Or How to Get the Most Bang from Your Inbound Marketing Buck
While marketing budgets are growing and more and more companies are leveraging inbound marketing, many CEOs want to know: what returns are we getting out of our investment to prove that inbound marketing is the way to go?
One, inbound has supplemented outbound in terms of clearly measurable ROI; two, the ROI areas prove the effectiveness of inbound marketing; and three, 10 metrics to consider when measuring inbound ROI.
Topics: Content marketing, Content, Marketing, Persona, Inbound marketing, Customer communications
Marketers increasingly recognize that if they want higher ROI, more qualified sales leads, lower cost per acquisition, and increased brand authority, inbound marketing is essential.
Inbound marketing is unlike traditional outbound marketing approaches that have marketers vying for customers’ attention via ads, trade shows, and cold calling. Instead, inbound focuses on having potential leads come to you via company-created content that drives visitors to your website, engages them, and helps your sales team convert them into customers and loyal brand followers.
Topics: Blog, Content, Marketing, Social media, Inbound marketing, Customer communications, Audience, Personas
You can have it all, just not at the same time, or so it seems.
Your SEO/AIO expert is amazing but your writing team doesn’t have the time to create all the needed content nor create all the content and landing pages, even with AI help.
Your social media team has created comprehensive promotional campaigns but is falling behind on curating the objective content necessary to please your target audiences.
Topics: Public relations, Content marketing, DIY, Social media, Persona, Inbound marketing, Customer communications, Personas, PR, SEO
Committing to inbound marketing means attracting and growing your leads and customer base via valuable and highly customized content and experiences. To successfully drive inbound marketing and sales, three things must happen:
Topics: Content marketing, Inbound marketing, Customer communications, Marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales qualified leads (SQL), Hubspot
Social media always needs to be in complete synch with inbound and content marketing, PR, and customer communications. This is especially critical when it comes to the PESOTM model (created by Gini Dietrich), which drives brand awareness, reputation, and sales by integrating Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media, maximizing content.
Topics: Content marketing, Content, Customer communications, Corporate communications, SEO, PESO, Paid media, Earned media, Shared media, Owned media
The PESO model is an integrated approach that strengthens your ability to leverage your thought leadership content, building trust and credibility with audiences across multiple channels.
Topics: Content marketing, Content, Customer communications, Corporate communications, SEO, PESO, Paid media, Earned media, Shared media, Owned media
Hmmm…should this be a blog or rant?
We’re constantly amazed at the number of companies who’ve been around for years and don’t have a cohesive messaging document (MD).
While I understand the aversion – MDs are difficult to execute, with various stakeholders within the company trying to get their voices heard – a well-conceived MD creates a virtual paint-by-numbers scenario, where all of your unique value propositions/unique selling propositions (UVPs/USPs) are well defined for audiences across the purchasing chain, smoothing the account-based marketing process.
Topics: Marketing, Brand, Customer communications, Message, Messaging, Corporate communications, Client relations, Integrated marketing
Understanding the role of market research and up-to-date intelligence
Many companies are overlooking the critical importance of market research and fail to use it to get actionable insights about their customers. With unpredictable markets, up-to-date intelligence from effective research can help B2B marketers stay on top of customers’ evolving needs to clearly understand what they want or don’t want - knowledge that can inspire truly customer-centric messaging.
Topics: Market research, Customer communications, Message, Messaging, B2B, Marketing strategy
B2B messaging should clearly explain the unique value and selling propositions (UVPs/USPs) and myriad advantages of your solution to everyone participating in purchasing process. Sometimes, that just isn’t achieved.
Fail 1 - The “too-broad” B2B messaging
General marketing blah-blah is not appreciated. Technology products are very rarely designed for general use, and the more specific you message to your personas, the better. Messaging must make it immediately apparent who benefits from your product and how.
Topics: Persona, Customer communications, Message, Messaging, B2B
In the “change is the only constant” department, we’re seeing B2B marketing evolve in approach, philosophy, and focus - with new opportunities and technologies promising to impact businesses for the long-run. Some of these come from the increasing sway of B2C marketing, others from emerging technology, and still others from the pandemic. Whatever their provenance, these will keep B2B marketers on their feet so they can stay ahead of the competition.
Topics: Content, Marketing, Brand, Customer communications, B2B, Marketing qualified leads (MQL), Sales qualified leads (SQL), Sales funnel, Trends, Customer journey