Inbound Marketing Is All About Leverage

Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Survey

HubSpot recently released a report on the State of Inbound Lead Generation. The report is a result of interviews with more than 1,400 HubSpot customers who are mostly small and mid size businesses. A webinar delivered by Rick Burnes and Sophie Schmitt of HubSpot summarized the findings.

The findings are very interesting and very compelling especially for businesses who are either still sitting on the sidelines or are flat out skeptics of inbound marketing. I find that overwhelmingly those businesses who don’t buy into the inbound marketing mindset haven’t allowed themselves to break out of a decades-old paradigm. But, the earth is shifting and marketers simply can’t ignore the facts especially as more facts become available such as those in this report from HubSpot.

Critics of this research may say that the companies interviewed are users of the HubSpot inbound marketing software. Of course! You wouldn’t survey people sun bathing on a beach about their winter vacation habits and expect that data to be of high integrity.

HubSpot has built a customer base of more than 2,500 customers. While the degree to which each customer is using the full gamut of inbound marketing strategies to include SEO, blogging, social networking and generally a strong content marketing mindset may vary, the common denominator is they buy into the fact inbound marketing can effectively produce leads.

So, here are some of the most compelling findings from this report.

The More Google Indexed Web Pages the More Leads Produced

Businesses with 60 to 120 Google indexed pages produced a median of 7 leads per month. Those with 176 to 310 Google indexed pages produced a median of 22 leads per month. Those with 311 + Google indexed pages produced a median of 74 leads per month. This triple digit growth is achievable through a bonafide, committed, consistent blog strategy.

Business Who Blog Produce More Leads

As stated above businesses with more Google indexed web pages produce more leads. The most practical way to increase indexed page count is by having a blog connected to your website. This chart shows that companies who blog produce more leads.

Blog Size Matters
The survey proved that having a blog alone doesn’t move the needle. The more content the better. The data suggests that fewer than 10 blog posts didn’t make a difference in lead generation. But, more than 20 blog posts demonstrated more leads from those surveyed.

Twitter Matters in B2C
B2C businesses who use Twitter produce twice as many leads as those who don’t use Twitter. Though this research doesn’t account for B2B businesses on Twitter I’m a fan of Twitter due to the reach it can provide and ability to spread your content. For example, in addition to my personal Twitter account, Find and Convert also has a Twitter account.

More Keywords Ranking in Top 100 Produce More Leads

This data point proves two myths wrong. Myth #1 is that many businesses think the only ranking that matters is for a small number of keywords which typically represent their core business. Sometimes it’s just one keyword phrase. Myth #2 is that the only rank that matters is page 1. Of course, we all want to rank #1 on page 1. But, this data shows that businesses who have dozens of keywords ranking in the top 100 rankings get more leads. This translates to having dozens of keywords that rank across the first 10 pages of Google. The way to look at this is like a diversified portfolio of assets. The value is in the total portfolio, not any one asset. Having dozens of relevant longtail keywords that rank in the first 10 pages of Google will produce more leads.  These two myths are shattered in the chart below.

It’s All About Leverage

This webinar concluded with the concept of leverage. Inbound marketing allows a company to leverage content assets online to produce connections with people who have interest in your company’s products. Ignoring this leverage opportunity is very risky in a marketing economy where established competitors can surpass you with inbound marketing strategies quickly. Worse yet, newer nimble and inbound marketing savvy competitors can come out of seemingly nowhere and eat your lunch.

Get on the inbound marketing bandwagon. A good place to start is with my book, Marketing 2.0 . I wrote Marketing 2.0 for executives and their staff looking for a basic understanding of how social media and inbound marketing strategies can bridge the gap between sellers and buyers. Mike Volpe, V.P. Inbound Marketing at HubSpot wrote the foreword of my book. Those who’ve read it say it provides a good primer to get started. Check out the reviews.

Allow me to give a plug for the fact my inbound marketing agency is a certified HubSpot partner. We can help you get started producing more leads through inbound marketing or take it to the next level.

Measuring Results in Social Media Marketing

This blog post an updated excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0.

Measuring results is one of my favorite topics in marketing. Since the invention of marketing (I couldn’t find that date in Wikipedia), executives have wanted to measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars against sales in order to determine their return on investment, or ROI.

The reality is that in recent years, measuring marketing results, at least at the quantitative level, has become increasing sophisticated through tools and techniques. In addition to quantitative metrics, measuring qualitative results can be just as valuable.

Social media marketing measurement is very similar to measuring other web marketing results. First I’ll review the tools you can use. Then, I’ll offer ways you can use them to measure social media marketing results.

Conventional Wisdom

Let’s start with a look at the conventional web marketing metrics tools, beginning with some free tools. You may be familiar with some or all of these tools. As obvious as they are to me, I often meet marketers who are not harnessing them to their full potential.

Google Analytics—a free web analytics service that provides website owners valuable insight into website traffic details including visitors, sources of visitor traffic, pages visited, time spent on your website, keywords driving website traffic, geographic location of visitors, conversions based on a predefined goals, and much more.

Google Webmaster Tools—another set of free and powerful tools from Google providing another level of detail in studying traffic data for your website as well as keyword click-throughs and inbound links.

Google Alerts—another free service that will alert you by email or to your RSS reader each time Google finds a relevant result for a topic you’ve set up to track.

Google Blogsearch—a free search engine subset of Google’s search engine geared to display blog posts. When you search on a phrase, Google displays recent blog posts for that phrase.

Social Media Measurement Tools

As social media marketing has exploded, so has the landscape of tools and services designed to help companies measure and optimize their results. I’ll start with a partial list of free social media measuring tools. Note most free tools offer fee-based premium versions as well.

Blogpulse—a service from Nielsen Buzzmetrics that acts as both a blog search engine and blog tracker. Bloggers can track conversations taking place about topics of interest, as well as discover where their blog ranks in relation to others covering similar topics.

Trendpedia—a free service that functions mostly as a blog search engine. Its main feature involves helping people find the most popular trends in social media across a variety of topics and tracking the trend of the topic over a three-month period in comparison to other relevant topics.

Trendrr—a free service that adds a real sense of analytical measurement through its use of trending graphs. Trendrr lets anyone track, compare, and share trends on any topic across blogs and other social media.

Technorati—a free service that functions as an Internet search engine for blogs. You can track your blog content in Technorati.

Twitter Search – Whether or not your have a Twitter account, you can use Twitter’s search engine. Marketers should search relevant keywords to learn about conversations about their brand on Twitter.

The free tools listed above are a partial list of many tools available to track your content results. I encourage you to use as many tools as practical to measure and track your social media marketing results on an ongoing basis.

Staying on Course

However, tracking the reach of your content in social media is just a part of the measuring results secret sauce. You also need to gain insights so you can measure your progress and take action. A metaphor comes to mind. Social media marketing is like flying an airplane. The sophisticated cockpit constantly calculates the extent to which the plan has shifted from its course route and makes the necessary adjustment to get the plane back on its course. In social media marketing, you must similarly be tracking and interpreting in order to know when and how much you must adjust your content strategy and your tactics to stay on course.

In addition to the free tools listed above, there is an ever-growing list of fee-based tools to measure social media results. I will only list two because these are the two we use at Find and Convert and therefore I’m most familiar with them. Again, there are many other good tools available and you should do your own homework.

HubSpot – an inbound marketing software as a service (SaaS). HubSpot allows marketers to track keyword rankings, competitor’s web marketing presence, traffic analysis, leads and lead intelligence. Recently, HubSpot added social media tracking features allowing marketers to track the impact of social media on your desired goals (such as sales leads). In the screenshot below you can see the emerging impact of social media traffic.

ScoutLabs – a social media tracking tool that allows marketers to track mentions in blogs, bookmarking sites, Twitter, photos, video and more. We like the ability to track sentiment of keywords and the ability to chart trends. Below is a short video interview with Jennifer Zeszut, CEO of ScoutLabs.

Measuring Quantitative Results
There are many factors you can measure in your social media strategy. First, make sure you have clearly defined goals. Otherwise your metrics will not be meaningful and you won’t be able to measure success. Here are some quantitative metrics you can measure.

Subscribers – watch the subscriber count to your blog(s) and newsletter grow.

Followers – watch the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook grow as well any groups or communities your create.

Mentions – track the mentions of your brand and relevant keywords to learn about conversations and decide which conversations you should engage.

Sentiment – track the sentiment of your keywords to determine what (if any) changes you should consider in your content strategy and in the tactics you use. A negative trend on a topic may give you cause to back away from that topic or to change your approach to it.

Inbound Links – links are the currency of the web. Track the number of links you’re building and where they are coming from.

Comments – study the comments being made on your blog or your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Comments could give you reason to engage or add more content on a topic of high interest.

Connections – one of the greatest and measurable factors in social media marketing is the new doors that can open up. New connections can result in speaking opportunities, media interviews, guest blog or publication articles, key introductions and new sales opportunities.

Brand Equity – all businesses should care about brand equity. It’s not limited to large companies. Using any combination of tools described above you should study the trends in your brand. Is your company name a growing keyword driver of traffic to your website? If the trends are positive, correlate that to your sales results. If you have employees with a strong social media presence include them in your brand equity study. The relationship between your employees and your brand is tied more tightly than ever before. Take Mike Volpe as an example. His blogging, speaking, podcasting and overall content creation on the web has a positive impact on HubSpot, his employer. And, btw, both Mike Volpe (the brand) and HubSpot (the brand) benefit from his efforts.

It Takes Work!
If you’re thinking, man this sounds like a lot of work, you’re not only right, you’re onto something big! Measuring results properly is not just hard work. It’s time consuming. So, where are you going to get all this time? By eliminating non-performing marketing activities! Measure all your marketing activities. If you have losers in your marketing mix (assuming you’ve been at it more than six months) scale them back or eliminate them. Many marketers report cutting back on marketing activities such as direct mail and tradeshows after measuring success in their social media strategy. BTW, attending a tradeshow can be just as effective as exhibiting at a tradeshow at a fraction of the cost. While you’re at the tradeshow you should be posting to Twitter about the people you’re meeting and the content you’re enjoying, taking pictures and shooting video interviews with industry people and posting all this content on the web to keep building your footprint on the web. Of course when you tag this content you’ll create links and build more brand equity. And, you can measure that…

To measure your social media marketing results keep at it and measure. Keep at it. Measure. Keep at it. Measure.

The Future of Search is Here

Create a Broad Footprint on the Web

I frequently advise “create a broad footprint on the web” if you want to be found by your target audience.  Create content that will be found easily across the entire web. In my book, Marketing 2.0, I harp on this a lot.

When people search by keywords, increasingly the results presented to them are diversified. The conventional search results have been known as “web results.” We refer to them as organic results and paid (or sponsored) results. The latter is also known as pay-per-click advertising. Some refer to it as SEM.

However, increasingly we’re seeing results delivered to the searcher which are not limited to conventional web results. Two examples of the future of search results (available today) are WebMynd (a plug-in for search engines) and Kosmix (a standalone search engine). Let’s look at each one in the screenshots below by doing a search on my name: “bernie borges.” I use my name as the example for two reasons. It is not a common search phrase so you wouldn’t expect to find a bazillion search results. And, there is a diversified mix of content to illustrate my point. You should experiment using your name, or other relevant search phrases.

These search results show several of my organic listings including my company website, my blog, my LinkedIn profile, Twitter profile and other content destinations…

The WebMynd results which display along the right side of a Google search result (but can not displayed that way in this blog post) shows results found in other web media including LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia and YouTube.

The Kosmix results also list various types of content ranging from blogs, video, photo images and good old fashion web listings in Google.

The point I want to stress is that the future of search is based on content delivered to the user from various locations across the web! Think of it logically. If you search for a topic, do you want the search engine to limit the content they offer you? Don’t you want the choice of drilling down on various types of content on your search topic from various locations across the web?

The future of search is NOW!  It’s only a matter of time before Google presents search results to us in this manner.

Are you prepared? Do you produce just website content? Or do you offer a diversified mix of content that allows you (your business, your products, etc.) to be found on the web?

Two New Improvements to Google Search Results Pages

Throughout my years of doing search engine optimization (SEO), I’ve often been asked by clients, how does your inbound marketing agency keep up with all the changes from Google? The answer of course is, we don’t have a choice.

Here’s an update from Google I’m please to cover. It’s a good example of how Google is making search results more relevant. And, if you read between the lines Google is helping the long tail searcher get better results.

There are two new improvements to Google’s search results.

More Useful Related Searches

If you search for “psa” the search results now will offer results which pertain to more than one meaning of “psa.” One common meaning is prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Another meaning is Plano Sports Authority. Another meaning is Professional Sports Authenticator. What if you are a software developer of professional services automation, or PSA software? At the bottom of the page, Google offers suggestions for other meanings of PSA, which includes professional services automation. Google is using “intent based logic” in their algorithm to give the searcher options in the search results.

But, what is Google really doing? …

Longer Descriptions

Google knows that people use longer search phrases. Of course, we call this long tail search phrases. Google now provides longer snippets of descriptions displaying all the words in the search. For example I searched “how information technology directors use social networking in business” and below is the first result showing a longer description:

Notice that the description is longer than what we’ve seen in the past. Google is clearly accommodating long tail searches.

I’m pleased to see this improvement. It helps us educate our clients on the value of long tail keyword search optimization.

@berniebay

Some SEO Basics Still the Same

I’ve been as guilty of hyping up the changes to SEO in 2009 as anyone in this industry.  And, it’s true that Google’s algorithm is expected to undergo some major revisions this year.

But, there are some fundamentals that have not changed. Let’s look at some of them.

Website Architecture

When search engines crawl your website think of as guests coming over for dinner. You want it to be a pleasant experience. You don’t want to put up barriers and force your guests to crawl over a bunch of obstacles to get inside your home. Make it easy for search engines to find your content. Tell them what your content is about through human-readable URLs. Keep the code clean and lean. Ask your developer to consolidate long scripts into files that can be efficiently called. Use header tags.

Remember that search engines see your website differently than humans. Though humans are the buyers, you want to deliver a friendly experience to search engines to deliver more humans to your website!

Content

The most successful websites in terms of SEO have great content and a lot of it. It’s no secret that Google likes blog content because it updates frequently and presumably gives your visitors a good experience. But, even a static website benefits greatly from hundreds of pages of static content. Yes, I said hundreds. For small companies that can be a challenge. Consider adding two new pages of content per month (or whatever you can commit). Get very focused in your content. Use a long-tail keyword strategy. Give search engines the food they crave with 400 or 500 words of content per page.

Links

Ever since Google invented PageRank we’ve known the importance of inbound links. But did you know how important it is to tell Google the relevancy of your link structure within your website? Google assesses and scores your website each time it crawls it. Using its link structure Google determines what your content is about. Sure, other factors come into play but your internal link structure is an important factor.  Make it easy for Google with internal links anchored from relevant keyword phrases.

To avoid getting too much into SEO geek stuff, I limited this post to these big three factors.

Do you know of other SEO basics which have not changed worth mentioning? Add them below with your comments.

Bernie Borges
@berniebay

What are your marketing plans for 2009?

By now your 2009 is in full swing. The first week is behind you and you’re starting to roll out your 2009 marketing plans. Maybe you’ve read some of the predictions for 2009. I’m please to point out that several of my predictions are shared by credible market research as published by e-Marketer in December 2008.

As you can see in this chart of US Marketer’s plans for online marketing, Search Engine Optimization has fallen to the number 3 position. Overwhelmingly video is at the top of the list!

I’m also pleased and not surprised to see that social media marketing is in the top 3 and podcasts and webcasts are in the top 5 tactics.

Interestingly we don’t see pay per click advertising (aka SEM). It is conspicuously absent.

So how do you plan to produce your videos? How do you plan to produce your podcasts?

Are you up to speed on the changes in search engine marketing in 2009?

You may have formulated your 2009 plans in 2008. But, are you confident you formulated the right plans?

The web is the best place to be in 2009 (and beyond) for most of your marketing tactics.  No matter your industry, your buyers are on the web. The question is how will you engage them? How will they find you? When they find you, how effective will your content be? Will your message resonate with them because you address their needs, or are you busy talking about your products and services?

In a weak economy marketing plans must produce measurable results. Marketing dollars are under tight scrutiny.

Think carefully about where you are planning to spend your 2009 marketing budgets. Are you pushing your message out to an audience who is harder to reach than ever before? Or, are you meeting them where they are and engaging them with answers to their problems?

The Internet marketing landscape has broadened. Search is still very important but it’s not the only game in town. Google is implementing new changes to search in 2009. You should plan to meet your buyers where they are and be compelling.

My assumption is that my clients don’t care anything about our services! They care about solving their business problems.  What do your customers care most about?

What are your marketing plans in 2009?

Bernie Borges

@berniebay

Should SEO Become SO?

I recently blogged about SEO becoming SMO. Call me fickle but in this podcast I suggest that SEO should become SO (search optimization). Whichever acronym you prefer, this is a healthy debate.

The demand for SEO services is at an all time high. A recent survey from B2B Online survey says that nearly one third of B2B marketers will spend more on marketing in 2009. 42% will remain unchanged in their marketing budgets. 62% said customer acquisition was their highest priority. The highest increase in marketing budget allocation in 2009 is going to online activities including search (50%) and social media (46%).

Given this trend of “search” and “social media” why do we still call search “SEO?” The answer is simple. It’s an entrenched term. Have you ever noticed that when a musician has a new release it’s still called a new album? But, it’s not an album, it’s a CD. The point is obvious. Some old terms just don’t die.

The point in this podcast is we should consider pulling “engine” out of search optimization. Searching on the web is no longer the sole domain of search engines. Buyers have the easy ability to visit all kinds of sources on the web to find information.

People who search on the web are still finding information from search engines as well as from other sources such as Technorati, Blogsearch.Google, DIGG, Stumbleupon, Slideshare even Twitter as well as vertical industry web destinations with blogs and other links to credible sources of information.

A related factor to this trend is the “social” culture of the social web. Users create content and express opinions about products and services. These contents and opinions shape buyer’s opinions and their decisions as they get shared prolifically on the social web. The interaction that occurs on the social web is dynamic compared to a search engine result.

I don’t expect SEO as we know it to dramatically change tomorrow. But, there are changes coming from Google in 2009. They recognize the shift in content on the social web and will display results of all kinds, not just websites. The websites with rich media will get the best results in Google and other search engines.

You could say that Google doesn’t just view their competitors as Yahoo! and Microsoft. They understand that people can get answers to their searches from many other sources on the web. So, like the old cliche goes rather than fight it they are joining the movement.

The point of this podcast theme: SEO becomes SO is that buyers are looking for information on the web, not only in search engines. Buyers get their information from various sources on the web. The culture or mindset of searching on the web has shifted and will continue to shift.

Have a listen to this podcast. Do you think I’ll get on Larry King or Anderson Cooper talk shows due to my radical suggestion?

I’m sure you have an opinion on this topic. Many people do…Let’s hear your opinion below.

@berniebay

SEO Basics Revisited

I recently conducted a table session at an AMA event in Tampa on SEO basics. It’s funny how when you revisit basics sometimes things click in a new way. I didn’t learn anything new in conducting this session other than maybe a way to communicate SEO basics.

I began by explaining how search engines work. I explained that search engines attempt to crawl a website starting on the home page and seek to “find” as much of the website’s content as possible. As marketers our goal is to make it as easy as possible for search engines to find (and index) our content.

When we describe search engine optimization we refer to optimizing the chance that search engines will list our web pages high for our most desired keyword phrases.

I explained Google’s explanation of their search technology which boils down to two factors: 1) PageRank which is an analysis of your website’s link structure (external and internal), 2) Text matching.

Google explains how their patented PageRank technology looks at the complex link structure on the web to determine the extent to which others link to your website and the extent to which your website pages link to each other. BUT, Google also considers the text matching that takes place among all those links.

For example, say you want your website to be found for the keyword phrase “accounting software,” your website would need to have a lot of incoming links from this phrase and a lot of text within the website matching this phrase as well internal links from this phrase. The truth is there are a lot of websites that have text and links for “accounting software.” So, often it’s wise to optimize for more targeted keyword phrases which are less competitive. For example, “project accounting software,” is more specific to a particular type of accounting software and is less competitive. This SEO strategy is known as a long tail keyword strategy.

Sometimes a short tail keyword strategy (accounting software) is realistic but only when the competition factor is not exceedingly high and you have the ability to produce enough of a link structure (both external and internal) to win that SEO strategy.

When we deliver SEO services to our clients we discuss both long tail and short tail strategies to explore the trade offs and the realities of both approaches.

Another factor when considering basic SEO strategies is the URL structure of each web page. Optimizing for a keyword phrase should ideally be done for a web page that contains the search phrase in it, such as ….project-accounting-software.com. Note the keywords are separated by a dash, not an underscore.

The simple rule of thumb in basic SEO strategies is to remember that we want to make it as easy as possible for search engines to find and rank our website content.

Bernie Borges

http://twitter.com/berniebay

Impact of Economy on SEO Services

On the date of this writing, the world is in a financial crisis unlike anything we’ve seen since the great depression (years before my birth).  Yet, I’ve noticed a very interesting trend in our business.  Lately, there is increased demand for our SEO services. 

I noticed the trend about a month ago when more inquiries and referrals started coming our way for SEO services.  So, I started asking prospective new clients what they are doing right now in the face of this economy?  The answer I’m hearing consistently doesn’t surprise me.

Most businesses across all industries are cutting expenses.  Some industries are affected more than others impacting the severity of their cutbacks.  Most marketing managers are being forced to cut marketing expenses. 

So, why are we seeing increased demand for SEO services?  Because marketers are cutting back other more traditional forms of marketing and relying more on the web to “find and convert” new sales opportunities.

Marketers are relying more on inbound marketing strategies through the web and it starts with search engine optimization (SE0) recognizing that when someone has found them on the web and contacted them, they are a potentially serious buyer.  In this economy, most sellers want to avoid wasting time with tire kickers and only spend time with serious buyers and the web is the most efficient medium to source out serious buyers.

While this is good news for internet marketing services companies like us, there is one word of caution I share with new clients.  I advise all client not to put all their eggs in the Google basket.

I inform all our clients that our web analytics prove that the top five referring sources of traffic to Find and Convert’s website include Google as well as other social media sites such as StumbleUpon, Twitter, Junta42 and Sphinn.

I advise all our clients to build a rock solid foundation in their SEO plan, and build out a social media marketing strategy on top of it for best long term results.  I’ve always believed we should “fish where the fish are,” and Google is not the only pond that has fish.  Focusing an entire internet marketing strategy just on Google would seriously overlook “other ponds of fish.”

Your thoughts?

Bernie Borges

 

Static or Dynamic URLs Best for SEO?

Google is attempting to communicate updates to how they crawl dynamic URLs.   In a blog post in Google Webmaster Tools on Monday the author says “If you want to serve a static URL instead of a dynamic URL you should create a static equivalent of your content.”

Yes!  We’ve been saying this forever.  What’s new about this?  Nothing!

The blog post goes on to say: “It’s always advisable to use static content with static URLs as much as possible, but in cases where you decide to use dynamic content, you should give us the possibility to analyze your URL structure and not remove information by hiding parameters and making them look static.”

In other words, don’t try to game Google.  Yes again!  White hat SEO best practices have always been about giving the visitor what they want and giving search engines what they want – the truth.

Isn’t it interesting that effective SEO strategies are just like the basic principles of life?  Tell the truth and you’ll always be better off.

Bottom line – static URLs are still best for best organic search engine rankings.

Got a different opinion?

Next Page »