Non-podcast blog posts.

Lifecycle-Marketing-Guide

Are You a Follow Up Failure?

What do you traditionally do with the leads that you capture? I am assuming that most of you will call them or send them an email. If they don’t respond, you will call them again or send them another email. If they don’t respond again, you will probably call them again or send them another email.

Now, here’s the real question. What do you do next? Because, if you are like most small business people, you stop trying to contact the prospect and it ends up in the trash. Do you realize how much business you potentially throw away every single day? Imagine the impact on your business if you could convert an extra 10% of the leads that go in the trash.

Have you ever wondered why it’s so important to nurture your prospects?

followupstats-1It’s because 81% of your sales happen after you make seven or more contacts to your prospects. Seven contacts! How many of you can honestly tell me you attempt to make seven or more contacts to your prospects.

Please don’t feel bad because 85% of the time, we stop after 1 to 2 contacts.

Have you ever wondered the cost of not making the additional 4 to 5 contacts to each of your prospects?

Here is a very good example that will help identify the cost of not nurturing.

Let’s say you do a campaign to 10,000 people. This could be by email, direct mail, etc. Out of those 10,000 people, 100 people say they are interested in your product or service. Out of those 100 people, 10 people end up buying your product or service.

I’m assuming many of you would be thrilled by closing 10% of the people that were interested in your product or service.

10customersThe question I always like to ask is: what happens to the other 90 responders? Most of them fall through the cracks, have zero follow-up, or will end up buying from your competitors.

In other words, most of these 90 responders will end up in the trash.

What if, on the other hand, you had a way to easily stay in touch with them? What if it was automated?

What if this system allowed you to convert 15, 20, or 25 people instead of just 10? How much of an impact do you think all that extra profit would have on your business?

25customersIt would be huge, wouldn’t it?

That’s what I’m talking about! If you aren’t systematizing the lead nurturing process, you could be leaving thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars of profit on the table…for someone else’s business to grab.

Now, that’s just not good business!

As you can see, the key to great nurturing is with AMAZING follow up. This is where so many business people drop the ball. They are great at making lots of contacts and connections but they lack the skills necessary to follow up properly.

This is why most business people need a specific campaign or path to follow to deliver the right follow up.

Three Basic Follow Up Campaigns

There are three basic follow up campaigns that will help most businesses.

  • New Lead Campaign – to be used when you capture a new lead and want to nurture them until they are ready to buy
  • New Customer Campaign – to be used after a customer purchases your product or service so you can work on repeat sales, up-sales and referrals
  • Long-Term Nurture Campaign – to be used for those people that aren’t really interested in your product or service but you still want to follow up with them over a period of time.

If you’re curious what one of these campaigns looks like, please take a look at the diagram below.

Screenshot from Infusionsoft's Campaign Builder

Screenshot from Infusionsoft’s Campaign Builder

This is a typical lifecycle marketing campaign. Starting on the left, you can see how this company plans on attracting traffic to their business. They plan on doing this through blogging, Facebook, their website and organic marketing.

They will be offering something free as their lead magnet.

They will then enter the customer into a new lead campaign that will send information about their product or service to educate the customer until they are ready to purchase.

From here, either the customer purchases the product or service online or they will be added to a long term nurture that will provide them consistent information until, sometime in the future, they will hopefully be ready to purchase a product or service.

Once they make the purchase online they are entered into a new customer campaign which will provide them with information to encourage repeat sales and to upsell them on other products and services.

As you can see, this campaign is a easy (and easy to replicate) follow up system. Best of all, we do all of this automatically!

What does this mean for small business owners?

It means you get to spend less time on worrying about your marketing and more time working on growing your business.

It means that emails, white papers, videos, etc. are sent out to the right people at the right time without you thinking about it.

It means that fewer of your leads will fall through the cracks and more of your prospects will become customers.

It means that you are generating the maximum amount of sales from each of your customers and generating the amount of referrals necessary to reach a higher level of success.

Doesn’t this sound like the kind of business you always dreamed of owning? With an automated follow up system like Infusionsoft, this can become your reality.

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28 Ways to Use PR to Drive Traffic to Your Website

The following article is a guest post by By Nancy Marshall, Principal, Nancy Marshall Communications.

I started doing public relations in the 1980s when we used a mimeograph machine to copy our press releases and then mailed them out in envelopes with postage stamps on them.  Today we distribute them by email and share them on social networks.  Have we come a long way since then or what?

The power of the internet to massively increase our public relations footprint has grown exponentially since the 1980s and is still growing every day. The challenge is to leverage the power of the internet with a well thought-out strategic plan that includes defining our messages, defining our audiences and figuring out the best methods to connect our messages with our audiences. Just because we have the ability to email a press release to thousands of journalists doesn’t mean that we should do so. That’s why it’s important to have a PR plan before you start spinning your wheels generating content and randomly disseminating it everywhere.

Today, I am going to share my 28 ideas about how to use PR to drive traffic to your website. Each and every day, the most important thing is to keep your website at the top of your own mind so you can explore new ways to share your web address. At the same time, be sure to keep your website content up to date, because the search engines do not want to send people to a site that is outdated or irrelevant.

Always be thinking about how to improve your site by adding new content that is remarkable, and watching the Google Analytics to see how people are using your site.  The bounce rate is a key indicator as to whether your site is appealing to visitors or not.  If you are spending time and money to send people to your site and they are immediately clicking away, you have a serious problem that needs to be corrected before you send more visitors to the site.

There are two main ways to generate traffic to your site:  attracting them by having the optimized key words, and sending them there by having links from other sites or listing the URL on printed pieces. In this article, I’m going to address both: attracting visitors and driving visitors to your website.

Here are my 28 ideas, and I’m sure you’ll have plenty of your own ideas once you get the creative juices flowing!

  1. Press releases sent to business publications and shows on TV and radio, including a link to your website. Make sure you are announcing something newsworthy such as hiring a new employee, or winning an award, or making a speech at a significant trade show or conference.   Also make sure you are targeting the kind of media that will be interested in your press release.  Business publications will be interested in business announcements, for example.
  2. Press releases are great, but it’s even better if you can use a press release to get a journalist to do a feature story on you or your business.  A feature story is an article in a newspaper or a magazine, or a story on radio or TV that will ideally include a link to your site. If there is no link, some people will still become more interested in you and Google search you. Either way, feature stories are a great way to tell your story in the media and raise your profile. In order to get a feature, you need to send a very good press release to the right reporter, editor or producer and pique their interest in the story you have to tell. Usually, you also need to place a follow up phone call to pitch your idea.  In the tourism industry, getting a story in the Sunday Travel Section of a major newspaper is a major coup. Typically these stories include what we call a “service bar” which is a sidebar that includes all the contact info including phone number, postal address, physical address and web address.
  3. Your business cards, letterheads and other printed materials should always include your web address. You might even consider having a QR code with a direct link to your site. That’s what we do on our business cards at Nancy Marshall Communications.
  4. Make sure your email signature includes a link to your website. You’d be amazed how many people will click through after they read your email message!
  5. Branded giveaways are a great way to literally put your web address on peoples’ walls (calendars), in their hands (pens and pencils), on their desks (calculators, thumb drives and coffee mugs) or in their cars (travel mugs, ice scrapers).  I have a wall calendar from my chiropractor that I look at every day, and it reminds me to contact him if my neck or back start feeling out of whack.
  6. Trade shows are an ideal place to promote your website. The web address should be prominently displayed on your trade show booth and in all your promotional materials. If you are exhibiting at a trade show, there will be members of the media in attendance. Frequently there will be a media room at the show where you can leave press kits or giveaways such as pens, water bottles and coffee mugs. Make sure your web address is on every single item that you give away at trade shows.
  7. Speaking engagements at Rotary, Kiwanis and Chamber meetings as well as college classes are an ideal place to talk about your website and give out the web address. If you are using a PowerPoint presentation, include the web address on every slide.  Every time I do a speaking engagement, I write a press release about my appearance and send it to the local media, which is yet another opportunity to include a link to my website.
  8. Guest posts on other peoples’ blogs (like this one that you are reading now!) are a great place to provide a link to your site.  I also have a blog at www.maineprmaven.com, which is another site that I promote whenever possible.
  9. Submit your blog posts to social bookmarking sites such as Reddit, Stumbleupon and Digg.
  10. Take advantage of local search.  Google + Local are a great ways to make your site more findable by local audiences.
  11. Produce videos to be posted on YouTube including keyword-rich text descriptions. YouTube is great place to include a link to your site. Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine next to Google? That’s because people love to watch videos when they want to know how to do something or they want to know about something.  As a society, we are reading less than ever, unfortunately. Your third grade teacher would be disappointed that you would prefer to watch a video to learn something new rather than going to the library to get a book about it.
  12. Guest opinion columns in the newspaper about relevant timely topics can include a biographical backgrounder on you as the author, including a link to your website.
  13. Facebook posts on your own page and on other peoples’ pages can include a link to your site, but be careful.  You need to interact with others in a very human way, and not always be promoting to your own site, or people will see right through what you’re doing. A mix of posts that are social and human, along with one post a week with a link to your own site will work. My strategic partner Stephen Woessner’s book, ‘Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Marketing,’ (available at amazon.com) lays out an exact formula for the balance between social posts and promotional posts.
  14. Pinterest is a fast-growing social network, particularly among women. If you pin an interesting photo on one of your Pinterest boards that links back to your site, people will click through to see where that photo came from. For example, I saw this wonderful photo on Pinterest of a breakfast at a Maine B&B, The Pomegranate Inn in Portland, Maine. I was curious about it, so I clicked through to their website, which is equally wonderful to look at, and I thought to myself that I would like to go there someday soon (especially since my PR agency handles PR for the Maine Office of Tourism!)
  15. Twitter is a great place to include links to your site, although you might want to use them as ow.ly links so you can reduce the number of characters. (Google  the term “ow links” for an explanation if you are unfamiliar.)
  16. Use Instagram to drive traffic from photos to your site. Be sure to completely fill out the online profile to close the loop from your photos back to your website.
  17. LinkedIn is a great place to establish yourself as an expert, and to make important professional connections.  You can list your web address right in your LinkedIn profile.
  18. Event sponsorship allows you to create banners and give branded giveaways promoting your business name and web address to a targeted audience. Consider a business-to-business trade show, an arts performance, a sporting event, or even the walls at your local Major League Baseball or even the Little League stadium. Align the sponsorship with your targeted audience.
  19. Charitable donations position you as a responsible and philanthropic neighbor. When you make a donation, the charity will help you promote your business in their event programs, their annual giving guides or in thank-you speeches at their annual meetings.  We work with the Maine Children’s Home for Little Wanderers in Waterville, Maine as a client, and I donate to them throughout the year. They are sure to promote my URL, www.marshallpr.com, whenever possible.
  20. If you are in the business of building websites for others, be sure to include a link back to your own website at the bottom of the home page. We build websites for businesses and nonprofits of all kinds, and we always embed a link on the home page of every one.
  21. Put your web address on your clothing:  logoed clothing is a great way to build your wardrobe, whether it’s on the front of a golf shirt, a hoodie sweatshirt, a baseball cap or a ski hat.  Give fleece vests emblazoned with your logo and URL to all your employees. They will wear it with pride and promote your web address everywhere they go.
  22. Ask the CEO of your company to write an article (or offer to ghostwrite for him or her) to post on a blog or submit to the local newspaper or business journal. If you’re the CEO, try to make this a regular practice. Be sure to include a bio at the end of the article with a link to your website.  Post the article on your own company’s blog too, because it will be rich in keywords.
  23. Create infographics and post on social media sites. Infographics are all the rage right now as an easy, graphical place to explain a concept. You will need a professional graphic designer to create them, and you can either hire a designer to serve on your staff or outsource to a freelancer.  There are freelancers available online through sites like 99designs.com that can create infographics cost effectively. People are more likely to share infographics than other types of content through social networks. Be sure to include your website address and company name in the infographic and post it on your website, as well as sharing it on Facebook, Pinterest and other social networks.
  24. Network with influencers the old-fashioned way at trade shows, chamber of commerce meetings and conferences. Meet people in person, exchange business cards, then connect with them on social media in order to maintain the relationship until you see them again. The more influential people who you link with on LinkedIn, or friend on Facebook, or follow on Twitter, the better.  They call this practice “pressing the flesh,” and it is, in my opinion, the best possible way to create meaningful and long-lasting relationships.
  25. Generate links back to your site from websites that have ‘authority,’ such as college and university sites and governmental sites, by figuring out ways to post content or get articles written with links to your site. Google and other search engines consider the ‘authority’ of websites when viewing the links to your site. If a site with a great deal of authority links to your site, that’s like an endorsement of your site, so it’s a good thing.
  26. Create an e-newsletter and constantly build your list. We publish “The NMC Report” once a month, no matter how busy we are with other commitments. We include tips and techniques that are easily implemented by our readers, who are typically small business owners or marketing officers for companies and nonprofits.  We make it easy to sign up for the e-newsletter on our website and we are constantly gathering names at trade shows and conferences. This list is valuable to our business because these are people who don’t mind having us market ourselves to them. Every single time we send out an e-newsletter, we see a spike in our web traffic because we include links throughout the e-news back to our website.  We use Mail Chimp but we also recommend Constant Contact.
  27. Share your PowerPoint presentations and other slide decks to sites like Slideshare and Scribd.   This is a fantastic way to position yourself or someone from your organization as an expert and to generate a quality link back to your website.
  28. Build a rock-solid reputation to generate word of mouth. The #1 absolute best way to drive traffic to your website is to do great work so people will refer you to others. This is, by far, the most powerful form of marketing and public relations. 

Nancy Marshall, also known as The Maine PR Maven, has been practicing PR professionally for 30 years. She owns Nancy Marshall Communications, an agency in Augusta, Maine specializing in producing and implementing strategic marketing communications plans, called The Marshall Plan™. Her agency blog is at www.maineprmaven.com, and her agency’s website is at www.marshallpr.com. Nancy was the 2011 winner of the Edward L. Bernays Award from the Maine Public Relations Council for the state’s most accomplished PR professional. She is married and has two sons who are accomplished ski racers. 

What Do You Think?

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Lifecycle-Marketing-Guide

4 Steps to Keyword Research Success

As was clearly demonstrated in my interview with Marcus Sheridan, proper keyword selection is critical to the success of your content marketing strategy.

The ability to properly select keywords is also a huge part of how any firm can create a sustainable competitive advantage for themselves. How, you ask?

Think about this for a moment…your products and services can be copied by other firms. However, SEO is not easy to copy and keyword research is the the second step to SEO and content marketing success. (The first step is picking your target market.)

The problem for many entrepreneurs who are new to content marketing is that they don’t have a methodology for proper keyword research. Not having a system in place either leads to a flawed strategy, or, even worse, no strategy at all.

In this post, I’m going to provide you with an overview of the keyword research process, and then I’m going to dive deep into exactly how I do my own keyword research, so grab a cup of java and get ready to see an approach that differs from many that are published on other sites.

Ready? Good, let’s get on with it!

Understanding the Long Tail

Proper keyword research begins with an understanding of the different types of keywords. To help illustrate that, I’ve included a chart from SEOmoz that visually explains the difference between what is called a head keyword and a long tail keyword.

keyword-research

As this illustration shows, the 70% of searches are for long tail keywords, and, unlike the Fat Head keywords that are virtually impossible to rank for, these long tail keywords are much easier to get traffic from, so long as your on page optimization is done correctly.

Another reason to target long tail keywords is because they are likely to convert better. For example, if someone is searching for “conference”, they are not nearly as likely to buy a ticket as someone searching for “marketing conference in San Diego”.

Creating a Competitive Advantage with SEO

While each long tail keyword doesn’t have a huge search volume, in aggregate, the search volume can really add up over time. To illustrate the importance of this consider the following two firms:

The first firm is an avid blogger and they target a long tail keyword with every post they write. Over a 2 year period of time, they write 300 blog posts, each targeting a keyword with just 300 exact searches per month. In aggregate, the total search volume that they are ranking for is 90,000 exact searches a month! Even better is the fact that they are highly likely to rank on the first page of Google for a good number of these keywords (assuming proper selection, which I’ll cover down below, and on-page optimization, which I’ll cover in a later post). From purely an SEO perspective, this first firm has created a very strong and highly defensible competitive advantage.

The second firm wrote the same number of posts and each post is just as high quality as the first firm, except the second firm didn’t bother to target a long tail keyword with every post they wrote. This will still receive some SEO benefit from having all this content on their blog, however, the benefit won’t be nearly as good as what it could have been, plus the traffic they receive won’t likely convert nearly as well because their content will be less likely to be relevant to the keywords it ranked for.

The steady accumulation of SEO traffic from long tail keywords is the primary reason why your content marketing strategy should be focused on long tail keywords.

Now let’s take a look at the actual process by way of a real example.

Step 1: Start with a Head Keyword

For this example, let’s assume that we want to find a keyword that is related to LinkedIn. To do that, I’m going to show you two tools: the free Google Keyword Tool and the tool I use, SECockpit (affiliate link).

First let’s start with Google’s tool. When you look at the image below (click to enlarge), pay close attention to the areas the I have highlighted in red.

When you are doing keyword research you should always choose the [Exact] match type because it it the most accurate measurement you are going to get for your phrase.

For example, Broad need only contain the words you are searching for, and they can be in any order. So, if I was searching for LinkedIn for BusinessBroad would include all searches that contained any of those words, in any order. This is hardly an accurate measurement for the word I’m researching.

Phrase is much closer in that LinkedIn for Business would have to be included in the search string somewhere and the words would have to be in the correct order. For example, searches that contained LinkedIn for Business today would be included in the total search count. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s still not as accurate as I’d like.

Exact includes ONLY the exact phrase that I’m researching, and that is why I suggest you use it.

Next, make sure you have Keyword Ideas selected.

keyword-research-with-google-keyword-tool

The reason Google’s tool is free is because it really doesn’t tell us very much. In the example above, we can see there there are (supposedly) 16,600,000 exact global monthly searches for LinkedIn. However, what this does not tell us is anything about how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for that keyword or any of the other related keywords that are shown down below.

This lack of SEO competition analysis is a massive limitation of this tool. Please note, the word low under the competition heading does not relate to SEO competition. Instead, it is only a measure of the amount of advertiser competition to bid for that keyword – which would only be useful if you were setting up an Adwords paid traffic campaign, hence why it is included in this tool.

Now let’s look at SECockpit and I’ll walk you though why I feel it is by far the most effective keyword research tool available on the market, and how using it is going to save you a huge amount of time.

In the image below, notice the areas that I have highlighted in red.

keyword-research-with-seockpit-1

First, across the top, notice that I can have more than one tab open. This means that I can analyze multiple keywords simultaneously. Obviously, this is a big time saver, but it’s not the best part of this tool.

Next, notice all the orange bars on the right half of the image. These bars are a measure of the strength of the SEO competition on the first page of the Google results. Having this data at your fingertips is hugely valuable because without it, how would you know which of all the keywords would be the easiest to rank for? SECockpit makes this easy by allowing you to just click on the column header to instantly sort all the related (long tail) keywords so that the ones that are easiest to rank for are at the top.

All I have to do now is to scroll down until I find the keyword that is related to my content and has a monthly exact search volume that meets my minimum acceptable amount.

Let me explain this another way so you really get the point. With every other keyword tool I’ve ever used (and that is most of them), you  have to analyze the strength of SEO competition for just one keyword at a time. That means that, in the case of this particular search example, I would have to spend approximately 1 minute to analyze each of the 170 keywords on this list.  That’s almost three hours of work to get the same data that SECockpit gave me in about 60 seconds.

Hopefully the significance of this has just registered with you. Without SECockpit, you are going to have to invest exponentially more time to get the same result. Boo.

Step 2: Find Related Keywords

Once you have completed your first round of research, you may or may not find a suitable long tail keyword to use. In all likelihood, you will, but if you don’t, expanding your search to include other phrases may also be quite helpful.

If you are using SECockpit, here’s just one way you could do that. You click the expand button and then begin typing another phrase. In the screenshot below, I started to type LinkedIn training and as I was typing, the other phrases appeared. I decided to choose LinkedIn training courses to expand my search and 30 seconds later, I now have 331 keywords that have all had their strength of SEO competition analysis all done for me.

keyword-research-secockpit

Now that I have 331 words, I want to narrow my list back down to only words that included LinkedIn so I can make a selection of which keyword I wish to make the focus of the post that I intend to write. (As a side note, this process is also a very good method for figuring out what to write about!)

keyword-research-example

To narrow down the list, I simply typed LinkedIn into the search bar at the bottom and my 331 words was reduced to 2400 words – all with the strength of SEO competition nicely represented by the orange bars so I can easily sort them from easiest to hardest. Gotta love that!

At this point, the phrase linkedin recommendation examples has caught my attention. It stood out for me because:

  • it has a relatively short orange bar, so I know SEO competition is not too hard
  • it has 2400 local exact searches per month, which for a long tail keyword is plenty
  • there is a youtube video ranked on the first page of Google

Now that we have a potential keyword (after investing only about 2 minutes), we need to do a bit of a deeper dive to check on the trend and exactly the nature of the competition that we’ll face if we try to rank for this phrase.

Step 3: Determine the Trend

To determine the trend of a keyword, you can use Google Trends, or if you are using SECockpit, this functionality is built right in and you will save some more time. To get the report in SECockpit, you just click on the keyword you are interested in.

Regardless of how you get the report, you can see in the image below that the trend in search volume for this keyword is steady, and more recently, has increased quite a bit. This is the type of trend you are looking for.

keyword-research-secockpit-review

Having invested another 5 seconds to determine that the keyword has a positive trend, it’s not time for the last step – determining the strength of the competition we’ll face.

Step 4: Determine the Strength of the Competition

This is a part of the process where inexperienced folks make some pretty big mistakes, thereby negating all the work that preceded this step. The biggest mistake is thinking that the strength of SEO competition is low because they were using the Google Adwords keyword tool and saw the word low under the competition column. As I pointed out earlier in this post, that is NOT a measure of SEO competition.

The fact that SECockpit automatically calculates this for me is the primary reason why I like the tool so much. After all, what good is it if you pick a low volume keyword that happens to have really strong competition on the first page of the Google results? Targeting a keyword like that is a total waste. Plus, if you are only using the Google Adwords keyword tool, you are never going to stumble across a higher volume keyword that happens to be new to the scene and not yet have a ton of competition. We LOVE finding nuggets like that, right?!

keyword-research-secockpit-review-3

To see the data above, all I had to do was to click the keyword I was interested in. Once I did, I was presented with this screen and I can right away see a lot of green. Green is what you are looking for because it is an indicator of weakness.

In looking at these results, I can quickly draw some important conclusions.

First, not all the sites in the results are actually targeting the exact phrase we’re looking at. I can see this by looking in the title column. Page title is extremely important for SEO.

Next, only about 1/2 of the top 10 results have mid to high domain authority. This means I have I chance to rank, and as my domain’s authority increases, my chances will get better over time.

Next, I can see that the link count for most of the sites in the top 10 is pretty low. This is also quite encouraging because if I create a really killer piece of content and then share it on my social networks, other people are quite likely to link to it for me. As time goes by, I will get more and more links, and my ranking will improve. (Hence why creating epic content is so important!)

And finally, I can see that none of my competition, with the exception of #4 (which isn’t even targeting my exact phrase) has much in the way of social sharing. If I’ve done a good job of building my LinkedIn network and am an active participant in a number of LinkedIn groups, I’ll bet I can get a lot of social shares right away just by asking people (or my list) to do it for me.

Summary

If you want to create a sustainable competitive advantage for your company, as well as to turn lead generation into a systematized process, you need to invest in content marketing.

A huge part of your content marketing strategy should be to create content that targets long tail keywords. Doing so will, over time, provide you with an ever increasing source of free traffic from search engines.

The key to getting keyword research right is to use tools that allow you to quickly and easily find high value keywords that have SEO competition low enough to make it probable that you will rank for them. SECockpit is by far the bets tool that I have ever used for this. Using it will save you hours upon hours of boring research.

Once you find your potential keyword, check to ensure that the trend for the search volume is steady or increasing, and finally, have a close look at the strength of the competition for those coveted first 10 slots in the Google search results.

When you find a keyword that passes all these tests, you have just taken a step towards more traffic, more subscribers and more revenue!

It all starts with keyword research.

What Do You Think?

Was this article helpful? If so, please share it by clicking one of the social sharing buttons on the left. If you have questions or comments, please leave them below. Thanks very much!

Want to write for Bright Ideas? Click here.

Hey, thanks for the info. Now what?

If you need any help with content creation, we have tons of free resources to get you over the hump. Please subscribe to this blog to ensure that you never miss an article.

Have questions or comments? Please contact me.

If you really enjoyed this post, please help us to spread the word by clicking one of the social media sharing buttons.

Thanks so much!

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Lifecycle-Marketing-Guide

How to Get Management Support for Content Marketing

If you aren’t the boss and your company is not yet actively engaged in content marketing, chances are you are going to need to convince someone higher up the chain that this newfangled “content marketing stuff” is actually worth the time and investment.

For the folks that speak “ROI”, this guide from Eloqua will likely be very helpful (warning: optin required to download it) as it goes into plenty of detail on all the metrics that the C-suite could ever want to see.

Below are a few snippets from the report that I liked. Then, below that, I’m going to link you to some interviews that I’ve done with real live folks that are walking, talking proof that content marketing has worked remarkably well for them.

Don’t forget to check out our very own content management system.

Eloqua’s Findings

According to Eloqua’s findings, a mid-sized organization should expect to spend approximately $12,000 a month and a larger-sized company could expect about $33,000 a month. These costs would be inclusive of the Managing Editor, Chief Content Officer (for larger organizations), the freelancers to actually write the 2 blog posts per week (estimate to cost $150 per post), and $2,500 (mid-sized) or $3,500 (larger-sized) per month for a piece of premium content; which is typically a special report or video, etc…They also included a charge of $1,500 for mid-sized and $2,500 for larger-sized companies for software and hosting.

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

As the principle objective of content marketing is to drive traffic and conversions, let’s look at Eloqua’s findings for these two metrics.

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRl

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRl

When compared to the ongoing cost of paid advertising, content marketing shows a clear and substantial benefit; especially when longer time frames are taken into account.

Image Source: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Image Source: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Bencmarks, Budgets, and Trends

Some 86% of B2C marketers in North America are using content marketing, employing 12 individual tactics on average; but, as is the case with B2B content marketing, B2C content marketers are struggling with the effectiveness of their content marketing, according to the findings of the first B2C content marketing study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute.

  • Among the highlights of the “B2C Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America” study:
  • B2B marketers use social media more often than their B2C counterparts; however, B2C marketers consider it more effective (57% of B2C marketers think social media is effective vs. 49% of B2B marketers).
  • On average, B2C marketers use four social media platforms, compared with five used by B2B marketers.
  • On average, 28% of B2C marketing budgets are allocated to content marketing, and 55% of consumer marketers plan to increase their content marketing spend.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/9504/2013-b2c-content-marketing-benchmarks-budgets-and-trends#ixzz2MExOqdDU

Real Life Examples

As not every boss is going to be convinced of the merits of content marketing just by looking at just facts and figures, allow me to share some real-life stories from entrepreneurs that I have interviewed here on Bright Ideas.

River Pools and Spas – Marcus Sheridan

Marcus’ story is nothing short of amazing. In 2008, his fiberglass pool and spa business was nearly broke. Prior to then, there were spending $250,000 a year to produce $4M in annual revenue. By 2012, their marketing spend had decreased to $20,000 a year and sales had increased to $4.5M (keep in mind that the pool business was hit very hard during these years, so any increase in sales was amazing in itself). You can watch the full interview here.

Joe Pulizzi – Content Marketing Institute

As the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, Joe knows content marketing extremely well because he’s used it to build his entire company from scratch. Now one of the leading websites in the industry, CMI’s story is well worth listening to. You can watch the full interview here.

Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz

After starting out as an SEO consulting shop in 2004, SEOMoz has fast become one of the leading SEO software companies in the world today. Now with over 100 employees and venture backing, SEOmoz and Rand are proving the ROI on content marketing is extremely attractive. You can watch the full interview here.

Mike Stelzner – Social Media Examiner

Mike started SME back in back in October of 2009 at a time when there were already thousands of bloggers covering the topic. Despite that fact, SME has become the #2 blog in the US for small businesses and boasts a mailing list of just over 190,000 subscribers – all from a very focused content marketing strategy. You can watch the full interview here.

Conclusion

While there is no question that there is effort required to properly execute a well planned content marketing strategy, there is also no question that the benefits are substantial – and the best part is that, unlike with paid advertising, the benefits increase over time, even if your expenditures do not.

What Do You Think?

Did this article resonate with you? If so, please share it on your social networks and leave your comments down below.

Want to write for Bright Ideas? Click here.

Hey, thanks for the info. Now what?

If you need any help with content creation, we have tons of free resources to get you over the hump. Please subscribe to this blog to ensure that you never miss an article.

Have questions or comments? Please contact me.

If you really enjoyed this post, please help us to spread the word by clicking one of the social media sharing buttons.

Thanks so much!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”BuildGroove”]

Lifecycle-Marketing-Guide

Introduction to Content Marketing

How much of an impact do you think it would have on your business if you had a steady supply of qualified leads for your products and services?

Now imagine that you didn’t have to pay for advertising to attract all those leads.

Seem like a pipe dream? It’s not. It’s actually the natural result of a well defined and properly executed content marketing strategy. In today’s post, the first of the Bright Ideas Content Marketing Guide, I am going to begin by giving you an introduction to content marketing.

What is Content Marketing?

Content Marketing is a term that is getting a lot of buzz these days…and for good reason. It works better now than it ever has in the past. We’ll get into why it works so well in a bit.

But first…what is content marketing?

Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. Content Marketing’s basic premise is to “provide some valuable information or entertainment – ‘content’ – that stops short of a direct sales pitch or call to action, but which seeks to positively influence a customer in some way.” This information can be presented in a variety of media, including news, video, white papers, ebooks, info-graphics, case studies, how-to’s, Q&A’s, photos, etc. – Wikipedia

Let’s put this another way: content marketing is the process of using high quality, relevant content to attract people that are already looking for a solution (that you have) to a problem that they have.

Content is Your Greatest Asset

content-marketing-assetThink about the last time you bought a product or hired a company to perform a service for you. How did you begin your search for this product or service?

More than likely, you started off with Google, or some other search engine. You may have also done a search on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. Regardless, my point is this: purchasing begins with search and the way to get found is to create valuable content.

Think about this from Google’s perspective. What is their goal? To provide the highest quality, most relevant search results for a given query.

Over time, Google’s search algorithm has changed a great deal, and in its current form, Google rewards websites that:

  • Have high quality content
  • Have a lot of content
  • Continually add content
  • See their content regularly shared on social networks

So, if you decide to create high quality content on your blog on a regular basis, what do you think is going to happen over time?

Google will like your site more and more, and reward you with more traffic. The more traffic you receive, the more social sharing that is going to occur and the more social sharing that occurs, the more Google is going to like your site.

Can you see the snowball effect I’m talking about? If you decide to make creating high quality, relevant content the focus of your overall marketing plan, your site is going to receive more and more traffic over time, the by-product of which will be more leads and more customers.

Oh…and did I mention that all this traffic is free?

True, you did have to incur the cost of creating the content; however, this content can have a very long shelf life, and so long as it is timely, you are still going to be rewarded for it.

Let’s compare this to paid advertising.

With paid advertising, you can drive a ton of traffic and you can do it very quickly. The problem is that as soon as you stop paying the bill, the traffic stops.

Image Source: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Image Source: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

With paid advertising, you are not building an asset. You are only driving traffic. Worse, any competitor with an advertising budget can easily replicate what you are doing.

Is that much of a competitive advantage for you? Nope.

This is not the case with content.

High quality content takes effort to create, and as such, few of your competitors are going to take the time to create it. Instead, they will probably go with paid advertising and continue to attempt to interrupt people to grab their attention.

I’d much rather put my time and effort into attracting people who are already interested in what I have to say/sell.

Once I’ve attracted those people, I can then offer them something for free in exchange for their email address, and now I’m building another even more valuable asset: a mailing list.

With a mailing list, I can reach out to my prospects and customers whenever I like. In other words, I can drive traffic on demand.

Think about how valuable that would be for your company. Think about the types of partnerships you could form with other firms in your niche if you could each drive traffic to the other, whenever you liked.

In a later section of the Content Marketing Guide, we’ll take a much closer look at how to build and leverage a mailing list. For now, just know that it is the natural result of having valuable content for your audience to consume.

Buying Attention is Hard to Do

inbound-marketing-buying-attention

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/58ZDA

Remember earlier how I said that content marketing is working better now than ever before?

It’s not like content marketing is particularly new. In fact, it’s been around for a very long time.

The following examples (source: Wikipedia) demonstrate early use of content to disseminate information about a brand, and build a brand’s reputation:

 

1895 – John Deere launches their magazine, The Furrow, providing information to farmers on how to become more profitable. The magazine, considered the first custom publication, is a success and is still in circulation today, reaching 1.5 million readers in 40 countries in 12 different languages.

1900 – Published in France, Michelin develops the Michelin guides, offering drivers information on auto maintenance, accommodations, and other travel tips. 35,000 copies were distributed for free in this first edition. Eventually, the company began selling these books, yet the publication set a precedent for both informative guides and content marketing distribution.

1904 – Jell-O salesmen go door-to-door, distributing their cookbook for free. Touting the dessert as a versatile food, the company sees its sales rise to over $1 million by 1906.

What has changed is technology adoption.

Today, we all have a smart phone in our pockets, millions of us are on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ LinkedIn, Youtube, etc…and the truth is that we are totally overwhelmed with information and advertising.

As a result, breaking through and actually getting someone’s attention is harder than it has ever been. Back in the day when we didn’t see 5 zillion ads a day, any one ad stood a much better chance of getting out attention.

why-content-marketing

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/VkRlY

Those days are gone.

Not only is our attention hard to get, but as a consumer, I have easy access to the information I want, when I want it, so why do I need to pay attention to your ad? I can just go to a search engine and find anything I want, anytime I feel like looking for it.

How Content Marketing Differs From Outbound Marketing

Content Marketing

Image Credit: http://goo.gl/cDOB7

With content marketing, the goal is not to interrupt someone from what they are interested in – by attempting to grab their attention. That is outbound marketing’s goal – and it can be a very expensive one to achieve.

As a content marketer, my goal is to become what you are interested in, and in doing so, my chances of getting your attention go up exponentially.

To do that, all I have to do is design a content marketing strategy that will address the unique problems, goals, and desires of my target audience. We’ll examine exactly how to do this is upcoming sections of the Content Marketing Guide.

With inbound marketing, the communication is interactive and goes both ways. With outbound marketing, the communication is just one way – from seller to buyer.

With inbound marketing, the seller’s goal is to provide massive value to the buyer. That is how trust is built, and with trust, all sorts of wonderful things begin to happen.

With outbound marketing, the seller is not providing any value to the buyer. Instead, they are basically saying “Hey, look at me!! Buy my stuff!!”

If someone walked into a party and sounded like that, would you be very interested in speaking with them? Probably not.

On the other hand, if you met someone at a party who was incredibly knowledgeable about a topic you were interested in and after speaking with them for an hour or so, do you think you’d be more inclined to buy from them? You bet you would.

In case you still aren’t convinced that inbound is better than outbound, consider a few facts:

  • 84% of 25 to 34 year olds have left a favorite site because of intrusive advertising
  • 200 million Americans have registered their phone number of the FCC’s do not call list
  • 86% of people skip television ads
  • 91% of email users have unsubscribed from a company email they previously opted into
  • 44% of direct mail is never opened

Why Start Now?

There is no better time to get started than right now. Developing a content marketing strategy is not rocket science. In fact, it is incredibly easy to do and I’m going to share with you exactly how to do it in upcoming sections of the guide.

Unless you believe that the Internet is just a fad and people actually like advertising, there is not better time to get started than right now.

Bright Ideas is here to help, so let us know what questions you have and we’ll do our very best to provide you with answers you can immediately put into use.

To get started, make sure you subscribe to Bright Ideas so that you will never miss an update to this guide. As well, you will want to watch my interview with Joe Pulizzi, and if you really enjoyed that, you may also want to  head over to iTune to subscribe to the Bright Ideas Podcast.

What Do You Think?

Did this article resonate with you? If so, please share it on your social networks and leave your comments down below.

Want to write for Bright Ideas? Click here.

Hey, thanks for the info. Now what?

If you need any help with content creation, we have tons of free resources to get you over the hump. Please subscribe to this blog to ensure that you never miss an article.

Have questions or comments? Please contact me.

If you really enjoyed this post, please help us to spread the word by clicking one of the social media sharing buttons.

Thanks so much!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”BuildGroove”]

bookoutline

The Outline for My Book

Earlier this week I interviewed Guy Kawasaki and during the taping of the interview (which, thanks so a software glitch has to be totally re-done!), I asked him for advice on writing my book.

As Guy has written 12 of them, I figured he’d be a fountain of knowledge on the topic (which he was) and after reading one chapter of his latest book, APE (affiliate link), I decided that before I get too far into writing my book, that I would post the outline of my book here on Bright Ideas so that I could get feedback from my audience on whether or not my outline was solid, or in need of improvement.

bookoutlineSo with that in mind, I humbly share the first draft of my book’s outline (along with what Guy calls the book’s elevator pitch) with the hopes of your feedback.

Also, as my book doesn’t yet have a title, I would love to hear your suggestions. Just put your ideas down in the comments and if I pick yours, you will get a free copy of the book as well as a free hour of consulting with me to talk about whatever business issues you like.

My Elevator Pitch

The elevator pitch is meant to be used when pitching publishers, and while (at this point) I don’t intend to pitch any publishers (I plan to self-publish), I wrote my elevator pitch solely with the intent of clearly defining why, and for who, I was writing this book.

Why am I writing this book?

  • To help small businesses get more leads and customers
  • To help small businesses to automate more of their lead nurturing and sales processes
  • To help me book speaking engagements

Who am I writing this book for?

  • Small business owners will buy my training materials and/or use my affiliate links
  • Companies that can pay me $10K for a day-long workshop

What action do I want them to take?

  • Join my list
  • Buy my products
  • Hire me to consult

What Problems am I Helping them Solve?

  • Not enough website traffic
  • Conversions are too low
  • Too many manual processes in the sales funnel
  • Sales aren’t growing quickly enough
  • Customer retention is too low
  • Not enough referrals

Book Outline

Part One – Inbound Marketing

  • How buying has changed
    • The Power of free information
    • The informed buyer
    • Social proof
  • Is Your website a marketing automation machine?
    • Its not about you (define your avatar)
    • The importance of blogging
    • Give away your best stuff
    • Become the wiki for your industry
    • Help your visitors solve their problems first
    • WordPress
  • Content marketing
    • How to know what to write
    • How to create remarkable content
    • Blogging
    • Nuclear fuel
    • Podcasting
    • Video
    • Curation

Part Two – Traffic

  • Traffic Generation
    • Google
      • The Power of the long tail
      • Authorship
    • Social Media
      • Engagement and listening
      • Community
      • Facebook
      • Google+
      • Twitter
      • LinkedIn
    • Networking with other bloggers
    • Kindle
    • Contests and Promotions
    • Paid traffic
      • Google
      • Facebook

Part Three – Conversion

  • Conversion
    • Lead magnets
    • Landing pages
    • Split testing
    • Measuring results
  • List Building
    • The value of a list
    • Software Tools
  • Sales funnels
    • Nurturing
    • Self segmentation
    • Software tools for automation

Part Four – Keeping Tabs On Your Market

  • Watching the Competition
    • RSS and alerts
    • Social profiles
  • Why Do This Now?

 What Do You Think?

Is this a book that you would want to read? Have you got any ideas for a title? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

female_auther

Blog Talk Radio Interview, an Excerpt from My Book, plus My Wedding Invitation Video

Happy Saturday!

Today’s post is going to be a bit unusual. In it, you are going to find:

  • My being interviewed
  • An excerpt from a book I’m writing
  • My wedding invitation video that got a lot of laughs

Hear Me Interviewed on Blog Talk Radio

On Friday afternoon, I was interviewed by Jim and Jennifer of the Blog Talk Radio Show, Freedom For All.

In this interview, they asked me about my background in business, how I managed to make the change from employee to entrepreneur, and what advice I had for others wishing to make the same change.  Listen in and hear us talk discuss:

  • How I launched my last business
  • How I am launching my current software startup
  • How I manage my time
  • How I recommend that first time entrepreneurs begin their first business (and it’s unusual advice)
  • Why most people never start and what to do about it
  • The attributes that I think make up a successful entrepreneur

Listen to internet radio with 1000 Breaths on Blog Talk Radio

An Excerpt from My Upcoming Book

Below is a some of the content of a book that I’m writing. As it pertains to the interview above, I thought I would share it. The book is going to be about content marketing and how it can propel your business to new levels. I hope to have it complete in 90 days. Wish me luck!

And now the excerpt…(the three passages below are from different sections of the book)

Excerpt #1: Who is the Book For?

This book is for entrepreneurs who want to get more customers, make more money, and build something of value. In particular, this book if for those of you aren’t exactly sure how to make this outcome a reality.

When it comes to business, like me, you all have one thing in common: you have to find customers and make sales to grow. If you can’t do that, you’re a dead duck. Succeed in this regard, and we are able to enjoy a lifestyle like none other.

For most of us, that is why we have chosen the life of an entrepreneur. Sure, some of you chose it for passion or craft, but, if we are being really honest, lets all admit that getting rich isn’t such a bad reason either, right?

In my 20+ years in business, I have come to realize that most business owners have one thing in common: they think that finding new customers is hard to do…and in most cases, they can back it up with years of evidence!

I understand how you feel. In fact, I used to be just like you.

I’d come to work each day thinking: how am I going to find my next customer?

The problem with asking yourself this questions is that it sets up the wrong frame of mind.

In my case, thinking this way caused me to immediately start thinking about prospecting tactics. Now, before I go any further, don’t think for a minute that I think prospecting is a bad thing – far from it – but I do think that the way that most of us prospect is not as efficient as it could be.

Rather than think about how to find customers, my goal for this book is to help you to shift your thinking to: how can I help customers find me?

While these two ideas aren’t that different; the meaning (and the activity) behind each one is radically different.

Prospecting, in the tradition sense, is hard. If you are using the phone to make cold calls, you are subjecting yourself to massive amounts of rejection each day, but even worse is that you are likely annoying the hell out of a lot of people.

Consider this; how would you feel is a doctor called you up and said, “Hello Mr. Johnson, my name is Dr Mark and I’d like to arrange a time for us to get together so that I can ask you a whole bunch of questions so that I can determine if you have any sickness that I can try and heal. Which is better for you, this Tuesday or next Thursday?”

Can you imagine ever receive a call like that? I can’t. (Yet, I’m loathed to admit, I have MADE thousands of calls that sounded just like that)

The key to modern prospecting is to realize that there are already thousands of people searching for what you do every day. Rather than expend considerable effort (and resources) so sift through the masses to find them, don’t you think it might be a whole lot easier to just answer when the call or reply when they email you?

Of course it would be! Just imagine how much more enjoyable your business would be to run if you simply had to respond to inquiries each day. Now that would be something!

Making this happen doesn’t have to cost millions (or even thousands) and in this book, I’m going to show you, step by step, exactly how I and others have made this happen in our businesses. Trust me when I tell you it’s not rocket science.

Once you finish reading this book, you are going to be equipped with the knowledge you need to make this very same thing happen in your business – and I don’t care what business you are in because the strategies, ideas, and tactics that are about to be shared with you work in virtually every business that I can think of.

Are you ready?

Excerpt #2: My Story

Back when I started my career in sales, the Internet didn’t exist. Back then, prospecting via the telephone worked exceptionally well and as a young stock broker, I made quite a bit of money by making cold calls.

Back then (1993) I was 23 years old. In my very first year in the business, I dialed the phone approximately 25,000 times and I earned $72,500. In other words, I earned $2.90 every time I dialed the phone.

Out of the 125 dials a day that I made, I would get through to about 30 people, and out of those 30 people, 10 would agree to receive my free report in the mail. Of those 10 people, 3 would take a meeting, and out of those 3, one would become a client.

For those of you old enough to remember, $72,500 back in 1993 was pretty good money, considering the average 3 bedroom house was about $225,000 in my neighborhood. (That same neighborhood today has an average price of about 3x what it was in 1993).

After about two years of this, I was totally burned out and I actually left the business for about 6 months. As you might guess, I had grown to hate cold calling. Not because of the rejection mind you. It was just so darn boring!

Luckily for me, I had stayed in touch with a mentor of mine. This guy was about 30 and making millions per year. Better still, he never made any cold calls. Instead, he spent a truckload of money on newspaper advertising and hosting huge seminars.

His formula was simple; buy 10 ads in every issue of the local paper, advertise a free report. Send the report and then never stop sending them a monthly newsletter. Hold regular seminars with well known speakers, and then watch the people pour in.

His marketing formula was awesome and it worked like a charm for the 3 years that I worked with him. I was making over $200,000 a year by 25 and he was making even more. The only problem with his model was that it cost a fortune to do; hence why most others weren’t doing it.

I eventually left the financial services industry to start my own business. The first one failed and cost me a good bit of money. The second one was started shoe string in 2001 and went on to be quite successful.

Now, you’d think that after working with a guy who was an inbound marketing master, that I’d have learned a think or two, right? Well, I did…but, unlike him, I didn’t have all the cash to ramp up the advertising in the way that he used to do it. (Plus, I doubt that kind of advertising would have worked in the IT services industry anyway).

So what did I do? I resorted to what I new best; cold calling.

Cold calls worked fine until about our 4th year and then the results from my activities took a massive nose dive. I was in uncharted waters. It was 2005.

Luckily for me, by then revenues had hit 7 figures and I had also figured out a way to have most of that revenue coming in on retainer contracts. Had I not, I think running my company would have been a LOT harder….and my company would have been worth a LOT less.

In 2008, I sold it for a seven figure sum and began to enjoy my first mini-retirement. I moved from Seattle to San Diego, grew my hair long, bought a surf board and set out to learn to surf.

Surfing changed my life…but not in the way you’d expect.

I never ended up becoming much of a surfer, but I did meet someone who had a profound impact the way I thought about business. Her name was Haley and she made her living online.

Shortly after learning what Haley was up to, I started building websites and started blogging. Within a year, I’d built up a six figure business that I could run out of my house that was extremely profitable.

For the first time in my life, I had become extremely successful at inbound marketing (as a result of my content) and since then, I’ve never looked back.

Now, before I go on, I want to confess one thing: while I was quite successful with that first business, it had one fatal flaw, it was completely dependent on getting free traffic from Google, and when Google released their Panda and Penguin updates, my revenue dropped by about 80%. Its for this reason, that I strong advice that you do not make SEO the sole focus of your traffic strategy. More on this later.

My point is this; if a guy who isn’t super technical can convert himself from cold calling to inbound/content marketing, then so can you. It’s just not that hard once you understand that process.

What are you waiting for? Why not start today?

Excerpt #3: What is Content Marketing?

At the time of this writing, two terms cross my screen almost daily: content marketing and inbound marketing[Change this. Inbound marketing cost $$ because it involves media buying. Content marketing doesn’t have to.]. For the purposes of this book, I’m going to use these terms interchangeably because, in my opinion, they mean pretty much the same thing.

To help you understand that they mean, let me tell you a story.

The Story of Dave’s Search for an IT Support Company

Meet Dave. Dave runs a small business and has 25 employees. Dave is looking for a new IT supplier for his company because the last one didn’t give him the service that he was looking for.

To begin his search for a new supplier, Dave asks a few of his friends for referrals and he also uses Google to do some searches.

The first thing that Dave does is to check the websites of a few of the firms whose name he was given. Most have pretty similar websites. They have an About Us page, and then a bunch of pages devoted to describing their products and services. Most of these pages sound about like this: We do this, that and the other thing. We are experts. We are certified. We have won this award and we were written up in their press here, here, and there. We are awesome. You should hire us.

Not particularly impressed, Dave decides to give Google a try. Why Google? Well, none of Dave’s friends (who gave him the referral) run a company like his (Dave sells torqued out bindle rotors) and as such, it didn’t seem to Dave that any of the other firms really understood his business – at least not that he could tell from their websites.

Here’s what Dave types into Google, “IT support for torqued out bindle rotor company”.

Much to Dave’s surprise, the very first search result takes him to a blog of a company that has written an article to address this exact problem. Nowhere in the article do they talk about themselves (or at least not very much). Instead, the article explores the problems that Dave’s type of company faces when it comes to IT support. Intrigued by what he read, Dave spends some more time on the company’s website, and then, before he leaves, he enters his email address to receive a copy of their free report titled, “5 Ways to Use IT to Increase Profits In the Torqued Out Bindle Rotor Industry”.

After downloading and reading their professional created report (ok, it was just made in word and was well written and edited), Dave is left with a feeling that this company might actually understand his particular set of problems. He plans to invest some time to study them more, but first, he has to go get his kids from soccer.

When Dave comes to work the next day, he’s greeted with an email from the company thanking him for downloading the report and then directing him to several of the most popular articles on their blog. Dave likes everything that he reads and is planning to investigate further just as soon as he gets through some of this other tasks.

Two days later, Dave receives another email that invites him to attend a webinar titled, “5 IT Mistakes to Avoid in the Torqued Out Bindle Rotor Industry”. Intrigued once again, Dave registers for the free webinar.

The next day Dave watches the webinar and is thoroughly impressed by what he learned. Not only did they not try to actually pitch him anything, but they did an extraordinary job of pointing out a few of the IT issues that Dave is likely to encounter as he continues to grow his company. They also offered to provide the webinar attendees with a free consulting session over Skype. Dave, having been thoroughly impressed with everything he’d read on the company blog, decided that signing up for the Skype call was a no brainer – but as he was in a rush to go pick his wife up, he didn’t have time.

The next day, dave received an email inviting him to select an appointment in the company’s calendar for the Skype interview. Dave clicked the link in the email and effortlessly booked himself a time for the Skype meeting.

A few days later, at the end of the Skype call, with all this remaining questions answered, Dave asked how much their monthly retainer fee was, what was included, and made a decision to hire them without even asking a proposal to be drafted.

Dave found just the supplier he needed, and the company landed a valuable new client. Everybody wins.

Let’s Analyze What Happened

As you can see from this story, content played a major role in Dave’s decision to become a customer. Let’s have a walk through the behind the scenes and examine how this ‘miracle’ took place.

First, it began with search. Dave had a problem that he knew he needed to solve, so, he went to the two most obvious places; his business friends, and Google.

Next, Dave spent time studying the websites of the companies he was referred to and was underwhelmed with what he found. All were just online brochures and did little to address his needs.

Dissatisfied with the referrals, Dave searched on Google and found a company whose website was literally the wikipedia for companies that provide IT support to the Torqued Out Bindle Rotor industry. Impressed with what he saw on the site, Dave made the decision to enter his email address to get the free report.

Here’s where the magic begins to happen…

When Dave entered his email address, not only did he receive a report he asked for, but he entered the top of this company’s automated sales funnel – though he wasn’t aware of this at the time.

Notice that I said “automated”. No one at the company had to manually respond to Dave’s email. This all happens on auto-pilot. We’re going to cover HOW this is done in far more detail later.

I should also point out that the free report that Dave downloaded provided very high quality content that would be of immense value to Dave regardless of whether he hired the company or not. If the company’s report had been garbage or fluff, it’s much less likely that Dave would have gone any further.

Next, Dave received an email inviting him to the webinar. Most important was the title of the webinar. When Dave read it, he felt as though he was going to receive a valuable education, as opposed to a sales pitch. People hate to be sold, but love to learn, and that is why having a headline like this is so important.

When Dave attended the webinar, the experience was exactly as he’d hoped. The host of the webinar was very professional and well prepared. The content that was shared with Dave was of immense value and helped him to fully understand the issues around the problem he was trying to solve. In fact, Dave also discovered a few new problems that he was likely to face in the relatively near future. At the end of the webinar, Dave felt as though he time was well spent and we keen to take another step.

Dave did have the intention to take the next step, but, for a lack of time, had to exit the webinar quickly. By the next morning, Dave had pretty much forgotten about the Skype offer and was back to business as usual.

Here’s where some more automation comes into play. Because the IT company was able to track who stayed to the end of the webinar, their follow up system dispatched a reminder email to everyone that stayed until the end, but didn’t sign up for the Skype call. People are busy and forgetful. This is human nature. So, to capture as many leads as possible, the design of the automated follow up takes this into account.

The next day, Dave received the reminder email and was able to easily book his time slot. He didn’t have to call anyone, or have any back and forth to arrange the time. Instead, he could simply choose from the available time slots and get back to work.

On the receiving end, the IT company’s system notified them that Dave had booked a time slot. The resulted in a task being assigned to the sales rep that would do the call with Dave in a few days. The task for the sales rep was to study Dave’s website and be ready with several intelligent questions about his business. Because this company really focused on Dave’s industry, the rep was also very well equipped to answer all of Dave’s questions.

When the call took place, Dave was already pre-disposed to buying. He’d read many of the company’s articles on their blog, he’d read their valuable report, he’d attended a valuable webinar, he’d seen several of their client testimonial videos and case studies, and he’d already seen the pricing on their website.

All that was left to do was ask a few simple questions and make a decision to proceed.

If your sales process doesn’t resemble what I’ve just described, don’t worry. Setting all this up isn’t as hard as you might think, and it’s all quite inexpensive to do. The best part is that once you’ve got your lead attraction system and nurturing process in place, growing your business will be far easier than you ever though.

What Do You Think?

Like I said at the top, this is all first draft stuff, so it may change or get completely eliminated from the book if that is what my editor decides. For now, I can publish to my heart’s content, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I’m Getting Married!

A few weeks ago I proposed to my girlfriend (now fiance) Liz. I made her a youtube video and then sent her on a crazy scavenger hunt all over town before finally meeting me on the beach where we met.

I took one knee, and she said yes! (now that’s what I call an opt-in!)   <<— marketer’s joke.

As Liz and I both have similar tastes and sense of humour (hence why she said yes), I decided to make yet another video as the first part of the invitation for our guests. My friends all thought it was hilarious, so being as this post is going live on a Saturday, I thought I would share it with you. Hopefully you’ll enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it. (the funniest bits start about 1/3 in and last to the end).

Facebook Graph Search: What It Means For Your Brand?

This week, Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook’s new Graph Search feature. As an enhancement to the site’s current search feature, it leverages the power of a person’s social network to provide results that are more likely to be relevant to the user. When the feature completes its beta, it will be rolled out slowly to desktop users in the US.  Graph Search will be focused on people, places, photos and interests, so if your brand fits in one of these categories, now is the time to prepare!

How does it work?

Facebook users can enter queries into the Facebook search box, such as “photos I like” or “restaurants near me” to get results that may potentially include brand pages. The search results are influenced by the searcher’s Facebook connections and the strength of these relationships. Users can use filters based on their social circle to narrow down the results and get the most relevant pages.

For example, this is what a user will see when searching for “People who like things I like”:

facebook graph

How does it differ from Google, Bing, and Yahoo searches?

Facebook envisions that people will use the Graph Search to find groups of people and places instead of websites. For example, if someone is using a regular search engine such as Google or Yahoo and searches the web for “Italian restaurant,” the search results page will include a variety of listings including local restaurants’ pages, review sites, media articles, etc.

Instead of searching for “Italian restaurant,” Facebook predicts users will use the Graph Search to look for “Italian restaurants my friends like,” and will then be served with results containing the Facebook pages of the restaurants that their friends have also liked.

Sponsored results have a big play here because in addition to showing results that your friends have liked, brands can also buy placements within these results. Forbes speculates that, though Graph Search doesn’t currently have ads, Facebook may eventually allow brands to purchase premium placement through sponsored results.

What does it mean for your brand and what actions should your brand take?

The Graph Search’s functionality means that your company will need to expand your Facebook presence by picking up more fans and truly engaging them. As your Facebook fan base grows, so does your brand page’s visibility. By the way, this may help you counter the negative effects of the Facebook Edgerank algorithm change rolled out last year.

Here are some actions that I recommend you considering now to ensure that your brand is ready for the Graph Search public release:

Make sure your Facebook page is up-to-date and complete with vanity URL, description, mailing address (if applicable), website URL and images.
Build a strong fan acquisition and retention strategy. Actively engage your Facebook audience through daily posts, contests, surveys, etc.
Make sure the content posted to your brand’s Facebook page is of good quality and relevance.
If budget allows, buy a sponsored ad for your page to increase the number of “likes.”

Another important thing to note is that Bing serves as the backup search engine if there is nothing to match the user’s query on Facebook. So, optimizing your main brand website for Bing can eventually help you earn organic search traffic from Facebook’s Graph Search.

The use of Bing is interesting. While it is one of the top three search engines, Bing’s share of organic search is still at only about 16% – miniscule compared to Google which owns about 66% of all organic searches. The Facebook/Bing partnership might be Microsoft’s biggest play in positioning Bing as a major player in the search industry, so this is something to keep an eye on.

If you haven’t already, you can preview the Facebook Graph Search and sign up for a beta version. More details from Facebook on Graph Search can also be found in the official press release.

What do you think about this news? I’m very curious to see how this pans out!

fbchecklist

How to Evaluate Your Facebook Page – infographic

The following is a guest post from one of my Triberr tribemates.

Source: Shortstack

How to Evaluate Your Facebook Page - infographic

How to Evaluate Your Facebook Page – infographic


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My Trip to NMX Blogworld in Las Vegas

Just over a week ago, I returned from my trip to Las Vegas where I attended the New Media Expo. This is an event that has been around for a long time and this was my first year attending it.

Below are some short on-the-spot interviews that with people or companies that I found interesting. I hope you find them helpful.

Triberr

By far, my favorite discovery was a company called Triberr.

Triberr is the creation of Dan Cristo and Dino Dogan and in the video below, you are going to hear Dino tell me why Triberr is worth paying attention to.

(apologies for the sound quality on all the videos. It was a very noisy environment)

I have to admit, that I think the Triberr concept is pretty terrific because it gives anyone (person or company) with a blog the power to easily accomplish the following:

  • Publish quality content
  • Distribute your content to other blogs
  • Increase traffic to your blog
  • Provide social proof

triberr

I’ve recently started to use Triberr right here on Bright Ideas because, after interviewing Mike Stelzner, I learned that he publishes content 6 days a week. He told me that in the early days of the Social Media Examiner, they tested all sorts of publishing variations and regardless of what they did, one thing was always clear; more content = more traffic.

Not really surprising, is it?

So, why don’t we all publish content every day? Because it’s a lot of work!

In my case, I’m working on a software startup, as well as creating a new WordPress plugin for local marketing consultants. With a workload like that, there is no way that I can publish content every day.

With Triberr and a couple of Tribemates, I’ll easily be able to publish as much high quality content as I want.

In case you are wondering, a tribemate is just someone who’s joined my tribe (in Triberr) and by doing so, assuming we each have the Triberr plugin installed, we are able to “reblog” each other’s content with the click of a button.

To see how it works, watch this short video below.

If you’d like to see an example of a recent reblog of someone else’s content here on Bright Ideas, click here. Notice that the post has proper attribution as well as comments from both Bright Ideas and the original author’s blog.

In case you haven’t already guess, not only can I reblog my tribemate’s content here, but they can also reblog my content on their blogs; all with the click of just one button.

For those of you who are wondering whether or note reblogging is considered duplicate content, let me assure you that it isn’t. The reason for that is because attribution exists. For a more detailed explanation of this, please read this post.

If you’d like to join my tribe, please go grab yourself a free account at Triberr and then search for a tribe called Professional B2B Marketers and Digital Agency Owners.

UStream

If you are looking for a way to stream live video on the web, uStream is the leader in the field. I haven’t tried this yet, but plan to at some point.

OutBrain

If you are looking for a very inexpensive way to buy traffic for your site, this is a video that you should watch. I was surprised at how cheap it was for clicks.

Brafton

If you need content for your site, then this video is one that you will want to watch.

What Do You Think?

Please share you thoughts in the comments below. If you have some tools and resources that you love, please let us know.