The State of Inbound report 2015 was released today, and this year it goes global, including data from Aussie marketers.
The top finding of this years report—Three out of 4 marketers across the globe prioritise an inbound approach to marketing.
How do Aussie marketers compare to the rest of the world? I'll get to that, let's take a look at some of the key findings of this years report.
Accounting firms have a relationship with their clients that is pretty unique - you'll find a similar pattern in only a handful of other professions. It's a working partnership tempered with a high degree of trust, and often goes on for a long period of time. Because an accounting firm is built on these long-term, trusting relationships with clients, there's also a whole lot to say for how much of an impact customer referrals have on the business. Often, these referrals are one of the chief ways that a firm will bring in more business.
This pattern is functional, but it has its limitations. While customer referrals are a powerful way to bring in more clients, relying on it as the primary method of lead generation will ultimately restrict a business' growth, since the firm would only be bringing in a small pool of clients from a local area.
All of us seek to write and host high-quality content on our websites. It's what attracts viewers and customers, and there are a variety of metrics that we seek out to prove whether the venture is successful or not. Because it is an indicator of reach and impact, the share rate of a blog post can be one of the more sought after qualities. Oftentimes, it is regarded as a prize metric, since it is an indicator of reach and impact. Kind of.
But what goes into making high share blog posts? Is there a formula that we can follow or is it simply a game of chance?
Just recently, HubSpot conducted a study on the qualities that correlate with highly-shared posts, to see what qualities made their not inconsiderable stock of blog posts popular for sharing across social media and seeking through organic search. Here's 3 things that correlated with a high share rate.
How many times have you rebuilt your website? If you're like most businesses you've done it every 2 to 3 years since you've had a website. Think back to each time you've done a website redesign. Chances are you didn't enjoy any of your previous website rebuilds and you're not looking forward to the next one.
The reason that we’ve come to accept the fact that a website redesign is one giant headache is because of the approach we take to build them. The traditional website redesign process is filled with systemic risk and always requires a lot more effort from us than we expect, even when we hire a professional website developer to do it for us.
You might have guessed from what I said above that the biggest problem in website design is the way projects are run, which leads to several issues, one of the biggies being it places too much of an unexpected burden on the website owner.
Let's get real: The inbound vs outbound marketing debate is one we can go on about until the cows come home. Knowing how to respond to recent rise of inbound marketing can be challenging, especially if your industry has been around for more than 20 years. If your industry has been around for any length of time, you're probably still following the outbound/traditional methods of business advertisement and you're not feeling too keen on switching or adding to your established system. I wouldn't blame you, either - working out how to market your business in a completely new environment is a resource-heavy venture, what with the retraining of your marketing department, in addition to the purchase of new and complex software or tools you might need to get things off the ground.
But, we've either got to make history or become it. So it's probably worth having a look at inbound marketing and what it can achieve for a business, when compared with its older brother. Today we're looking at the efficiency of outbound and inbound marketing strategies.
In 2010, I wrote an article on a personal blog about binary dates, and it was received differently to articles I’d written before or after it. While every other article I wrote would have its initial surge in traffic and then decline, this one somehow stuck around, continuing to bring in traffic for reasons that I didn’t really understand.
If you’ve been running a business blog for a while, you’d be aware of this phenomenon too - you probably have a few posts that, inexplicably, keep bringing visits. Not only that, but they keep converting visitors, adding to the value of your business long after their contemporaries have expired in usefulness.
Successful blog posts are powerful assets for your business. They’re able to continue converting leads long after publication, and they’re great for lending credence to search engines. But what goes into making these kinds of blog posts? Can they be replicated? How can we replicate them?
One of the biggest challenges we have with our clients is helping them to understand how to edit their websites. Until now every website development and management system we've seem separates content management from the website itself. You edit the website in a completely different looking interface than the public view of the website itself. Most of these systems easily understood only by IT techs and are challenging for everybody else.
The result of this problem is that website content isn't being updated when issues are identified causing conversion rates to fall.
This all changes today as HubSpot has released their next generation of website tools. This update allows you to edit the content right where you see it, in the public view of the website. Not only that, you get mobile optimisation and SEO assistance built in.
Sometimes the right combination of factors come together and the result blows the roof off with its popularity. Think of comic book movies - ten years ago, they were still kind of avant garde and a little dorky. Now, they’re kind of their own genre of film. Society is inundated with them, thanks to storywriting and CGI’s rapid improvements, and the right kind of marketing.
Today we’re looking at a new technique that allows your lead nurturing to seriously step up its game. Lead nurturing done well has always been about understanding the needs of your customers and working to those needs, building rapport with those most likely to convert. Now, we’ve got the opportunity to understand what exactly makes that person most likely to make the jump, and create content that resonates with these folks.
The worst thing your digital marketers can do is start marketing your business without any type of goal or clearly defined ambition in mind. Though you may have a vague idea of what you want to accomplish (bring in more business, for example), defined goals keep you focused on moving in a positive direction and help you invest in marketing tools that will propel you forward, not hold you back.
Without goals, you may not ever know what successful marketing looks like, which can lead to overinvesting in marketing that isn’t helping and throwing money at a marketing tool that will never help you do achieve your goals.
If your company is just starting the digital marketing game or hasn’t had much luck in it so far, here is how to go about setting goals for your digital marketing strategy and better evaluate the needs and wants of your business.
You’re staring blankly at two nearly identical objects in a store, wondering what the difference is between them. They stare back, just as blankly, as you try and weigh up the options in your head. You can’t have both - you need to just hurry up and pick one. But you don’t know which.
“That one,” says your friend, standing nearby. They point at the article in your right hand, and that’s all the nudge you need to help make a decision. You put the other object back on the shelf and the two of you head towards the shop registers, the problem task of choosing solved.
You might have been choosing a new shirt for a business function, or a cooking sauce, or trying to decide whether to go with branded or generic printer ink refill. Whatever the case, we’ve all felt the paralysis of a choice decision, coupled with the helpful nudge from an outside source before. They help us make decisions, and they can help your website visitors make that final jump towards lead conversion.
Today we’re looking at three different website elements that help provide that helpful nudge that can raise your conversion rate.
