INBOUND MARKETING BLOG

Generate, Then Guide Leads Down Our Sales Funnel

• By Donny Kemick

On the web, we have a unique opportunity that doesn't exist with traditional, interruption marketing. We can not only generate, but also guide leads down our sales funnel and score them into a qualified lead that sales can work to close. This aspect is often overlooked with small businesses looking to generate leads online. It's just as important to help guide newly generated soft leads down your sales funnel based on where they are in the buyer's journey for your industry. Let's briefly talk about this notion of a buyer's journey and how it impacts the sales funnel. Every consumer, whether B2B or B2C has a common set of steps that they take from the time they identify that there's a problem or desire that they have to the time that they make an actual purchase. Inbound marketing allows us to market to our leads based on where they're at in the buyer's journey. I plan to write more detail on the buyer's journey in the future, but for now this simple explanation will suffice. We can ...

4 Inbound Marketing Articles You Should Have Read This Week

• By Donny Kemick

Holy smokes! It's Friday already! Here're some inbound marketing articles you should have read this week: The 5 Biggest Content Marketing Lies - Inc. This is a quick read and well worth the time. John Hall hits on 5 very common misconceptions about content marketing and does a good job of clearing things up. As a teaser, my favorites are "Content marketing is just a buzzword" and "If you create it, they will come". Author: John Hall 8 Blogging Rules You Should Probably Ditch - Search Engine Watch Still not blogging for your company? That's a shame. You're missing a huge opportunity... Maybe this list of don'ts will help you get started on the right foot. They actually take blogging and make it easier. Already a blogger? Great! You're probably already following what Salma Jafri lists, but it's worth a double-check. Author: Salma Jafri 3 Components Every Value Proposition Must Have - JillKonrath.com With content marketing being such a useful tactic in your inbound marketing strategy, ...

How To Find Out Who Is Using Content Marketing In Your Industry

• By Donny Kemick

I bet you've said it... yep, you. You've made the dreadful mistake of saying no one in your industry (competitors, vendors, etc...) use content marketing yet. No one baits in high quality prospects with valuable content they've written in hopes of generating leads... OH REALLY!?!?!?!? I'd be willing to bet with a little Googling we can prove you wrong. You just need to know how to start looking. Here's a quick way to do some competitive research on who is using content marketing in your industry.

Sales Down? Start Generating Qualified Leads With Marketing!

• By Donny Kemick

The first step to solving a problem is recognizing you have one. The second step is identifying the exact problem you have. If your sales are off, inconsistent or non-existent you may think you have a sales problem. This is often not the case at all. Most likely, you have a marketing problem. By most definitions of marketing, your efforts should generate leads for your sales process. Could the same person at your small business be in charge of both processes? Yes. Especially for a small business. If your sales are struggling or you are simply looking to increase your market share, you need to refine your sales process, but you absolutely MUST focus your efforts on generating qualified leads through your marketing efforts. You may have the best closer in the business working for you, but if this salesperson gets garbage leads sent to them, they won't be the closer they could be. Some Signs You Have A Marketing Problem It Seems Like No One Is Buying Right Now Someone is buying. They ...

The 5 Best Inbound Marketing Articles From This Week

• By Donny Kemick

My oh my was it a good week for getting some inbound marketing education! Here are the 5 best inbound marketing articles from this week: How To Repurpose Marketing Content The incorrect assumption by many small businesses that are just getting started with content marketing, that all of their content has to be unique keeps many SMBs from getting started. While you certainly need a good volume of unique content, you should also have an ongoing effort to repurpose the content you create. For example, you write a series of posts on your blog surrounding a certain topic. Could you combine those posts into a longer form piece of content like an ebook? Could you take an ebook that you've created and do a youtube video or infographic on the topic? Additionally, you have the option of updating a piece of content you've previously written to account for industry changes. The bottom line here is that you can re-use your content assets online and offline. Article By WH & Associates in Los ...

Model The Best LinkedIN Company Pages

• By Donny Kemick

The Path To A Small Business Website Conversion

• By Donny Kemick

A website conversion takes place when a visitor to a website takes the action the website owner wants them to take. This action could be anything from starting a real time chat or downloading a valuable piece of content to submitting an RFQ (request for quote), making a donation or completing the buying process through ecommerce. To make your website a lead generating machine, you need to understand the path to a small business website conversion. Step 1 - Quality Website Traffic If you want to generate quality leads, you need quality website traffic. Yes, quantity can be important, but the quality is even more important. We tell our clients that it would be better to have 1000 quality visitors that are actually interested in their offering than have 2000 visitors that have little to no interest in their offering. Through small business SEO, search engine pay-per-click advertising and/or social media paid advertising, you can really hone in on your ideal buyers and generate quality ...

4 Great Web Marketing Resources This Week

• By Donny Kemick

Head into the weekend with some great web marketing resources! Here're some gems we came across this week: 5 Simple Acts to Take Right Now In this article by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Jantsch touches on the fact that for many small businesses, the summer months are a bit slower. Whether it's because so many people take vacation or your business has a natural, cyclical dip in the summer, it's a great time to broaden your perspective a bit and do some thinking/planning. Even if you're not slow right now, it's time to start planning for 2015. Don't wait until March of 2015 to start.... 5 Secrets of Lead Generation in Social Media You Never New (INFOGRAPHIC) Ya know how you always put off using social media for your business? Digital Marketing Philippines put together this excellent infographic and write up on lead generation through social media that should help you change your viewpoint. They touch on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube. Don't like ...

How To Start Using Twitter As A Small Business

• By Donny Kemick

Most small businesses that we work with have not taken a social media step beyond Facebook. Most have only used Facebook because they are using it personally. Many have created a Facebook business page for their company but rarely, if ever use it. Facebook is not always the best place to focus, but because they already "know" how to use Facebook, that's where they start. Twitter is often overlooked by small business owners because they don't use it personally. If they were already on Twitter and had "figured it out", chances are they would have a business Twitter profile as well. This post aims at removing the "figuring it out" step that so many business owners put off.

Effective Inbound Marketing Is NOT A Project

• By Donny Kemick

The majority of our clients are small businesses with no full time marketing staff. In fact, many do no marketing at all. That's why when they look to redesign their website and improve their SEO, they look at it like a project. They think they will give it their focus for a couple of months and it will be behind them, "running" in the background, "hopefully" generating leads for them. Like most things in life, effective inbound marketing, the kind that generates leads and helps to grow a business, is not a project that you do once, and then set it and forget it until the next time you decide to focus on it. Effective Inbound Marketing Is Not A Ron Popeil Product Inbound marketing should be an ongoing effort that is on any business owner or executive's regularly reviewed processes. Why? Because you won't always be able to rely on those core clients that pay your bills. When one of them goes in a new direction and picks your competitor over you, do you want it to be because they did a ...