Inbound (Internet) Marketing Success for 2012
Greg Sherwood is CEO of DBC digital, a Hybrid marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado. With over 30 years of marketing experience with traditional and inbound marketing, Greg helps medium-sized businesses get a better return on their marketing dollars.
Okay, Denver-area marketers! We’re almost through January. Did you develop a marketing action plan for 2012? If you did, have you been implementing it (or is real life getting in the way)?
It’s not too late to re-focus and re-commit. Let's get to work!
Here are the most important actions you should be taking during 2012 to grow your Internet (Inbound) Marketing success:
1. Write content consistently, backed up by an SEO strategy.
You've heard us emphasize the importance to our Colorado clients of content creation for your website, but blogging every once in a while isn't going to be enough to edge out your biggest competitors. You need to be committed to creating content consistently, like clockwork, and it should be backed-up with a purposeful SEO strategy. Be sure you are dedicating time to researching which keywords are important to target using keyword research tools like Google's Keyword Tool or HubSpot's Keyword Grader. Also, focus on long tail keyword phrases, which comprise 70% of organic search traffic and are less competitive, letting you outrank your competitors for a huge amount of long tail keywords that actually drive qualified traffic instead of a small handful of head terms that will take months and months, if not years, to show results in both search engines and your bottom line.
2. Be an agile inbound (internet) marketer.
Armed with the knowledge that comes with understanding your analytics, you're empowered to make constant improvements. One of the advantages you have over giant corporations is being less burdened with bureaucracy. That means you can move quickly. Use A/B testing tools to experiment with everything in your marketing, giving you the data you need to understand what works and what doesn't with your audience, and improve bit-by-bit on a daily basis.
3. Have a social media personality.
Since many big corporations often have to work within a bureaucracy and a well established set of rules that are hard to nudge, their social media policies can sometimes make the endeavor less than, well, social. You can sidestep that hurdle and use social media the way it's intended to be used -- like a human being. Get really social. Be friendly and helpful. Talk like you would to someone in real life. Establish your online voice in a genuine, upbeat way that makes people flock to you. These are the characteristics of the most successful social media strategies, and it's a leg up you have over the industry giants.
4. Recognize and fill your weak spots.
If you're working at a small-or medium-sized business, you likely wear many marketing hats, not all of which are your area of expertise. Even with all your marketing knowledge, everyone has weak spots. Identify these, evaluate how much investment they are worth, and spend money to hire talent or purchase tools that will better serve that need. It's a worthwhile investment to put your talents where they are best suited, and to let others do the same.
5. Invest time every day into learning something new.
This is how you'll stay ahead of the curve and become a thought leader, regardless of the size of your business. Whether during lunch, carving out time during your work day, or listening to podcasts on your commute, invest some time every single day in learning about not just inbound marketing, but your industry. It's a fast moving world, and those that don't stay on top of it day after day will quickly get left behind.
6. Spend time building your opt-in list.
There's so much more you can do to nurture leads with a great subscriber list. This means taking the time to build killer landing pages with forms, creating remarkable content to put behind those forms, and continually fine tuning your email marketing strategy so you understand what kind of information your leads need, and when. As your opt-in email list grows and you get better at nurturing, you'll see a shorter sales cycle and higher revenue per customer as a result of better pre-purchase education.
7. Invest in the right technology.
Technology and automation help you do your job better and faster. If that isn't enough of a selling point, know that your big competitors (in and outside Colorado) are probably using technology and automation in their marketing, but aren't necessarily doing it well. That means you have the opportunity to implement inbound marketing software and automation tools the right way from the get-go, and can free up time to do things that require personal attention, like creating content, social interaction, and data analysis.
8. Have a legitimately good product and service.
Never, ever sacrifice this. We preach about quality content all the time. But quality extends to every facet of your business. Hire the smartest people. Provide the best customer service. Be honest with people about what you can and cannot do for them. If you always keep this in mind, you'll create a loyal base of customers that market for you and stay with you forever, giving you sustainable growth that compounds over time.
Go get 'em!
Photo credit: Bellatcqtpie