the marketplace. Make sure to define what it is and how it will be merchandised. Is your product an aftermarket add-on or OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) upgrade or both? Understanding how your product fits into the marketplace is key in negotiating terms and structuring a contract.

3. Define your pricing

Before setting up meetings with distributors, make sure to define your pricing that includes MSRP, MAP, Dealer, Distributor, and OEM—make sure to pad enough in for overhead and profit. This will help you determine who the right distributor is. If you fail to examine all the factors involved in your pricing, it could be detrimental to your business down the road.

4. Define your manufacturing and shipping volumes

Quality is everything in this industry since it is so highly concentrated. Never cut corners or sacrifice craftsmanship. Once word gets out that your product is faulty, it will be difficult to recover. 

In order to maintain quality—define your manufacturing and shipping volumes that you’ll be able to handle while still maintaining quality control.

If you are creating your product by injection molding and/or assembling in-house—what volume can you handle without having to expand? If you receive a large order from an OEM or a P.O. from Cabella’s—can you ramp up? Know what your capacities and contingencies are and prepare for it.

5. Don’t sign exclusive agreements, unless…

When you’re just starting out, it may be tempting to take that first exclusive deal. Only sign the agreement if it makes sense and if payment is made in advance.

6. Research and ask the important questions

When considering distribution, don’t go into it blindly. It can be a very exciting time in your business’ history, so do your due diligence to understand if the buyer is the right partner. Here are a few important questions to ask:

  • How many sales personnel does your company employ?
  • What are your distribution points?
  • What size of dealers do you typically work with?
  • What is your annual sales volume as a whole?
  • Do they market a similar product that has been successful? How much did they grow the product’s sales over the last three years?
  • What is the size of the initial purchase order size and what is your annual commitment to my product?
  • What are your terms? (Remember you are not a bank so be very careful of whom you give terms to. 30-90 days can seem like a lifetime if you have financial obligations like shop and equipment payments.
  • What are your limitations? Can I sell to dealers or consumers directly? If not, negotiate a higher price.

In conclusion, by understanding who your customer is, how your product fits into the market, manufacturing and shipping volumes, contract exclusions and asking the right questions—you’ll be better equipped to negotiate terms and identify the right distribution partner for your firearms, hunting or outdoor product.

Matt Burkett is President and Owner of Predator Tactical, a firearms manufacturer, accessories and training company. 

Mar 08
Hunting-Outdoor-Website-Design

6 Tips To Increase Your Hunting Website’s Traffic

By Hunting and Outdoor

Your hunting, outdoor or firearms company’s website is an immense investment of time and money in your ability to enhance your business and brand online. It must be responsive (mobile, tablet and desktop viewable), it must be easy to understand, informative and entertaining. However, most marketers and business owners in the industry minimize this aspect during the design phase and forget to think about how to effectively keep visitors coming back after they’ve visited. It’s typical to be more focused on graphics and aesthetics—but just having an awesome looking website will only get you so far in today’s digital environment.   It doesn’t matter what size of a company you are—a small business of 10 employees or 5,000, every visit is an opportunity to build a relationship, customer or lifetime promoter of your brand. Below are six simple tips you can use to turn your website into a traffic and lead generating machine.

1. Write your content based on your customer

 According to recent statistics, over 90% of visitors to your website never come back. The reason they don’t come back is because they didn’t find anything to keep them coming back. To keep them coming back, target three potential customers or buyer personas and write helpful, relevant content specifically for them—that solves a problem they have one at a time.  Learn about their pain points, where they hang out on social media and how they talk. Implement this across every page of your website and watch those bounce rates decline. 

2. Optimize your content

It goes without saying that all websites should be optimized, but I am always amazed on how many marketing people skip this crucial step. Today, Google accounts for over 65% of web searches. The most important aspects of your hunting and outdoor website for SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) are title tags. Make sure they accurately describe what your page is about with the keywords in the title and URL. The title tag should be under 60 characters and the description tag under 160 characters. Keep them short and pithy. Look to sprinkle your keywords throughout your page 2-3 times over 500 words—if it makes sense. Write naturally and don’t stuff your keywords. Write for humans, not search engines. 

3. Create free downloadable content

60% of the sales cycle is over before a buyer talks to your salesperson. Consumers today behave in a way that requires you to establish trust. The years of broken brand promises by politicians, get rich quick schemes and magic pills have taken a toll on the consumer market and with the economy in its current state—consumers don’t blow money like they used to. No matter what type of product you sell, you are an expert in something. Write about it, package it and offer it to your customers. Parallel this with follow up emails and other content as you create it. This simple tip can begin building trust with your customers and will grease the wheels come hunting season.

4. Create a strong call-to-action

Make your downloadable content irresistible to your visitors. For example: “6 Elk Hunting Secrets from Today’s Top Trophy Hunters.” I think we’d all like to download and read this offer! If you are offering up relevant content that solves your customer’s problems, the call to action should be designed to entice them to fill out a form, send an email or pick up the phone and contact you. Experiment with different colors and different headlines to optimize your offers.

5. Blog weekly

Companies that blog receive 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report) The more blogging you do, the higher your rankings will be on SERPS—which means more traffic—which means more customers. Almost everyone these days has a blog, but now it’s more important than ever to keep that content fresh and flowing. Make a commitment to start a blog and maintain it weekly. All content is not created the same. Make sure you are blogging on topics that solve your customer’s problems and use titles like “How-to’s”, “Tips on…”, and other enticing subject matter geared specifically for your audience. Google’s latest algorithm changes suggest that stagnant websites are no longer useful for users. 

6. Get social

Social media has an 80% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. (State of Inbound Marketing). Every page on your site should have a way for users to share content. If it’s not shareable, you loose out on your content being spread. Social media will become more important to hunting and outdoor brands than ever before. Try to personalize your posts as well. People want to work with people. The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%. Use social media to expand your message, expertise, and personality. The simple tips above you can begin to shape and optimize your hunting or outdoor business’ website for more traffic and leads. 

Mar 05
how to get your hunting product into walmart

How to Get Your Hunting Or Outdoor Product Into Walmart

By Hunting and Outdoor

Recently, a long-term sporting goods client of ours was rewarded placement in Walmart for their revolutionary new product. It won over Walmart because it’s innovative, made of quality materials, packaged correctly, easy-to-use and understand and our client has the support and the inventory to fulfill the required purchase order (10,000+ units).

If you are a hunting or outdoor company that has attempted to get into Walmart, you know it is not easy. Walmart is the holy grail for most sporting goods companies because one purchase order can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Below are 6 points to keep in mind that will improve your chances of getting your product into Walmart.

1. Create an innovative and quality productHow to get your product into walmart
All great businesses start with a unique offering in the marketplace. In order for any large retailer to do business with you, your product has to be somewhat innovative. It has to solve a problem needed by many. It also must be durable and packaged in a way so that when customers buy it, it doesn’t break, people can’t steal it and it is designed to be seamlessly placed on Walmart’s shelves. Keep this in mind as you design and develop your product and packaging. Make sure that during production you adhere to Wal-Mart’s requirements and build in good cost margins as Walmart will ask for pricing below wholesale.

2. Develop your brand
We are firm believers in the following statement: “Unless you stand for something, you stand for nothing.” We have 10-20 of everything in the marketplace. Unless you develop your brand you risk falling into the cacophony of products that only differentiate on functions and features. A well-developed brand makes your product stand heads and shoulders above the competition because of its unique story and personality.

3. Design great packaging
Package design is key. A great package design can help your product look larger than life on the shelf. A good package design dramatizes and communicates the brand to the customer while demonstrating its use, function and features. It differentiates your brand from your competitors and allows you to stand out.  Our client also adds QR codes on their packaging so the customer can scan using their smart phone to see a live demonstration—which further persuades the customer to buy. This also helps you persuade the Walmart buyer when you get your 30 seconds to pitch your product.

4. Build your inventory
One thing that most hunting and outdoor start-ups overlook is the ability to fulfill large orders. Walmart promises to always give customers the lowest prices on their products and they always ask for large purchase orders…always.  Larger orders are typically classified as 7,000 – 10,000 units or more. If Walmart accepts your application to be a supplier, you will need to fulfill the purchase order under their terms, which could be within 15 days, and you may not get paid for 60-90 days. If you do not have a good inventory and the means to stay afloat for 3 months, this could be a deal breaker. This also relates directly to my next point about business history.

5. Build your business history and a good product case study
A lot of our past hunting and outdoor start-up clients have come to us with one thing in mind: “We want to get into Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Sports Authority, Dick’s, Lowes, Target, etc.” Most haven’t thought through what it takes to build their business first and are shocked when we tell them the bad news about what it entails—unless the product is truly remarkable and the client has the necessary inventory—but this is rare. We will typically advise you to build a business case study first so that when it comes time to go for it, you are equipped with a track record that says success to the Walmart sporting goods buyer. You will also learn much along the way. A simple website with online store and internet marketing program can help you build your business and obtain valuable experience. This strategy gets the most ROI and allows you to test the validity of the product before making a significant inventory investment. While this is taking place, we advise you to get out there and be willing to take some risks with smaller retailers. This also will provide you with much needed experience to perfect your sales pitch and allow you to test the appeal and validity of your product. Long before Walmart, our client was selling in smaller retail outlets like Sportsman Warehouse, Cabellas, Bass Pro Shops and others. This allowed them to identify and get over the many hurdles that you will face along the way.

6. Perfect your pitch and be persistent
Once you have developed your brand, designed a killer package design, built your inventory, have a deep sales history, product case study and have perfected a winning sales pitch, it’s time to apply. Your presentation should be brief and to the point; it needs to showcase and demonstrate the product’s value, tell the product’s sales history, list customer testimonials and review and project future sales. Once you’re accepted, having other products in your product line with the same standards will allow you to expand in Walmart and potentially get into other retailers. If you get turned down, or you experience fragmented or down right rude communication, don’t give up, it may take a few months or years to finally get that first meeting.

By following the above points, you’ll have a good idea and direction on how to go about getting into a large retailer.

Mar 03
inbound--marketing-turkey-hunting

Why Inbound Marketing Is Like Turkey Hunting (Infographic)

By Hunting and Outdoor

If you’ve made it to any of the recent trade shows in the hunting, firearms or outdoor industry—you may have heard about something called inbound marketing or sometimes called digital or content marketing. Outdoor companies are looking for ways to bring their brands online and to reach broader audiences that they were once limited to because of expensive media buys or trade show fees. They may also be looking for ways to reduce their marketing spend and get a better return on investment from their hard-earned marketing dollars.

To help you understand—we’ve put together the below infographic to help explain the differences between inbound and outbound marketing; and how it can help your company move its marketing online—versus spending more on trade show, print and T.V.

inbound-marketing-hunting-shooting-outdoor

 

Feb 17
how to prospect a new indusrty for new customers

How To Prospect A New Industry For Customers

By Inbound Marketing, Sales, Social Media

If you’re thinking about breaking into a new industry for the purpose of selling your products or services, there are few things that inbound marketing and social media can offer you to make your efforts more effective.

But with so many different points of entry like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and blogs—where does one begin?

Inbound marketing is a way to use content to attract your ideal customers to your website. Inbound then uses social media as a distribution mechanism to spread your content to those you hope to do business with by attracting them to your website for lead capture. This methodology has been proven to shorten sales cycles, garner trust with your prospects and boost referrals—which is critical to building a presence in an industry you’ve never been involved with before.

With so many of your prospective customers already on social media, you may be missing out on ample opportunities to fill your sales pipeline.

In this article, we’ll look at how inbound marketing combined with “social media prospecting” can help you break into new industries to prospect new customers.

[box type=”info” size=”large”]Seventy-eight percent of sales people using social media outsell their peers. (Source: Forbes)[/box]

1. Search industry organizations
To begin, start by looking online for trade and industry associations you’re interested in. A simple search should turn up several results. Industry association websites typically have content on industry statistics that you can download for free without paying a membership fee. These pieces of content can give you helpful insight into the industry you’re prospecting. In last week’s article, we highlighted a few of these industries. Trade show websites also provide great sources to learn about the industry you’re investigating. Check out this list of trade associations to get started.

2. Add “top” or “best” to your web search to identify category leaders
It’s funny how most companies will describe their product or services as “top” or being the “best”—even when they are clearly not the best in their category. However, there are some legitimate sources that you can use to your advantage that will point you in the right direction. By simply adding ”best” to your search: best aircraft manufacturer, best hunting brands, top financial advisors, most purchased computer monitors, best doctors in Raleigh, best branding agencies, etc…, you’ll be able to figure out who the leaders are in any given category. This will provide you some framework into the industry you’re looking to do business with and a list of companies to go after.

3. Utilize your personal networks
If you know some people in the industry you are targeting, it doesn’t hurt to call them up and ask them a few questions. Maybe even take them to coffee. Here are some good questions to ask:

  • Where do you go for information? Blogs, newspapers, trade journals?
  • What are your biggest challenges?
  • Where do you acquire most of your customers?
  • Who are your customers?
  • Do you use social media?
  • Do you use Google for search?
  • What was the last topic you searched on?

By asking where your potential prospects spend time online (or offline) will help you understand how these people think and where you can focus your marketing and sales efforts in the future.

 4. Create relevant content
61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, and are more likely to buy from that company. (Source: Custom Content Council)

In order for your social prospecting efforts to gain traction, you must create content. Blogs are the first best place to start to attract prospects. Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. (Source: HubSpot State of Inbound, 2014) 

By creating a blog article zeroed in on prospective industry keywords and your ideal customers, you’ll have the ability to share your thoughts, tips and advice with those in the industry you hope to do business with—which creates value. If you have little information to draw upon—start with simple industry statistics. As you become more familiar with the category, more ideas on in-depth topics you can write about will emerge.

landing pageSecondly, create a downloadable offer like an ebook, whitepaper or case study. You can create a landing page on your website specifically targeting the keywords your prospects are using so your page shows up in search results. Using a form will allow you to capture inbound leads once a prospect decides to download your offer. Using inbound tactics saves an average of 13% in overall cost per lead. (Source: HubSpot State of Inbound, 2014) 

When you do reach out over email, social media or phone, your offer has already initiated some initial trust in the mind of your prospect. And with 57% of the purchasing process over before ever talking to sales, its important to make sure your website is up to snuff. (Source: Executive Board) 

[box type=”info” size=”large”]You are 70% more likely to get an appointment on an unexpected sale if you join LinkedIn Groups. (Source: Steve Richard, Co-Founder of Vorsight)[/box]

5. Social prospecting
The best place to prospect for new customers in a new industry is on social media. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are all great places to start looking for prospects once you know who the players are.

LINKEDIN
The professional network of LinkedIn boasts 225 million members. Top sellers use LinkedIn 6 hours per week. (Source: Jill Konrath)

Seek out industry groups on LinkedIn and join them. Notice what topics are being discussed and join in on the conversation. Share and comment on your potential prospects comments and content. This allows you to establish some thought leadership. Aim to be helpful. Find the names of people and their positions who are the decision makers—more on this below.

TWITTER
Twitter is best for understanding what your prospects are interested in. Use #hashtags to search topics, people and ideas. To find what hashtags your prospects are using, take a look at these top sites to speed the process:

Retweet, favorite and comment on those prospects you are trying to build a relationship with and create a list for those people and companies to organize your feeds.

FACEBOOK
With 1.35 billion users per month, Facebook works the same as Twitter and LinkedIn. Locate the companies you want to work with and “like” them. Comment, share and like the posts to show interest.

It’s important to understand that you must approach social prospecting with the mentality that you want to help—not sell. Any advances that are too “salesy” or aggressive, may put a bad taste in your prospects mouth. Take it slow at first; aim to connect on an emotional level, help and be authentic. The goal here is to warm your leads so that when you do post a blog article or send an email or call them, they’ll know who you are.

[box type=”info” size=”large”]Personal value has 2x as much impact as business value does, and 71% of B2B buyers who see personal value will purchase a product. (CEB)[/box]

6. Create a list of prospects using a CRM
Utilize a CRM tool to track your prospects. A great tool we use is Sidekick and HubSpot’s CRM. It allows us to streamline our information gathering and prioritize our leads and sales pipeline more efficiently.

CRM

In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in most buying decisions. (Source: Gartner Group) 

Hubspot’s CRM combined with Sidekick allows you to identify who your potential decision makers are, making your initial calls/contacts more productive.

7. Set SMART goals
No effort should take place without SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely). A good example of a SMART goal looks something like this:

  • Prospect 25 companies that includes the contact information of decision makers
  • Identify and connect on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
  • Close 2 customers by the end of Q215
  • Sales Goal: $50K

Combine SMART goals with your CRM to stay focused and consistent.

To wrap up, breaking into a new industry or vertical can be fun and exciting. Social media prospecting combined with some inbound marketing tactics like blogging, landing pages and content offers can build out your sales pipeline and allow you to make some strong inroads into a lucrative new industry.

 

Feb 01
Brand Loyalty Customer Retention

7 Ways To Build Brand Loyalty Through Customer Retention

By Brand Development

Business owners of small-mid sized B2C companies—or entrepreneurs getting their enterprise off the ground—know that there are certain things that must be done in order to guarantee long-term success. The things that have brought success in the past must continue—and improve over time. This typically revolves around acquiring more customers and retaining the ones you currently have.

However, we sometimes—in the hustle and bustle of running our businesses—loose sight and take our eye off the ball of managing our customer retention programs. We tend to rely heavily on our products superiority, thinking that if we deliver a great product, customers will follow. When this type of thinking occurs, it’s easy to get off track. And before you know it—customers begin to bail.

According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. And if those numbers don’t impress you, Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. 

Still not sold on customer retention?

One final statistic provided by Lee Resource Inc. should give you plenty to think about: Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer. (Source: Forbes)

In order to retain your customers and build brand loyalty, here are 7 things to keep in mind.

1. Do not over promise
It’s really easy in your marketing communications to bolster your value propositions that make your audience think that what you’re offering is the next best thing to sliced bread. Take extra care not to over promise your products key differentiators in an attempt to make your packaging and marketing more powerful. Focus on creating a brand image and supplement that with a message that doesn’t over promise to your customers.

If you can’t deliver on it, don’t promise it. And remember the old adage: “Under promise, over deliver.”

customer retention blackberry2. Cutting corners can be disastrous
In 2011, Blackberry’s (RIM) entire network of 70 million customers went down. This happened because Blackberry did not adequately prepare for their customers increased demand for video streaming.

“Industry insiders and former RIM staff say the company has been storing up problems for years through its approach to its system – and the outage was only to be expected.” (Source: The Gaurdian)

At some point, someone at RIM decided not to invest in new system upgrades most likely in attempt to save some money.

This cost Blackberry its brand and plenty of marketshare (10% in 2011 now down to only 1% in 2015) (Source: Business Insider)

Blackberry’s demise could have been avoided by not cutting corners and keeping a better eye on what their customers wanted.

3. Keep it simple
We all love Apple because their products are simple. In our fast-paced, I have no-time, gotta-run world—you must simplify your products and services in order for them to be relevant. Anything that requires an extensive learning curve, or a lot of time to figure your product out—will be given up on and lost in the noise. 

Keep your products simple. By removing as many extra steps as possible—you will provide a better product experience to your customer. It will also help you simplify your communications. 

brand loyalty4. Invest in your brand 
I bought a GPS/heart rate monitor a few years ago for $500 plus tax—a big investment for my triathlon training requirements. Through the course of my use, the face got scratched making it unreadable, the watchband broke several times and I had to replace the heart rate monitor strap 4 times. I decided to keep reinvesting in it, because to replace it would have cost me even more money. I logged onto to the products support site and found people having the same problems, but I still hung on to it. 

When I initially purchased the watch—I thought the brand was superior to that of its competitors and that it would give me an edge in my training. I knew I was buying the Mercedes of training watches—but in the end, I was disappointed and worse of all—angry. If the watch came with guaranteed product support and replacement, it may have sat a little better with me, even though I felt cheated, I didn’t desert the brand, and gave it three more chances. 

brand loyaltyThe lesson here is, by investing in brand development that positions your brand as superior—you can potentially retain your customers, even if they become unhappy. If you asked a Mercedes owner why they keep driving a car that needs to go to the shop for repairs every other month, they’d tell you: “because Mercedes is the best.” 

5. Provide over-the-top customer service
If you’ve ever been overcharged for something you know that it needs to be resolved right away. If you have to make your customers search for a customer service number and then give them a foreign speaking service rep who could care less about your problem, this will definitely cause customers to become angry. Over the top customer service must be provided at all times.

A great example of a company that provides over-the-top customer support is an enterprise hosting company called Rackspace. Their tagline: “Fanatical Support” says it all. They give their customers the assurance they need that when something goes wrong—you can get someone on the line right away and get an answer on the spot. Because of companies like Rackspace, the customer service paradigm has shifted. Everyone expects great customer service. 

6. Utilize social media to stay in contact
If your customers subscribe to your Facebook feed, they want to hear from you. By implementing an inbound marketing strategy you’ll have plenty of interesting content to share that keeps your customers engaged, informed and delighted. See the free resource below on more information about attracting customers with Facebook. 

If you’re not utilizing social media to build a following for your products, you’re missing a huge opportunity to drive traffic and increase revenue.

7. Let them know you’re thinking about them
It also doesn’t hurt to budget some perks for your customers from time to time. Not all marketing spend has to be on advertisements, direct mail and tradeshows. A great example happened to me a few months ago. I received a letter from Southwest Airlines for 4 free drinks next time we fly—that don’t expire till the end of this year. Next time I fly—guess who I’m booking with? Southwest.

It’s the little things that can make your customers very happy.

In conclusion, to build brand loyalty and retain your customers, don’t over promise or cut corners. Keep it simple, build a brand that holds on to them, provide over-the-top customer service, utilize social media to stay in contact and let them know you’re thinking about them once in a while.

Jan 29
How Inbound Can Grow Your Business

How Inbound Marketing Can Grow Your Business

By Business, Inbound Marketing

Business owners today are faced with many options and challenges on how to market their businesses and make their marketing dollars go farther. From the Yellow Pages (yp.com), Angie’s List, trade show events to glossy print ads—the options are endless. However, I want to introduce you to a relatively new marketing and sales methodology that can help address one of your business’ biggest challenges: growth.

In this article, I explain 5 high-level factors of inbound marketing to help you understand how to attract customers, grow your brand and your bottom line. Inbound marketing harnesses the power of your company’s website to generate traffic and leads, automate marketing, acquire customers and understand your cost per lead more effectively. If you’re new to the concept of inbound marketing, read: What is Inbound Marketing? first.

1. Grow by generating website traffic
The World Wide Web celebrated its 25th birthday this past March. Since its inception, it has revolutionized the way we do business. According to iMedia, 93% of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process.  93 percent! If you’re serious about generating traffic month after month—it’s absolutely critical that the products and services you provide can be found online by your prospective customers/clients/dealers.

 

inbound marketing traffic

Actual Inbound Marketing Traffic Generation Data: 157% Increase in traffic!

 

So, how do you get more traffic? Well, once again the options are endless. A good place to start is with inbound marketing’s approach to blogging. If you aren’t blogging, you’re missing out on what could be your biggest opportunity to generate traffic.

Take a look at these statistics:

  • Blog frequency impacts customer acquisition. 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2013)
  • The global population of blog readers keeps growing. (eMarketer, August 2010)
  • 81% of marketers rated their blog as useful or better. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing, 2013)
  • There are 31% more bloggers today than there were three years ago. (eMarketer, August 2010)
  • 46% of people read blogs more than once a day. (HubSpot Science of Blogging 2010)
  • Most people read 5-10 blogs. (HubSpot Science of Blogging, 2010)
  • Nearly 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing purposes. (eMarketer, August 2010)

As you can see, one sure fire way to generate traffic to your website is to tap into blogging. Blogging can expand your business’ digital footprint which, creates more opportunities to generate traffic. And with 60% of all organic clicks going to the top three search results; blogging will also contribute to higher rankings. Every blog post you create will continue to drive traffic to your website for the duration of its existence. 

You may be thinking, “we blog, but it doesn’t seem to help.” If your blog isn’t performing the way it should, you may be doing something wrong. Are you seeking to solve your customer’s problems, or do you use it for self-promotion? There is a big difference and each serves two different audiences. To blog effectively, you must seek to provide information that helps the people you are trying to attract. 

[easyembed field=”blogCTA”]

2. Grow by turning visits into leads
Now that you’re blogging correctly, it’s time to turn that traffic into leads. To capture leads, you must offer premium content in the form of webinars, whitepapers, ebooks or videos. By utilizing call-to-actions (CTAs), forms and landing pages, you create a method for gathering your prospect’s contact information so that you can understand their needs and better solve their problems. You also will begin to establish trust, gain credibility and thought leadership which is important to attracting customers/clients/dealers etc.

 

Inbound Marketing Lead Generation

Actual Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Data: 1150% increase!

 

inbound marketing3. Grow by marketing automation
To do inbound marketing effectively you will need marketing automation software. We recommend a tool like HubSpot that ties all your online marketing efforts together into one convenient web-based source. With HubSpot, you can automate a lot of the manual tasks like social media publishing, email and workflows. The Contacts feature in HubSpot allows you to understand the areas of interest on your website that your leads have visited—equipping you to have a more meaningful and impactful conversation with them. HubSpot’s Competitor analysis tool allows you to see what your competitors are up to and how to outrank them on the search engines. With a marketing automation tool like HubSpot, you will save time, energy and get the support you need to conduct a successful inbound marketing campaign.

4. Grow by turning leads into customers
Eventually—if you’ve followed points 1 through 3—your search engine rankings, blogging and social media following will increase over time and you’ll begin to see an increase in traffic and leads. 60% of the sales cycle is already over, once you’ve determined that a lead is ready to talk to you. It now becomes time to reach out personally if you feel they meet your qualifications and convert your lead into a customer.

So for example, you may send them an email asking them if they would like to set up an introductory phone call or you may choose to call them directly. Whatever method you choose, the prospect has already warmed to the idea of working with you and is interested in learning more about your products or services.

5. Grow by being smarter with your marketing dollars
Inbound marketing has shown a 62% reduction in cost per lead. (Source: Mashable) it makes it the perfect solution to save money and achieve your business goals cost effectively over time. Instead of investing heavily in outbound marketing methods like printed advertising, direct mail, billboard, radio, placards at bus stops or television ads, inbound provides the data, wherewithal and insight you need to make your marketing dollars work harder. Utilizing HubSpot’s Marketing Performance Module, you’ll be able to see how your marketing dollars are working and allow you to avoid the black box which is outbound marketing.

inbound marketing performance

Actual Inbound Marketing Performance

 

In conclusion, I’ve given you just a taste of how inbound marketing can grow your business by utilizing your website. Inbound marketing is a great solution for businesses trying to grow, stabilize or become more profitable. Its methodology enables you to generate traffic and leads, acquire new customers and provide ROI analysis to help you grow your business more profitably.

If you’re interested in learning more about inbound marketing please contact our Indianapolis or Denver Branding Agency for a complimentary inbound marketing assessment and begin growing your business today.

Jan 24
10 Secrets to better home page design

10 Secrets To Better Home Page Design

By Web Design

With only 3-5 seconds to capture your website visitor’s attention, your company’s home page is one of your most important pieces of brand real estate.

If you’re a business owner (or marketer), knowing the secrets to effective home page design is critical to success in the realm of inbound marketing. In this article, I’ll give you the recipe that will help you design a better home page that will decrease your bounce rates, improve customer conversions and improve your brand’s digital impression. 

To begin, there are 5 overarching secrets to building a better home page.

1. Cognitive fluency
home page web designCognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard.

Google researchers found that users judge a website as “beautiful” within 1/50th – 1/20th of a second. “Visually complex” websites are consistently rated as “less than beautiful” as their simpler counterparts.

Let me an illustrate an example. Have you ever gone on a blind date?

As soon as you open the door — you’re able to within 1/50th of a second determine if the person standing before you is attractive or not. 

Websites work a lot like a blind date. You punch in a keyword not knowing what to expect until the page loads—and when the page finally loads—you either bounce away in horror or you pleasantly choose to stay—gazing at the beautiful layout in front of you. 

When designing your home page, simple = beautiful. 

2. Simple navigation
Simple navigation keeps the home page clean and gets your visitor to where they want to go quickly. Try to keep your navigation to an absolute minimum. Design your website’s architecture in a way that doesn’t detract from your overall goal. Notice the examples in this article. The examples shown have 3-5 navigation topics max.

Website Homepage Design3. Relevant color scheme
Keep your colors appropriate and in context to your industry. Do you need a dark color palette to convey luxury—or a more lighthearted palette to show approachability? Know what colors are used in your industry for maximum appeal. Find out more about your buyer persona to get an understanding of what will resonate with your target audience.

4. Streamlined next steps
What do you want your customer to do when they are on your website? Download an ebook? Contact you? Map out what you want them to do next. Don’t leave your visitor hanging. Think for them and move them through the buyer awareness stage using strong call to actions (CTA’s).

Now that you know the 5 overarching factors for a successful home page design, now you need to know the 5 elements and how they are implemented.

5. Logo

Your logo design serves as the anchor point for your website and communicates your company’s credibility and trust. Eye patterns start from top left and go down toward the right. An interesting and professional logo makes a great first impression. 

Website-Homepage-Design-Saucony6. Main image = main message

Next is your main image with the main idea that you want to communicate. Your message should be short and succinct. Be clear, not clever. Your imagery should position your brand accordingly and be tied to your main message. The image should be creative and eye catching. This is your chance to “stick” your visitor to your site. If someone hits your site and immediately bounces off, it’s because your message was not clear and they found your site unexciting or irrelevant.

7. Service offerings

Scrolling down—you should now tell your visitors what you offer and how you can help them. Make sure the text is written for them. By accurately defining your buyer persona, you’ll be able to talk their language in a way that grabs their attention and presents the impression that you understand them. This works in your favor to convince them you’re the company for the job.

8. Why work with you?
Next, you want to present the reasons why someone would want to work with you. These should be the top 3-4 things that separate you from your competitors and distinguish your brand. Make the reasons compelling enough and link to the areas of your website for more information and to track engagement.


Website-Homepage-Design-Hubspot9. Social proof
People tend to follow people. By showing social proof that people like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter can lend real validity to your above claims. If possible, showcase real customer testimonials with faces. This is the icing on the cake for presenting a credible narrative by showing others who you’ve helped.

10. Load time & responsiveness
Users want sites that load fast and that are responsive (iPad, iPhone and Desktop). By keeping your content simple and optimizing your images correctly you can decrease load times. If you’ve hired a web design company to build your site—ask them about load times and if they use content distribution networks (CDN), browser caching and if they will minify javascript and CSS for a faster loading home page. Below are some interesting stats on load times according to MOZ.

  • If your site loads in 5 seconds it is faster than approximately 25% of the web
  • If your site loads in 2.9 seconds it is faster than approximately 50% of the web
  • If your site loads in 1.7 seconds it is faster than approximately 75% of the web
  • If your site loads in 0.8 seconds it is faster than approximately 94% of the web

See how your website stacks up at: Pingdom

In conclusion, knowing the secrets for better home page design will ensure lower bounce rates and attention grabbing messaging you need to move your customer further down your sales funnel for customer conversion. These factors when taken into account will turn your website into a revenue generating machine.

 

Nov 20

3 Tips to Growing Your Brand in the Age of Inbound Marketing

By Brand Development, Inbound Marketing

The age of inbound marketing is here, and the rules have changed in regards to growing your company’s brand.

With so much content being created at break-neck speed, it’s important for your brand to have a clearly defined position so that your content is relevant, speaks to the right audience and achieves your business goals.

Marketers are shifting their budgets away from “interruption” advertising, and increasing their inbound marketing budgets (Source: HubSpot). Inbound marketing is changing how brands communicate.

Consider these statistics: 

  • 86% of people skip television ads. (source: Mashable)
  • Because 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, they are also more likely to buy from that company. (Source: Custom Content Council)
  • 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them. (Source: McMurry/TMG)
  • 4% more leads are generated by inbound than by outbound. (Source: HubSpot) 

In the age of inbound marketing, here are 3 tips to help grow your brand.

Tip #1: Establish yourself as a visible expert.

What is a visible expert? A visible expert is someone within an industry who focuses on a particular niche that he/she is known for. Studies have shown that 62% of visible experts accrue brand building benefits for their companies. (Source: Hinge Research Institute) Through specialization, content marketing, speaking engagements and book publications—you can boost your visible expert profile and attract more clients and customers.

Examples of some visible experts include: Darmesh Shah (Inbound Marketing, HubSpot), Karl Rove (Political Consultant, American Crossroads), Gary Vaynerchuck (Social Media, Vayner Media) and Warren Buffet (Investing, Berkshire Hathaway).

By establishing yourself as a recognized visible expert within your industry—you are able to charge higher fees, attract more leads and grow your company faster.

LinkedIn is a highly effective channel to building visible expert status for the purpose of distributing your content and building your company’s brand.

Tip #2: Help. Don’t sell.

By creating relevant and valuable content that answers your customers most burning questions first—you build trust and credibility that earns you their interest, time and attention.

According to Marketo, 93% of B2B buyers begin their buying process using Internet search. By optimizing your blog articles, downloadable ebooks and whitepapers for search engines and social media networks, you pull customers to your brand through your content. 68% of consumers are likely to spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in. (Source: The CMA) By optimizing your content for search engines you have greater opportunities to attract customers, build your brand and promote your content through social media shares and likes that educates your prospects faster and can potentially shorten your sales cycle.

Tip #3: Perfect your messaging.

One of the greatest challenges in marketing is crafting the right messaging. How do you know if your messaging will resonate? Most companies don’t have large marketing budgets to test market. In the age of inbound marketing, you can dial in your brand messaging faster by conducting A/B testing—easier and cheaper—to find out what messages resonate with your target customers. By finding out what title or blog post gets the most traffic and social shares, you can begin to dial in your brand messaging that makes your marketing more effective.

In conclusion, by utilizing the above three tips of establishing yourself as a visible expert, helping—not selling, and utilizing A/B testing to dial in your messaging—you’ll have greater success in growing your brand more efficiently in the age of inbound marketing.

Interested in learning if Inbound Marketing is right for your business? Please contact us for a free inbound marketing assessment. 

 

 

Nov 07
The-6-Hurdles-Of-Inbound-Marketing

The 6 Hurdles Of Inbound Marketing

By Inbound Marketing

 Thinking about pulling the trigger on inbound marketing? Have you taken the time to consider what it will take to make your investment pay off?

There is no doubt that there is a lot of buzz surrounding inbound marketing with over 78% of CMO’s thinking custom content is the future of marketing. 

But before you and your team dive in—there are 6 hurdles you need to consider before committing to inbound that could make or break your investment.

1. Education
It takes time to learn how to do inbound marketing correctly. You must understand the inbound methodology of Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. 

There are 8 activities that are attached to each one of these components: Blogging, SEO, Social Media, Content Offers, CTAs, Landing Pages, Email and Lead Nurturing (Work Flows).

Then there’s the sales funnel you must perfect once you get the prospect on the line. All of these things need to be understood to successfully manage an inbound marketing campaign.

inbound marketing icons

To get trained on inbound marketing, checkout HubSpot Academy.

2. Time
Inbound marketing takes 6-12 months to start seeing viable results. This could be faster depending on your industry. Industries who have yet to engage in inbound marketing stand to profit the most (construction, engineering, certain sectors of technology, healthcare, medical device, transportation and manufacturing just to name a few). You will need to blog at least 1-2x per week, create content offers, curate content, interact with your followers, comment on posts, read and research as well as manage all of the activities from hurdle 1. You will need at least 10-15 hours minimum to conduct inbound effectively. If you don’t have that kind of time, an inbound marketing agency can help you split the workload.

3. Consistency
Without consistency in your blogging your results will fall short. Google demands fresh and relevant content. By updating and optimizing your blog weekly—with relevant and valuable content—your website’s search engine rankings will climb and you’ll begin to generate more traffic—which equals more leads—that lead to customers. 

inbound marketing sales funnel4. Analyzing
After you get your inbound engine humming, you’ll need to have an in-depth analytical tool to understand how your efforts are performing. We recommend a time-saving tool like HubSpot to quickly understand your analytics. 

5. Getting traction
There will be months were you will feel like you’re going backwards. Then all of sudden, a post will go viral and traffic spikes 500% and the leads poor in. I think in all of the campaigns I’ve seen, there are two to three months when you begin to question your commitment. The best way to get traction is to be consistent and keep going even when it gets tough. Write your blog posts with personality, pick topics that solve your customer’s problems and spend time promoting your content effectively. Eventually things will pick up, so don’t fret. Planning budget for PPC is a good idea when the going gets tough.

6. Price
Obviously price is always a hurdle. HubSpot pricing can be out of range for most startups and small businesses. However, by making the investment and putting some skin in the game—the time you save will be more than worth it. HubSpot’s all-in one-platform brings all the tools you need into one portal so you can effectively manage all your inbound activities at once.

When you factor in your marketing budget on alternative outbound methods like trade show, email blasts, buying lists, cold-calling, printed ads, radio or banner ads—inbound still provides the lowest cost-per-lead and delivers 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing. Inbound also provides the only systematic way to forecast sales, measure your brand and grow your business.  

Content marketing facts

  1. $135 billion will be spent on new digital marketing collateral (content) in 2014
  2. 78% of CMO’s think custom content is the future of marketing
  3. Internet advertising will make up 25% of the entire ad spend by 2015
  4. Social media marketing budgets will double over the next 5 years
  5. Email with social sharing buttons increase click-through rates by 158%
  6. Nearly 50% of companies have content marketing strategies
  7. 33% of traffic from Google’s organic search engine results go to the first item listed
  8. 67% of B2B content marketers consider event marketing essential
  9. 73% of reporters think press releases should contain images
  10. 72% of “Pay per Click” marketers plan to increase their budget in 2014
  11. 52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook in 2013
  12. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads
  13. 43% of all marketers found a customer via LinkedIn
  14. 55% of marketers worldwide increased digital marketing budgets in 2013
  15. Customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness for content marketers at 89%
  16. Videos on landing pages increase conversions by 86%
  17. 65% of your audience are visual learners
  18. Marketers will use dynamic content to deliver highly personalized experiences to the right audiences at the right time
  19. Inbound marketing delivers 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing
  20. Visual data is processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text.

SOURCE: Jeff Bullas 

inbound marketing trafficInbound marketing is not for everyone, but the up-side far outweighs the down-side. We’ve been doing inbound with HubSpot since January of 2014 and our results have been amazing. I’ve been very happy with our growth—this is coming from someone who works in the ultra-competitive marketing industry working in the Indianapolis and Denver markets.

Interested in learning if Inbound Marketing is right for your business? 

Sep 30

Do I Really Need A Brand Strategy?

By Brand Development

Maybe you’ve just come out with some disruptive technology or game-changing gadget.

Or maybe your business has been around for a while and you’ve realized that to compete in today’s environment, you need to focus more on your reputation or brand. 

Do you really need a brand strategy?

Your customers, clients, employees, partners already have some kind of feeling, thought or understanding of you or your product/service—negative or positive.

The truth is… a brand already exists, even if you’ve never taken the time to develop your brand.

Below are 9 surprising facts that you may not have considered in regards to your brand development strategy.

1. Make it easier for the customer to buy

Customers make decisions on products they know and trust. If a customer is not familiar with your brand, they are less likely to buy it.


Think of the last time you were in the grocery store and you had to pick up some pickles. Vlasic—the pickle category leader—was not on the shelf. Do you buy the “I’ve never heard of you” brand of pickles—or forgo the pickles altogether? Most likely, you’ll wait till the next grocery trip or go to another store. Brands help us make buying decisions.

2. Make it easier for the sales team to sell
Having a strong brand reputation in the marketplace will allow your sales team to close more sales based on brand performance alone. A reputation for service, quality and the ability to solve your customer’s problem will be more likely received and sought after.


3. Brand clarity and delivery spurs employee motivation

Brands give your employees purpose. Having a clear cultural direction, goal and mission based on your brand values will create higher performance and productivity.


4. Increase the value of your company over time
Brands are line items on today’s most valued companies. The Coca-Cola brand alone accounts for 51 percent of the stock market value of the Coca-Cola Company. (Source: Brandchannel) 

5. Brand definition brings clarity to your business goals and direction
Having trouble getting along? The brand development process will get you and your key stakeholders on the same page that will align and foster greater cooperation.

6. The brand development exercise creates innovation

Most of us are so busy we sometimes just go through the motions in our businesses day after day with the mentality of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it attitude.” By purposefully sitting down and thinking about your brand and business you will give yourself and your team time to create new processes, products, services and other ideas that will drive innovation. This is time well spent.

7. Saves money on future design and advertising costs
Instead of reinventing the wheel every time that new ad needs to be placed or package redesigned, your brand standards will provide a guideline for consistency that creates visual recall and recognition.

8. A strong brand creates preference which, equals profit

By consistently delivering the same value, service and quality—along with the same visual identifiers—you begin to create preference and repeat customers. This is called “branding.” The goal of brand development is to create preference.

9. Attract talented employees
In today’s war for talent—companies are struggling to find talented and skilled workers. Those with strong employer brands coupled with a strong corporate brand will win.

10. Provides the foundation of you marketing efforts
Without a brand strategy, it will be very difficult to focus your inbound marketing efforts. The absence of your customer’s buyer personas, key messaging and brand-centric visuals will make any marketing effort less effective. 

So, do you need a brand strategy?

Well, if any of the above points appeal to you—I would say yes—brand development can help. Even if competition is non-existent—you eventually will need to develop your brand, if not direct it in some way. We have in any given category 10-20 of everything (toothpaste, cars, shoes, dishwashing soap, law firms, construction companies, healthcare providers etc.) by having a well-defined brand, you will be able to compete at a higher level than your competition and build a valuable asset for the future.  

Sep 25
Brand-Development-Interview-Guide

How To Create A Brand Development Interview Guide

By Brand Development

To discover what your brand stands for—you must start by asking your customers/clients the right questions.

By asking the wrong questions, you can completely miss the most important insights of how people view and feel about your brand.

As a marketer, you may have been tasked to rebrand your company or improve your brand’s performance. Within the brand development process one of the best ways to understand if your message and reputation is where you want it to be—is to interview your stakeholders and customers or clients.

In this article, I’ll share six points that will help you ask the right questions to accurately identify your customers/client’s perceptions, beliefs, feelings and motives. Your findings will give you a rich insight into how your brand is perceived and will equip you to build a more effective brand.  

 Brand interviews should consist of the following: 

  1. Basic demographic information
  2. Brand experiences
  3. Brand understanding
  4. Frequented marketing channels
  5. Feedback on how to improve the brand’s product or service.

The interview should only last about 30 minutes and consist of 10-15 questions (max). It may be necessary to create three different questionnaires depending on whom you’re interviewing. As an example, customer questions will be different than partner or internal stakeholder questions.

So let’s dig in…

1. Understand your industry’s challenges
To begin forming your questions, begin by looking at your industry. Every industry has some kind of challenge. Identify what those challenges or pain points are. Here are a few examples: 

  • Healthcare — regulation
  • Medical Device  — limited creative
  • Estate Planning — customer retention
  • Construction — antiquated processes
  • Retail — customer interest
  • Utilities — customer service

To get some background, start by doing some internet research to familiarize yourself with common industry obstacles and category imperatives. Twitter is a great place to start to locate industry news sources. This will give you a good foundation and help you in drafting your initial list of questions.

2. Interview your brand’s key stakeholders
The second step is to benchmark your investigation. Start with your company’s key stakeholders. This may include the CEO, COO, CTO and Sales Director. A lot of times, they will have insight that you may not have known or realized. Make sure to schedule your time via email well in advance. Try to pick a day where they are not too busy. Be aware and prepared to answer any potential skepticism. Their answers will give you a foundation of knowledge to test against.

[box type=”info” size=”large”]Interview Tip: Occasionally, you’ll encounter a cold facade that you’ll have to break through to get to the real truth. Don’t accept just any answer if you feel the answer given is too shallow, rephrase and ask it later on.[/box]

3. Interview your brand’s customers
To begin the customer survey, get buy-in from your stakeholders to conduct the interview and get feedback on the questions you want to ask. The best place to start is with your social media followers as they have already opted in to receive communication from you. Depending on how large of company you are, you may be able to personally email your customers to arrange the interviews.

Don’t rule out those passive-silent customers/clients. Their experiences with your brand are just as important to understand as those following you on social media. Make sure you have a variety of people to draw from. Interview your happiest customers as well as the ones who have constant complaints.

Interview Tip: You will encounter difficulty with scheduling.  I suggest asking 2-3 interviewees at a time over the course of 2-3 days. Use a tool like Sidekick to ensure your emails are received.

Interview 15-20 people (or as many as you can as time allows) and make sure to follow the same format throughout. If you are a bigger company, you may want to hire a marketing research firm. Remember, the better the questions, the better your investigation will be.

It may be necessary to send out an online survey through Survey Monkey for larger samples. 

Interview Tip: Don’t ask leading questions, focus your questions on getting a specific answer, don’t interrupt and try to transition naturally.

4. Analyze your answers
After you’ve completed each individual interview, write your responses on a whiteboard of what stood out to you and begin to look for potential trends.

5. Create your buyer personas
What is a buyer persona? Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They are based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what your customers/clients say it is.

By creating buyer personas, you will be able to focus your brand’s messaging, content and visuals to your customers/clients more effectively.

6. Brand alignment
As your interviews come to conclusion—your brand should begin to rise to the top. You should begin to see differences between what your company says versus what your customers say about your brand. 

The interviews will prepare you to conduct an educated and insightful brand discovery session where you will drill more into the internal side and business strategy of the brand. More to come on this later…

In conclusion, to begin the development of your brand, start by conducting industry research online, interview your key stakeholders, interview your customers, analyze your responses for misalignment and look for trends. Create your buyer personas to laser focus your messaging, visual and content.

 

Sep 19
How-can-long-tail-keywords-help-my-business

How Can Long-Tail Keywords Help My Business?

By Inbound Marketing, SEO

Did you know that if your website ranks within the top three listings on Google—your chances of getting clicked on is 6 times higher? Google refers to this as the golden triangle. See below.

For small business owners or start-ups trying to find a cost-effective marketing solution to generate revenue, attaining top 3 rankings on Google could mean the difference between stagnant or explosive growth.

Google controls almost 68% of all web search traffic (87% mobile) — Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide. (Source: Internet Live)

Bing is second with 18.7% and Yahoo third with 10%. (Source: Search Engine Land). 

google heat map

If you’re website ranks in the 4th-10th position or is listed on the second page—your chances of being found drops considerably.

So how does one make it into the golden triangle?

Well luckily, due to changing consumer behavior—93% of all B2B and 83% of all B2C purchases begin with an online search (Source: Business 2 Community). Most of these queries are in the form of a question that contains more than one keyword.

 

What is a keyword?
Keywords consist of concise phrases that are one to three words long. Keywords can be anything that describes what you do: category, service, product, brand, location or person.

Here are some example keywords with their estimated monthly search volume: 


  • graphic design (74,000) 
  • realtor (70,000)
  • weight loss (1,500,000)
  • swimming pool (49,500) 
  • brand development (1,000) 
  • cars (1,500,000)

The terms above are highly trafficked and extremely difficult to rank for.

Keywords should always be placed in the title of your website and sprinkled into the copy of your content—but only if it makes sense. Write copy for people, not search engines.

What makes keywords difficult to rank for?
Keywords with a difficulty of 60 or higher (on a scale of 1-100) are highly competitive because there are hundreds or even thousands of competitors in one given category. The more companies fighting for the same keyword, the harder it is to rank.

What is a long-tail keyword?
Long-tail keywords are more conducive of today’s user behavior and easier to rank for. After all, if you have a question—whom do you ask? Today, a rising majority of people turn to Google.

Long-tail keywords add more keywords to the base phrase and are typically created by stating a question. So using our terms above, this is how long-tail keywords look:

As you can see, by adding 2-3 more keywords (adjectives, nouns or verbs), to your string—you can potentially move your web pages, blogs or landing pages higher up in search engine results.

How to choose the right keywords?
Relevance is key in choosing keywords. Make sure when choosing your keywords you select the ones that most closely describe your product or service. Another method that should be considered is adding a location. By adding a location like Denver or Indianapolis, you concentrate your results to a specific geographic location. This can align your search engine rankings to local competitors and bypass national or global competitors which tend to be harder to rank against.

Here are a few tools to help you choose the right keywords:

long-tail keyword searchWordtracker
The best place to start with understanding what keywords you should go for is Wordtracker. Wordtracker gives you the ability to start with a seed keyword that in turn gives you results based on that term. It will also provide search volume and competition. So for example, if I search for “types of lemurs.” See right.

HubSpot
HubSpot’s keyword tool displays the same information as Wordtracker, but is much easier to use. We use HubSpot for all of our keyword research and analysis. It allows us to track our keyword progress as keywords climb in rankings and allow us to see what our competitors are up to. It also shows us other keyword opportunities that may exist.

The concepts of keywords are fairly easy to grasp, but knowing where to start is the first step.

With a little understanding of how long-tail keywords work, you can begin attracting visitors to your web pages–even in highly competitive categories.

So how do I use long tail keywords?
It all starts with a blog. If you’re not consistently updating your blog on a regular basis, and are competing for competitive keywords, it’s going to be very difficult to rank. You may try Pay Per Click—which is paid advertising on Google—but chances are those keywords will be very expensive.

How do I track progress?
There are several free tools out there to help you track your keyword’s progress. Google Analytics is a free service you can install on your website. A paid version we recommend is Counter Central. Google and other search engines typically crawl your website once a month looking for updates. Recently, its been noted that this is done on a weekly basis. Check back once a week and record your progress. Here are some additional tips to speed up your crawl rate. 

To get started with long-tail keywords and blogging, check out the free resource below. Good luck!

 

 

 

Aug 31
How-To-Plan-and-Build-an-Automated-Lead-Nurturing-Workflow

How To Plan and Build an Automated Lead Nurturing Workflow

By Inbound Marketing

 

Your campaign doesn’t end when leads convert on your landing page. Understanding your buyer’s journey from Awareness to Consideration to Decision is critically important in setting up lead nurturing workflows.

marketing-lifecycle-buyers-journey

What is a workflow?
Workflows give you the ability to automate your marketing to actual people, not just clicks and opens. A workflow tool is included in most marketing automation platforms like HubSpot.

What is lead nurturing?
Lead nurturing is a workflow of engaging contacts via automated touches (email) to build a relationship; with the end goal of closing a more educated and qualified customer. When engaging in lead nurturing, you need to be aware of three principles that will make them effective.

Each workflow should address the following:

Grow and nurture relationships – Ask yourself, is this adding value to the contact or is it self-serving?

Educational content – Does this content help or educate your contact?

Hyper-personalization – Try to personalize your workflows as much as possible. This is also called segmentation. As an example, don’t send emails meant for C-Suite executives to mid-level managers. Create and tailor content based on your buyer persona.

Lead nurturing is especially effective for businesses that offer complex products and services. Lead nurturing helps educate your prospect by spoon feeding them information in a way that educates them slowly that doesn’t overwhelm them; with the end goal of moving them from awareness to decision.

Here are some facts as to why lead nurturing is important:

  • 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
  • Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Source: Gleanster Research)
  • Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. (Source: InsideSales.com)
  • 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
  • Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)
  • Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research)
  • A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. (Source: MarketingSherpa)
  • Today, customers manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human. (Source: Gartner Research)

In this post, I give you 5 best practices for automating your lead nurturing workflows.

1. Identify the goal of the workflow
The most popular goal of any workflow is based around the marketing lifecycle. Your focus will be on moving your contact to the next stage of the lifecycle.

So for example, a workflow goal would look something like this:

  • Goal = Download Whitepaper
  • Goal = Contact attends webinar
  • Goal= Visits x number pages on your website
  • Goal= Contact request demo
  • Goal= Contact signs contract

Workflow Sales FunnelTo the right is a sample workflow that overlays the sales funnel and buyers lifecycle with the inbound marketing methodology. We will discuss the types of email to send once the contact opts in to the sales funnel shortly. The goal of this workflow is to move them through your workflow in an effort to build trust—so that they achieve your end goal. In this example the end-goal is: request a demo.

2. Identify contacts that should be enrolled in your workflow
When designing your workflows, make sure to enroll the correct personas. This can be done through your landing page forms by requiring your visitor to self-identify. See Landing Page Best Practices.

3. Select the appropriate number and type of emails to send
To identify the appropriate number of emails you should send, breakdown the types of email into 4 classes:

1. Email 1: Goal = Build trust/condition
The purpose of this type of email is to build trust and relevancy. Make sure whatever you send, it’s something your contact will find useful. The email should also reference why you’re reaching out to them and provide some useful blog links (this is a great way to drive additional traffic to your website). When executed correctly, you’ll begin to build trust that will help condition them to open future emails. Keep your emails short and simple, make sure the subject line is relevant to the action the contact took, always include a link back to the page they signed up on and personalize it. Delay 4 days from first touch.

2. Email 2: Goal = Additional downloads
Once you’ve establish some level of trust, you want to begin to draw a connection between the topic of your workflow and your solution. This could be in the form of whitepapers, ebooks, webinars or case studies. You allow them to consume your resources to further understand your organizations value. At this stage you are not yet selling them. You are still building trust. Delay 4 days from second touch.

3. Email 3 & 4: Goal = Soft/Hard Goal
By now, your contacts that are engaged will trust you and are beginning to understand the value of your organization and how you will solve their problem. You’ve probably seen them on your website a few more times—these are signals of a qualified lead. Now is the time to position your goal of the workflow (request a demo) as the next logical step for the contact to take. Position this step as part of the discovery process by focusing on delivering more detail on how you can specifically help them. At this point, they should be interested in talking to you and signing up for a demo. Delay 3 days from third touch.

4. Email 5: Goal = Breakup/Goal Action
The break-up email is designed to make it clear that this is the last email they will be receiving in conjunction with the type of emails they’ve been getting. Our goal with this email is to make one last-ditch effort to complete your goal (request a demo). Let them know this is the last email, and ask them to subscribe to your blog. Believe it or not, a P.S. works well here. Delay 3 days from fourth touch.


4. A word on timing
Timing is always important when nurturing your leads. You can easily upset people by emailing them too much or too little. There is a delicate balance when playing with the timing of your emails. Experiment with what times work best. Do not email your contact every day otherwise you’ll get flagged for spam. A safe place to start is one email every week for 4 weeks.

5. Identify contacts to suppress from your workflow
When setting up your lead nurturing workflows make sure to exclude any current customers, opportunities, competitors or contacts were a specific product or service is not relevant.

What if a contact just bypasses the whole workflow and calls me? Sometimes, a contact will just call you after spending some time on your website and bypass the entire workflow. Continue to follow the workflow and be prepared to tweak it slightly. The goal is still to educate them and distinguish your services from potential competitors they may be evaluating.

In conclusion, the lead nurturing process always starts with a desired end goal. Each email should be educational, simple and short, personalized and timed correctly. Each stage of the buyer’s lifecycle should be kept in mind as you move your contact to the next stage. By conducting lead nurturing you can expect to send your sales team more “sales-qualified” leads and close more business.

Aug 27
Landing Page Best Practice for Lead Generation

Landing Page Design Best Practices

By Inbound Marketing

Did you know that businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages get 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages? Businesses surveyed saw a 55% increase in leads when they increased the number of landing pages from 10 to 15.

A landing page is a key component to any lead generation effort. 

With 55% of the sales process over before a visitor even contacts you, you want to make sure that when your website has done its job of providing the right information and impression that you have landing pages in place to move that visitor into your sales funnel.

In this article, I’ll give you 6 keys to designing a successful landing page that will have you converting visitors to leads more effectively in no time.

1. What is a landing page?
A landing page is a stand alone web page—that functions to gather visitor information in exchange for a piece of relevant content.  Content can come in the form of a whitepaper, webinar, video or ebook. Visitors and leads are key performance indicators (KPI) that help determine if your inbound marketing offers are effective or not. The goal of any landing page is to convert visitors to leads so that you can identify a potential problem they are trying to solve, while moving them down into your sales funnel where the end-result is a new customer or client.

2. Why landing pages work
Remember the last time you went to a restaurant where the menu was ten pages long—and it took you ten minutes to decide what you wanted to order? I think we can all relate… This is called “analysis paralysis.” Analysis paralysis is where a person has too many choices to make. Landing pages zero in on one or two actions you want your visitor to take. This cuts down on the time and thinking it requires to make a decision. The rule in website design  “don’t make me think” applies here.  The fewer choices a visitor has, the faster you can capitalize on getting their contact information.

Landing Page Best Practices3. Seven elements of an effective landing page
A landing page should consist of only a few elements (see right)

  1. Descriptive headline
  2. Brief paragraph of the offer
  3. Picture of the offer
  4. Bullet points on what they can expect to learn
  5. Urgency statement
  6. A short form-typically only 4-5 fields
  7. Submit button
  8. Social proof (testimonial)

By utilizing the above 7 elements you can more effectively convert your visitor into a lead.

4. Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t add navigation from your homepage 
By adding navigation to your landing page you provide a distraction that could hinder conversation rates. Better to leave it off.  

Don’t have more than 5 form fields
Studies have shown the more fields you have the less likely your visitor is to fill it out. Gather only the information you need for the first touch. There will be more opportunity to gather more information with the next offer. 

Don’t design pages that load slow
Over 40% of visitors will abandon a page if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds or less. Make sure your pages load fast. Use this helpful tool to measure your load times: Web Page Test

Do add meta tags to optimize your pages
You want your landing pages to show up in search engines so it’s important to optimize them correctly. Use an appropriate <title> tag and <description> along with body copy and images.

Do add a thank you page
After your visitor has filled out the form, make sure to redirect them to a thank you page that reiterates the offer and give them back your website’s navigation. Ask them to share or follow.

Do send an email
Once a visitor fills out your form, make sure to send an email with a link to download the offer so you increase your visibility and you have a presence in their inbox to reference.

5. Test your landing pages
Typical industry conversion rates fluctuate somewhere between 1% – 5%. Top performing landing pages come in at 10% or higher. Every landing page should be maximized by A/B testing. To conduct an A/B test, create two versions of your landing page and then change the headline, copy, colors, image placement and form length.  Track to see what page performs best. By tweaking a few elements, you can increase your conversion rate dramatically. You won’t know till you try!

6. Take your lead generation efforts to the next level
To take your lead generation and landing pages to the next level, I recommend marketing automation software to help you systematize, test and create landing pages—making it easier and saving you time. Companies that automate lead generation and management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months. (Source: Gartner Research)

By not utilizing marketing automation, you will spend a lot of time piecing together the various tools needed like email software, analytics, forms and a content management system to put together one landing page.

We use a tool called HubSpot, which is an all-in-one tool that helps us create, optimize and test landing pages quickly. It saves time, tracks our data and helps us prove ROI to our clients more effectively.

In conclusion, maximizing landing page performance is key to generating leads and filling the sales funnel with viable, qualified leads.

If you’re interested in learning more, download the resource below that discusses landing pages more in-depth and 29 other ways to generate leads online.