The key takeaway from this study was the primary marketing method used: Inbound Marketing.  For those who may not know, inbound marketing attracts customers and qualified leads by setting the company up as an authority in their industry.  It specifically involves content marketing (articles, whitepapers, data sheets, video, etc.), social media marketing and search engine optimization.

The reverse of Inbound Marketing is obviously Outbound Marketing – commonly called advertising.  This is where your company is positioned all around the web in common ad placements such as pay per click, banner ads, trade magazine ads, etc.  The disadvantage to outbound marketing is that it’s your word that your product or service is the best solution for the customer.  While it truly may be the “best solution”, there is generally no data to back this claim.  You’ve not developed a relationship with your audience based on solid solution-based information but rather you’ve attracted their attention because you stood in the crowd and yelled the loudest and longest – make sense?

There is a place for everything but one things for sure…
Outbound marketing is far more expensive and because you have to convince your audience that you’re the best solution for them, you’ll see longer and longer durations between initial contact and final sale .  With inbound marketing, a lead comes to you because they’ve read a whitepaper you’ve written, watched a video you produced or have followed you on a social network and have come to understand that you are an Authority In Your Industry.  The obvious solution for them is to work with your company.

Inbound Marketing takes time to develop, mostly because it takes time to develop content, videos, etc. and get enough brand recognition that you’re company becomes the logical choice for all things ________________________ (insert what you sell).

The key is to get started right now.  For years, we’ve pushing for more content from our customers – content helps with search engine rankings, brand development, etc. but now it’s proven that Content is King.  Content will bring qualified buyers to your door without you spending tens of thousands of dollars every year on Outbound Marketing methods that bring little if any results.

Let’s schedule some time to chat about your Inbound Marketing strategy.

Trevor Walter | 907-414-0375 | Request Free Consultation

Getting involved with social media is pretty easy – chances are, you already have a company Facebook page, Twitter account and most likely a Linkedin page.  In order for a company to be successful with a social media campaign, you need to do a few things:

• Develop a consistent flow of information that your viewing audience will find informative.  Social media profiles are a lot like your snack cupboard at home – if every time you open the cupboard and find stale chips, it won’t take long before you don’t open that cupboard anymore.  The same goes for social sites – if you don’t keep a steady stream of updated information, people won’t have a reason to keep coming back.  Then, when you actually do have something of value, there’s no one around to see.

• Engage your audience.  This may seem obvious but a lot of people we work with think that “good content” is in itself, engaging – that’s almost never the case.  In fact, the best thing you can do is utilize Linkedin to create a group.  Once the group is created, post common questions you’re asked along with the solutions to those questions.  Before long, customers and non-customers will start asking questions specific to their needs.  After a while, you’ve developed an online knowledge base that’s available to anyone you grant permission to.

• The final item you need to consider is industry news.  Most industries have at least 10 to 30 good online trade magazines, forums, etc. that post content on a daily and even hourly basis. If you’re like me, you probably don’t have time to scan all of these sites and neither does your customers or potential customers. This opens up a great opportunity for you to become a news aggregator for your industry.  How great would it be if people, including non-clients, found that all the news they consider important for their industry is being aggregated and re-posted on your Facebook page, with quick links in Twitter and Linkedin?  It won’t take long and you’ll be the go-to place for industry specific, relevant news updates.

Well, in a few short bullet points, you’ve seen a simple solution to help you draw more clients and keep your current customers happy and as an added bonus, social media offers a way to boost your keyword positions in the search engines; that means free traffic!  However, we can’t just post anything that we find and assume it’s relevant to you or appropriate for your viewing audience.  But, if you could commit to sending us an email with articles you’ve written, faq’s you’ve put together from common questions you get asked, even links to articles from online trade magazines, we can do the posting for you and save you hours of promotion time.

If you want to get more creative and start a Linkedin group or two, that will require a bit more on your part.  We can setup and optimize your company profile but it will be up to you to monitor and respond to questions or comments posted by members of the group(s).  This is one thing you don’t want us to handle – it would be much like a doctor asking their marketing firm to help out in the operating room… Disaster is sure to follow!

One final note – I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they’d rather invest time in an email newsletter to 30,000 customers than spend time targeting a few hundred through social media.  That’s a valid point and email is a valid marketing platform, but here’s the reason those few hundred are important:

1. You can post information all day long to social media sites without being considered a spammer.  More than one or two emails a week and chances are pretty good people will start unsubscribing.

1. Social media grows exponentially – the more relevant information you provide, the more people will follow.  There is no need to buy lead lists, scam email addresses, etc. – these people are following you with an expectation of getting information on a regular basis.

1. And finally, you don’t need to prepare a huge email newsletter packed full of things you want to say.  In fact, it’s much better if you post small, easily digested bits of information that get you’re customers thinking.

For most, you probably already have a social media program.  You’re Facebook and Twitter profiles most likely consist of links to products on your site, however, if you want to get a bit more involved and help us to improve your data stream, you can have a social media program that will provide value to your customers and quality content to the search engines.

Q&A websites such as FormSpring, Quora, StackOverflow and the new TED Conversations offer a unique way for your company to brand itself using questions your customers ask everyday.  Since you’re already answering these questions, it takes very little effort to archive these, put them into text format and publish them for the rest of the world to see.  These sites can be real timesavers for companies with small customer service departments by acting as a knowledge base that you can direct customers to.

Concerned that these sites may not have relevant categories for questions relating to your industry?  Don’t be.  Our research has shown that almost every industry is covered – everything from sales and marketing to travel, from education to workplace safety.  There’s something for everyone.  And, like I mentioned above, every question/answer you post can be reposted within Facebook, Twitter and other top social sites and can include links to your website or back to the Q&A sites.  This is a great method for developing link popularity and social authority, two primary algorithms used in determining the ranking positions of your keywords.

Several of these platforms also allow for discussions to be carried on further by your viewing audience, which works to your advantage and gives you the ability to interact with industry influencers.

Here’s What You’ll Need to Get Started

Start developing an extensive list of common questions and your responses to those.  If you’re response includes product or service solutions offered by your company, include a relevant link to the product/service on your website.

So, what makes a quality web marketing firm? Well, for most of the SEO Evaluation firms out there it is money. That’s right, the more a marketing firm pays, the better ranked they are and the more they are touted as being one of the best firms. Ok, so the company has enough money to pay for this award, does that mean they deserve it? Not At All…..

Don’t be fooled by credentials – marketing firms can pay to be listed in just about any publication and most of those publications offer some sort of an award category as an incentive to get people to pay for inclusion.

If you really want to know what a company is like and what they will offer to you, talk with them, talk with their clients, get references, etc. Then, find out who the team members are that will be working on your project and Google them. You will be surprised what you find out about them.

You should also make sure that their company is willing to put their techs on the phone and let you get the scoop from them – most marketing firms that aren’t as reputable as they should be will often times keep you talking with the sales rep. What you really need to know is what the process entails, what is expected of you, what is expected of the marketing firm, how they will implement suggested changes, what marketing programs they will include you in, etc. – Get The Details.

The more time you spend talking with the sales rep and the tech team, the more you will see how much they are willing to communicate. Remember, if you have a team that won’t communicate with you, the chance of your success greatly diminishes.

Bottom line, don’t settle for just any old firm simply because they have been ranked top by major online and print sources – chances are they are paid credentials.

Using a 301 Redirect will help you keep the value of the old “orphaned” pages and redirect that value to the new pages that have replaced them.  * Remember, duplicate content is a huge no-no to the search engines and will prevent your site from attaining good keyword ranking.

Depending on the server platform your website is hosted on and the programming language used to create your site, you have a lot of different options for setting up 301 redirects.

Here are the primary methods for the most common programming languages / server platforms:

.htaccess 301 Redirect
This is the most common redirect method used on Linux servers with the “mod-rewrite” module.  Simply download or create a file (using a text editor) called .htaccess.  Add the line below to the text file, save upload to the root directory of your site and you’re done.

Redirect an old page to a new page:
redirect 301 /old/old.html http://www.yourdomain.com/new.html

Redirect an old page to a new folder/category:
redirect 301 /old/old.html http://www.yourdomain.com/folder/

PHP 301 Redirect
<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

.NET 301 Redirect
<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(“Location”,”http://www.new-url.com”);
}
</script>

Ruby 301 Redirect
def old_action
headers["Status"] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.new-url.com/”
end

Cold Fusion
<.cfheader statuscode=”301? statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-url.com”>