Tag: Inbound marketing

Guy Kawasaki has a clever quote on Inbound Marketing. It goes like this:

“If you have more money than brains, spend it on outbound marketing but if you have more brains then money, spend it on inbound marketing”.

Let’s take a look at inbound marketing HubSpot style…

 

With all due respect to Guy, inbound marketing may be smarter, but many of the top tier inbound marketing ‘suites’ still carry a hefty price tag. Here are 4 that emphasize content marketing and curation that come to mind [listed most expensive first]:

My own ‘e1evation workflow‘ on the other hand costs less than $25 per year if you know what you’re doing and all the products used meet the following criteria:

  • Best in class
  • Free or freemium
  • Completely cross platform down to the smartphone level

Great inbound marketing doesn’t have to cost and arm and a leg. Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation. Remember, the key is to get found when people are looking for you and what you do and that doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg!

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I had a great connect with an old friend who is a real estate rockstar in Barrington, IL. She’s not willing to accept anything less than being the dominant player in her industry and she’s looking at social media as a way to help her accomplish her objectives. Couldn’t help but think of her when I saw this article…

“Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

It used to be that you could efficiently grow your businesses by interrupting potential customers with outbound marketing methods like cold calls, email spam, and advertising. Today people and businesses are tired of being the targets of so much outbound marketing and they’re getting better and better in blocking it out.

At the same time, people and businesses have fundamentally changed the way they shop and learn, turning more and more to Google, social media sites and blogs to find what they want. Inbound marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts by helping them get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn. The following are Brian’s five steps to help you get “get found.”” Source: How to Get Found : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

You can go to the source and read more, but just in case, those 5 ways are:

  1. Be remarkable
  2. Create content
  3. Optimize content
  4. Promote content
  5. Measure results

As for my old friend, she certainly has 1 and 2 down cold — I’m hoping to get the chance to help her with numbers 3-5… ;-)

In the meantime you can use the site tools [comments, contact form, call button] to contact me if YOU are an entrepreneur who wants to be found!

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It’s always easier to just buy an ad.  There are people that will take your money and use it to produce a commercial, tv spot or print ad.  People will see your ad and a few of them may even come into your store if your ad has a good call to action or a coupon.  There is a problem with that strategy.  There’s an easier way that takes more work.  How can something be easier and take more work?

It’s more work to…

…gather contact information for all of your current clients or members.

…communicate with them about things other than your organization, store or “sale of the century”.

…talk to individuals instead of buying an ad for the masses.

But it’s easier to…

…get information of your current clients than to get information from strangers.

…talk about what’s important to their lives if you’re listening  on their terms (Facebook or Twitter come to mind).

…talk to individuals and get a response than to buy an ad and get the attention of the masses.

As with all things worth while it’s easier in the long run if you do more work in the beginning.

Stop throwing money at the masses and start talking to individuals.

via andytraub.com

Nice post by Andy Traub. For me, it’s like Guy Kawasaki says ““If you have more Money than brains, you should focus on Outbound Marketing. If you have more Brains than money, you should focus on Inbound Marketing.” [Just in case you’re not sure, ads are outbound, social media is inbound.] One of the things I love about social media marketing is that it takes more time than money! All of us are working hard in the current economy but imho, the smart ones are channeling that effort into inbound marketing in the form of social media. Questions? Feedback?

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A little while ago I wrote a post about 20 great Facebook Fan Pages. Most of the HubSpot blog readers found the examples eye-catching and inspiring, but many of the comments contained a similar yearning to see if these same concepts could be applied to B2B businesses.

Like the general idea of Inbound Marketing can be applied to both B2C and B2B companies, so too can the Facebook marketing techniques portrayed in the previous examples. In order to understand how to incorporate these principles into a B2B Facebook Fan Page we must first make sure that we understand the objective of these pages.

Engage Your Audience

One of the main reasons that people “Like” a page is because they want to stay up to date with the latest happenings at a particular company. Just like a company blog, if your Facebook Fan Page is rarely updated then people aren’t going to have much incentive to “Like” your page. It’s not only important to update your page with relevant company info, but also interesting goings-ons in your industry.

Encourage Sharing with Others

Other ways to engage your audience include holding contests or offering specials to fans. People love free stuff, and contests and specials are a great way to encourage fans to share your page with others. It is very common for friend’s on social networks to have similar interests and likely that they work in the same industry. Creating events that encourage current fans to share with others is an excellent way to extend your reach to those who are likely a good fit for your business.

Create a Conversation

This is similar to engaging your audience but takes it one step further. If you are regularly creating great content and sharing it, people will be more inclined to keep coming back to visit your Fan Page. If you’re actively participating in conversations with visitors in the comments and on your page’s wall then you will see an even better response. Showing your fans that behind your company logo is an actual person with whom they can interact is a great way to create happy customers who might even tell their friends about you :)

via blog.hubspot.com

You’ll have to follow the ‘via’ link if you want a peek at the 7 awesome pages. Comment below or ‘connect’ above so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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Driving traffic using Twitter?

The Twitter fail whale error message.
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Start here…

“If you are a small business owner like me, then you are no stranger to the fact that learning how to master Twitter can seem a little bit like wrestling a hungry alligator. Meaning, there is a steep learning curve and if you mess up it can be deadly.

Figuratively speaking, of course!

After using Twitter for the past couple of years, and following a lot of trial and error, below are ten ways that I think you can begin to use Twitter to drive more traffic to your small business blog.” Source: Top Ten Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Small Business Blog Using Twitter

Go to the source to get the 10 ways!

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