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.
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.
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?
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.
Nobody builds a website simply for exposure anymore. Your website needs to be a powerful tool in attracting visitors, converting leads, and closing customers. Today we discuss the best way to track and nurture your leads to close more customers.
“It’s not who your buyers are, but how they buy that matters.”
It’s an interesting position to take in the endless conversation on B2B and B2C marketing, in which we can discuss the differences between the two and argue for different marketing styles until we’re blue in the face. It doesn’t make the challenging statement go away though.
How many differences really exist between business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing and sales models? And how can we leverage those differences to get the most out of them?
You sit down at your desk with a sigh and begin to leaf through the paper on your desk. The mug of coffee you’d made fifteen minutes earlier sits untouched, no longer giving off steam. The numbers on your current sheaf of papers hold your attention, and you scratch your head, wondering how you’re going to talk about this to your boss.
You’d set growth goals for the business three months ago. You’d been so sure they’d work, but at the end of the quarter, it became apparent that things hadn’t worked out the way you’d planned. What went wrong? They were achievable goals, weren’t they?
Although it’s a common scenario, it’s never a fun one to be in. How do we work out what went wrong when a major goal or target falls through? And how can we work to avoid the same problem in the future?
Today, we’re reviewing three reasons why growth goals can fall through, as well as different (and highly effective) ways to avoid these problems. Shall we get started?
“How can not spending money cost me money?”
It’s a fair question to ask. Almost counterintuitive, really. How can not updating a system cost you more?
The reason for updating our marketing system is the same reason we upgrade our technology - once there’s a proven way to do a task that’s more efficient and more cost effective, we move forward. The Motorola Razr might have been the most successful flip-phone ever sold, but there’s a reason why people aren’t still walking around with them.
