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Posts Tagged ‘Inbound Marketing’

Three Secrets on Effective Social Media that Actually Work

April 20th, 2010 :: Steven Fisher

Dr. Alan Glazier of Shady Grover Eye and Vision Care here in the Virginia area. They have been in business since 1993 and always early adopters of technology. They registered their domain and built their web site in 1996. Over these last 15 years the web site got them a foothold in search engines and as the web has evolved they have evolved with it. They use the site extensively for customer service and were an early adopter of social media and have seen tremendous value being a small business. This is especially for those customers who are younger and it connects with those patients and potential customers who see that they use the same tools they do. They have gotten rid of all print advertising, even the yellow pages.

Shashi sat down with him recently and discussed the evolution of technology in his small business and how it has changed the way they do business and will carry them forward. He has three great secrets that you will have to watch the interview (or head straight to 6:05 in the video below) and find out. The interview is below:

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Tags: alan glazier, Inbound Marketing, social media
Posted in Customer Service, Entrepreneurs, Interviews, Marketing, small business, social media | No Comments »

How to Make E-Mail Marketing Core to Inbound Marketing Success

April 16th, 2010 :: Steven Fisher

We have all used e-mail in some capacity for our online communications, almost all have received emails promoting something and many of you reading this have used e-mail to market a product or service.

There are great e-mail marketing companies like Network Solutions, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Blue Sky Factory to name a few. There are many others so we are not recommending a particular one, only to let you know that you can find one that serves your needs and your price point. These days, they all address the needs of social media and as in my interview with John Arnold of Constant Contact, John says “Share, is the new Forward button”.

Power of e-Mail in Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

You might think that e-mail is an old technology and not part of this “inbound marketing” thing but you would be wrong. In fact, it is one of the most important components you can have in your inbound marketing strategy. One of the core things you can do as a small business is create an e-mail newsletter. It could contain products you sell, knowledge you have or things you have found across the web. Whatever it is, Monika Jansen, one of our talented writers here at GrowSmartBusiness, mapped out eight great ways to have a stellar e-mail newsletter and they are:

Send it to the right people. Know who your audience is (hint, it is not everyone in your address book!). Unless you put together a solid list of people who would find your newsletter useful, few people will read it. Keep in mind that whether you use Network Solutions, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or someone else, you cannot buy a list and use it with their programs.

Keep it short. Just like with blogs, no one has time to read a long article, let alone several long articles. Include one article/topic of no more than 300 words. If there is more information to share on that topic, write about it in your next e-newsletter or provide a hyperlink to your website in case readers would like to learn more.

Make it easy to pass along. Be sure it’s easy for people to forward and subscribe to your newsletter. Email marketing programs provide ways to do this in their templates. Use them! Remember, the more readers the better!

Include graphics. Photos, illustrations, even charts or graphs will make your newsletter more interesting to read and look at. Just be sure they are relevant to your topic. I like to pull photos off of Flickr for this blog (type in Creative Commons in the Advanced Search box—you can use any of those photos), but most email marketing programs allow you to use photos in their gallery (you’ll have to pay for that feature). Be sure you give the photographer or artist credit for the graphic you are using.

Use your logo and your logo/company colors. This is just good branding. You want your readers to recognize your newsletter as yours.

Keep format and delivery timetable consistent. People like consistency. If you’re going to share a tip, an interview with a client, or a coupon, do it in every newsletter. Figure out a delivery timetable and email your newsletter out around the same time, whether it’s every month, every other week, or every week.

Let content build on previous topics. This will keep readers eager to hear what else you have to say on a subject, and it’s easier for you—you don’t have to keep thinking up new topics.

Use attention-grabbing subject lines. The subject line that shows up in your readers’ inboxes must be intriguing. It can be witty, sarcastic, silly, a little out-there, whatever. It just needs to be compelling enough to get your reader to click on it.

Making E-Mail the Center of Your Inbound Marketing Hub

Here is the beauty of e-mail marketing as the center of your inbound marketing hub. Follow me on this one…

Use web site, Facebook Fan Page, and every other place to sign people up on newsletter
Make blog e-mail enabled for people that want that kind of delivery
Use e-mail delivery to bring people back using various promotions you can track
Enable social media sharing tools so readers can spread the word
Measure, Rinse, Repeat

On a related note, Amy Garland over at Blue Sky Factory wrote about e-mail and inbound marketing last year and has great advice on three question you need to ask first so you can effectively run an e-mail marketing campaign.

Are You Using E-Mail In Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

Are you currently using e-mail in your inbound marketing efforts? What do you find to be successful? Any best practices or lessons learned? Please leave a comment.

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Tags: Email marketing, Inbound Marketing, social media
Posted in Email marketing, Marketing, social media | 7 Comments »

Inbound Marketing Should Be Your New Best Friend

April 16th, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

Our Grow Smart Business theme this month is inbound marketing. For you non-marketing folks, that just means pulling business in online via your website, social networking, and blogs, rather pushing marketing messages out to your audience via advertising, direct mail, PR, etc. Inbound marketing should be your new best friend, as it is the present—and future—of an effective marketing program.

Ken Fischer, Click for Help

The two person monologue (bilogue?) that appears below started out as an interview with Ken Fischer, President of ClickForHelp, a web 2.0 application development company. In plain English, that means one of the things his company puts together and executes is an SEO program that is fully integrated with your marketing and branding efforts, which most SEO companies do not do. It’s a very robust approach that generates unbelievable results.

Amanda Fischer, Infinite Technologies

To make this interview more interesting, we decided to make it a case study using one of his clients, Amanda Fischer, Director of Marketing at Infinite Technologies, which makes orthotics, prosthetics, and helmets for babies with flat, flattening, or misshapen heads. They just launched a new, totally rebranded website with Ken’s help called HelmetTherapy. Ken and Amanda worked together to position HelmetTherapy.com as the go-to educational website for parents of children who need helmet therapy. The re-launched website has been wildly successful thanks to a strategic online marketing plan.

I told them what I wanted to write about, and then just sat back and listened to their back and forth, scribbling notes furiously. (Oh, and they are not related despite having the exact same last name. They usually point that out to people, so I figured I would, too.)

Excerpts from the “bilogue”:

Ken: Our philosophy around online marketing is simple: understand your audiences’ needs and meet them. You want to build trust and retain your audience.

Amanda: And education is a huge part of that. We put together great content that would fulfill the expectations of what our audience was looking for online.

Ken: Exactly. You want to educate people on issues they want to know about. So we always start out by doing a lot of analysis. We analyze audience data (who they are, what they’re looking for online, etc.), look at what the competitors’ are doing, and conduct an in-depth market analysis….Our strategy with HelmetTherapy.com became building an educational resource for prospective helmet therapy patients….All of this information does you no good, of course, if no one can find you. The website needed to be searchable and findable around terms parents regularly search for.

Amanda: Our goal with the website was to be top-ranked.

Ken: So, once you put an SEO strategy into place, you have to ask yourself: was the effort worth it? You must have A+ analytics in place so you know exactly what is and what is not working. We measure every path that customers can follow to your website.

Amanda: And the effort was worth it. We had been attracting 1-2 patients per week via our website; now we’re getting 5-10 patients per week. Our sales increased by 500% and we’re top-ranked on almost 300 sites!

Ken: HelmetTherapy.com is searchable for over 2,000 terms, and they have been found with 500.

Amanda: This huge project has also really helped with our brand awareness. It’s been 5 months since the site launched, and at 3 months, people were referring to our helmets, which did not have a name, as “KidCap”.

And that, folks, is the formula for a successful inbound marketing program: valuable information + technology + analytics. Deceptively simple, and very doable.

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Tags: Branding, Inbound Marketing, Marketing, seo, website analytics, website content
Posted in Branding, Marketing, social media | No Comments »

10 Inbound Marketing Strategy Tasks a VA Can Handle

April 16th, 2010 :: Thursday Bram

The tasks that make up an inbound marketing strategy are known more for requiring constant attention than some of their outbound counterparts. With a trade show, for instance, you’ve got some prep work to do, but once the show is over you can relax. With a blog, though, you have to keep adding new content at the very least. Working with a virtual assistant who specializes in that sort of work can help you focus on running your business while still getting the benefits of those inbound marketing strategies. It’s just a matter of deciding what tasks to outsource to your VA.

Writing blog posts: Depending on your VA, she may be willing to simply write the posts and other materials you need for your inbound marketing efforts. That can be one of most time-intensive parts of a strategy like blogging, freeing up your time significantly.
Finding freelance writers: If you need more content than your VA is ready to put together, you can have her handle the process of finding more posts and articles.
Managing social media profiles: Twitter, Facebook and all those other social networking sites can make a big difference in your ability to connect with potential customers. Setting up and maintaining those profiles is a job that a VA can take off your plate.
Publishing posts and newsletters: Even if you’re comfortable creating content for your site, the time it takes to get your writing ready to publish could be better spent writing even more. That’s why it can make sense to have a VA handle the publishing process.
Creating online events: Want to run a webinar to bring in leads for your business or, perhaps, another kind of online event? Hand your ideas over to a VA and she can set up the tools you need as well as help you promote it.
Sourcing photos and images: Need a stock image to go with a newsletter? Have your VA find a few options to help you get the right picture without spending hours looking.
Commenting on other sites: One of the fastest ways to build up traffic on a blog is to comment on other sites, a task that a VA can do just as easily as you can. Your VA can use her own name, just as long as she links those comments back to your site.
Respond to comments and emails: A good inbound marketing strategy will generate comments and responses on your website, as well as through email. Responding can quickly get out of hand, especially if you need to focus on the day-to-day details of running your business.
Optimizing search engine results: There are pages and pages of tactics you can use to help improve your search engine results, and most of them are not ‘set it and forget it’ approaches. Many VAs specialize in SEO tasks, however, making the process easier.
Creating ebooks: Creating informational resources can be crucial to helping leads find you. While you may not need to put together entirely new material, a VA can help you gather information for an ebook, as well as edit, design and promote it.

These ideas are just starting points. There are thousands of virtual assistants out there, many of whom specialize in inbound marketing. It’s just a matter of finding a VA who will be a good fit with your business.

Image by Flickr user gmahender

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Tags: blogging, Inbound Marketing, virtual assistant
Posted in social media | 5 Comments »

12 Easy Ways to Use Social Media for Inbound Marketing

April 14th, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

I have blogged before about how much I love Inc. Magazine. Not only is their magazine packed with valuable and useful information for entrepreneurs and small business owners, their website is, too. Best of all: everything is well-written in an accessible, friendly, and encouraging tone of voice.

.tomate d'epingles.'s/Flickr

On my birthday in January, they published 30 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Business on their website. It was a great, totally unintentional gift on their part, and it has been a wonderful source of inspiration for me. Sometimes I open up Twitter and Facebook and just sit there, trying to think of something useful or witty or funny to post. Being able to refer to the things other business owners have done to drive business and market themselves through social media is much easier!

I am not going to regurgitate what the author, April Joyner, wrote. Some of it didn’t strike me as easy to do, and some of it was “don’t do this!” What follows are my favorite ideas.

Sneak peeks. Whether you provide a service or product—or both—offer a behind the scenes look at, or preview of, whatever it is you’re working on.
Post videos. Use videos to quickly demonstrate what your company does. People like to watch well-made, funny videos, and they love to share them (just look at the success of YouTube!).
Interact. This really goes without saying, but it is worth repeating. Always respond to comments on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn page, etc.
Promotions. Offer coupons and other special promotions through social media only. Just make sure they are easily redeemed! You can also offer coupons through Groupon or, in certain cities, Living Social.
Read what they’re saying. Search your company’s name on Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp to see what people are saying about you—and join the conversation.
Broadcast your location. If your business is mobile (dog groomer, street performer, food truck), use Twitter, Facebook, and/or Foursquare to update your location so customers can find you.
Search for customers. By conducting keyword searches on Twitter that are related to your business, you can reply to people who have posted them—and hopefully snag some new customers.
Target your online ads. Facebook lets you to target your ads based on specific information in users’ profiles.
Customer forums. Add a customer forum to your website or social network so customers can interact with each other. Great way to build a community for both your business and industry!
Tap evangelists. Ask your top customers to spread the word about your company as guest bloggers, or ask them to make a short (2-3 minutes, tops) video of why they like your company’s product or service so much, which both of you can share.
Follow your industry. Read blogs related to your industry and join industry groups on Facebook and LinkedIn—and post comments!
Help others. Scan LinkedIn’s Answers for questions relating to your industry. Spend an hour or so a week answering them, and you may very well find new customers.

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Tags: blogs, Inbound Marketing, Marketing, online advertising, social media, video marketing
Posted in small business | No Comments »

Using Inbound Marketing to set up your own Small Businesses "Watering Hole"

April 7th, 2010 :: Steven Fisher

Have you ever heard of the term “Inbound Marketing”? I bet you know what “Outbound Marketing” is if I mentioned a few terms – trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and advertising. These methods are called “outbound marketing” because a marketer or small business owner pushes their message out far and wide hoping that it resonates with that needle in the haystack. While this works in some cases, for many small businesses they don’t have the budget to experiment or invest in the size that these programs require to get a measure of success.

Inbound Marketing Defined

The concept “inbound marketing” is where you use tools like your website or blog to construct a “hub” for your business and hopefully, your industry to attract people naturally through search engines. Ways people do this is by utilizing social media tools like blogs, Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages as a start. This dramatically increases the chances you will be found by those looking for the help you provide. Companies “get found” in this way because potential customers are already learning about and shopping in your industry, therefore they are using .

Setup Your Own Small Business “Watering Hole”

A great analogy from Hubspot is the “Watering Hole Analogy“:

“The best analogy I can come up with is that traditional marketers looking to garner interest from new potential customers are like lions hunting in the jungle for elephants. The elephants used to be in the jungle in the ’80s and ’90s when they learned their trade, but they don’t seem to be there anymore. They have all migrated to the watering holes on the savannah (the internet). So, rather than continuing to hunt in the jungle, I recommend setting up shop at the watering hole or turning your website into its own watering hole.”

Upcoming Inbound Marketing Series

This month the them is “Inbound Marketing for Small Business” and we will be connecting the dots and showing you the tools and best practices to set up your own “watering hole”. Stay tuned.

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Tags: Inbound Marketing
Posted in Email marketing, Marketing, Resources, Search Marketing, small business, social media | No Comments »

Six Things You Need to Do to Build a Sales Pipeline

January 26th, 2010 :: Steven Fisher

People get thousands of sales messages and pitches per day and it only is getting more saturated. How do you get more customers with so little time to get your message in front of them and acted on? They say it takes six impressions for people to remember a sales pitch or message.

You will need to utilize different channels where your audience is located. This could be email newsletters, search engine advertising, cold calls, letters, etc. This is a mix of inbound and outbound marketing and in order to build your sales pipeline we have identified six things you need to do to get that pipeline to grow and produce results:

1.) Perform Outbound Marketing Activities

Networking with existing friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.
Attending industry/trade meetings and walking the floor
Securing speaking engagements at local and regional associations or interest groups
Hosting breakfast meetings people in the circle of who you are looking to connect with
Cold and warm telephone prospecting
Direct mail/e-mail/fax prospecting followed up with direct telephone calls

2.) Reinforce brand with inbound marketing activities – this includes e-mail newsletters, podcasts, search engine optimization, white papers, and social media tools (blogs, Twitter, Facebook).

3.) Set Metrics – These can be a variety of things and Bnet.com sums it up well – “Measure the performance in each stage of the process, benchmark, and establish the potential for improvement. This allows you to trade off strategies, such as investing in after-care versus A&P, account management versus tele-sales. It also helps you prioritise key initiatives, and incentivise teams around the biggest value drivers. The absolute key to success is finding ways to collect good quality information without creating a paper-chase for the team That will provide them with added value in their roles. Involving the sales team in developing this is critical.”

4.) Follow up – You know, many people work so hard to get your information or they meet you and never reach out even after having identified the need for your offering. Follow up with a hand-written letter or send them an email to schedule a meeting or a quick call. Many people don’t like the interuptions of a phone call unless they asked or you have asked a gotten their permission. I know that nothing that irritates me more than getting a number on my cell that I don’t recognize and answer thinking it might be important and the sales person tries to pitch me at the wrong time.

5.) Add them to the pipeline and keep up the activities - You have to keep up the activity. I know this sounds like a law of numbers and in most cases, it is. Keep the pipeline full and keep selling because you will close some and will lose some. The most important part is that you get out there and sell.

6.) Track your response rate and successes AND learn from them – This means that you will lose some and probably lose many deals. Learn why, was it turn around time or pricing or capabilities. Try and really learn what is getting you the sale and what is not. Also understand how they found out and what marketing activities worked. All of this will help you as you cycle back to step one and do this on a regular basis.

What is Working For You?

So what is working for you to build your sales pipeline? Are you following a process like this? What activities are you engaged in? Leave a comment so we can learn from you.

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Tags: Inbound Marketing, outbound marketing, sales, sales process
Posted in Branding, Business Development, Email marketing, Entrepreneurs, Marketing, sales process, Sales Teams, small business, social media, Thought Leadership | 4 Comments »