What Is Inbound Marketing?

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For more than a century, marketing and advertising have been defined by interruptive marketing techniques such as print, radio, and television commercials, cold-calling, sales flyers, and telemarketing.

However, a new era is upon us where the populace is consuming media on their own terms, eschewing commercials, initiating their own search, and embracing social discovery of the products and services they need and want.

It’s no surprise then that marketers are left wondering why it’s getting harder to sell!

Inbound marketing is based on the concept of earning the attention of prospects, making yourself easy to be found, and drawing customers to your website by producing content customers value. These blogs, audio, video, eBooks, eNewsletters, white papers, SEO articles, social media marketing, and other forms of content marketing are considered inbound marketing.

Therefore, the process of Inbound Marketing facilitates and hastens client discovery of your offerings, increases web traffic, generates leads, facilitates sales conversations, and builds loyalty with consumers.

1. Generate more traffic
2. Turn visitors into leads
3. Convert leads to sales
4. Turn customers into repeat higher margin customers
5. Analyze, refine, and repeat

Inbound marketing is especially effective for those businesses with long research cycles and knowledge-based products. In these areas prospects are more likely to get informed and hire those who demonstrate expertise.

In the words of an accomplished marketing professional and new client who found Momentum as a result of our own inbound marketing techniques…
“I need to know enough to know who to hire to get the job done.”

Inbound Marketing will allow you to out maneuver your competition, and be regarded as the expert in your field at the moment of interest.

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How to Develop a B2B Content Strategy

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Today’s consumers are like proverbial husbands who refuse to pull over and ask for directions. Folks simply want the instant satisfaction of finding their own way to their destination. Your business is the destination. But can you be found?

This phenomenon has put huge marketing emphasis on the notion of discovery. It’s all the more important because consumers are also increasingly eschewing interruption marketing. No wonder 40% of marketing dollars have been shifted to inbound marketing techniques.

It’s critical that marketers embrace content initiatives and blend them with traditional methods. It’s not a question of whether to move in this direction. It’s a matter of survival.

Getting Started With Creative Content Marketing

1. Get Clear About Your Goals

What do you want to happen as a result of mobilizing a content initiative? Do you need to build awareness for your organization? Are you educating consumers? Or do you want to sell a product or service? If the latter, do you want to incorporate a lead generation component that will deliver prospects into your deal funnel? Setting crystal clear goals will best inform your content strategy.

2. Assess Internal Sources for Content

Most businesses don’t think like media companies unless there is a printing press in the basement or an antenna on the roof. Oftentimes, marketers are surprised to find great raw material sources within the organization. Take inventory. Do you produce or commission proprietary research or industry data? Who within your company has specific expertise, industry cache, or public speaking ability and can they serve as a thought leader for your efforts? These assets are often found right under your nose.

3. Identify External Content Sources

Feeding the content machine requires ready access to external raw material. Assess what is already available from industry associations, co-owned companies, partner organizations, even trade media or publications.

4. Get Help From Content Creation Experts

A medical professional would not all of a sudden feel the need to fix their own car. Likewise a licensed mechanic would never offer a triple bypass with an oil change. Executing a creative content strategy depends on your ability to create engaging, compelling, SEO-optimized… even entertaining content on a regular basis. It’s essential to call on experienced media people who are also marketers in order to deploy content that delivers on all of the above.

5. Develop a Plan and Execute

More than article marketing, web content, or public relations, your content marketing strategy will need to be a highly integrated series of blog posts, audio podcasts, video, white papers, and ebooks – the ultimate mix, of course, will depend on the particular goals of your organization.

Get Started With Content Marketing

A stellar content strategy will flow directly from your goals and will take into consideration all the obstacles that face your business as well as capitalize on specific opportunities in your sector. An optimized approach will facilitate discovery on the part of consumers and imbue your business with credibility as a thought leader in your field.

Businesses that employ inbound marketing and content creation initiatives find it much easier to attract pre-qualified prospects that are predisposed to buy. Finally, as any sales professional will tell you, once value has been established price becomes a secondary or even a non-issue.

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Building A Winning B2B Marketing Strategy

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Strategy is the backbone of great marketing. However, it’s the marketing strategy that is the most often overlooked or underdeveloped component of many marketing plans. The consequences of poor strategy can amount to wasted resources or, worse, a failed business initiative.

Bottom line: businesses cannot afford not to develop the correct strategy the first time around. A double negative, I know… but it underscores the point!

Good marketers must be part strategist and part tactician.

Setting Goals

Developing a great marketing strategy requires asking tough questions and developing consensus and clarity around goals. This often requires the marketer to serve as referee among all the stakeholders. The process of goal setting should include senior management and the sales and production teams. Clear objectives will allow effective measurement of all the marketing efforts.

Identifying Obstacles

It is said that knowledge is power. By acknowledging potential impediments to success, each potential course of action considered for the strategy can then be conceived proactively to both achieve goals and thwart obstacles. Like killing two proverbial birds with one stone, it’s far more efficient to hit a goal while at the same time navigating a pitfall. Now the strategy is ready to be created, followed by tactics.

Strategy and Tactics

In order to never confuse the two, think of it this way. Strategy is a high level “roadmap for success” that defines the basic courses of action required to arrive at the correct destination – on time and on budget. Whereas, tactics comprise all the specific actions that must be taken and tools to be employed to successfully execute the strategy.

For instance, “develop a creative advertising campaign to sell the unique brand attributes of quick service at low prices” is a strategy item. “Buy a local television schedule, produce a 30-second spot, and deliver creative” are tactics that support the strategy.

Jumping to Conclusions

We all know what happens when one assumes… When developing sound strategy a true marketing pro must resist the urge to jump to conclusions. Every strategy should be unique to every brand, product, competitive situation, and time (within the product life cycle). One should never attempt to prescribe tactics before all inputs have been considered and analyzed.

Creative for Creative’s Sake

The highly creative marketer has an even harder task, and that is to resist the urge to create for creative’s sake. Strategy must drive creative, not the other way around. The fun path or the first creative thought is not often the right one for the brand. This is why the creative brief is so crucial, especially when the strategy must be communicated to the creative team of copywriters, graphic designers, and others who will be responsible for bringing the campaign to life.

Thinking Deeply

Although a Hollywood-created character, “Mad Men’s” Don Draper, Creative Director with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, described the creative process this way. He explained that one must think very deeply about the creative problem being solved. If one thinks deeply enough, (focusing on all of the inputs), the answer will come, perhaps when least expected… even while sleeping or in the shower. Allowing the conscious and unconscious brain to deliver the creative answer is a powerful way to ensure that the work is on goal, on strategy, and will deliver the best possible results for the brand, product, or client. Nothing to it, right!?

Winning Marketing Strategy

Building winning strategy is a deliberate process. It’s not always fun or sexy. Nor is it quickly arrived at without proper evaluation of all the desired outcomes. And in the end, great creative always begins with great strategy, not the other way around.

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The Rebirth of the Living Room Screen = Christmas for Content Providers

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Industry publications love predicting the decline of the living room screen. Sure network television channels suffer from declining viewership, but the living room flat panel has never been more popular with audiences and, especially, advertisers. Even despite the proliferation of a myriad of media content playing devices.

Declines for Networks

Since the arrival of television sixty years ago, the networks have controlled the living room set and enjoyed a monopoly over the advertising shown on it. However, things are changing fast.

When an advertiser buys airtime on a television network, the sole way to measure the effectiveness of the campaign is to rely on Nielsen ratings.

Nielsen ratings are based on a representative sample that is composed of just 25,000 homes (5,000 for national programming and 20,000 for local stations). Collectively they reflect the viewing habits of over 106 million U.S. households in 210 markets. Because TV ratings are based on samples, it’s possible for shows to get a 0.0 rating, despite having an audience (Example: CNBC’s talk show McEnroe). No matter how the sample is selected and how the habits are representative of the population, sample based ratings always are approximations.

Combine these statistical imperfections with the availability of more choices in the living room, and no wonder network is struggling.

Boon for Content Providers

Meanwhile bleeding edge content companies and ad agencies are utilizing the same techniques that have made web advertising a force with which to be reckoned to take over advertising on living room screens.

These content providers have leveraged the smart screen to become an advertising platform that can better target demos and deliver a more reliable set of analytics when it comes to measuring success.

For instance, there are over 27 million Xbox Live subscribers who provided a wide array of information when signing up for the service (name, age, location, etc.). By using their Xbox, and services attached to it, they are constantly providing more data regarding their interests, spending habits, etc.

The way ad placement is sold on screen is not by length of airtime, but per impression, the same way ads are sold online. In the same way that BBC Kids Television can accurately target moms aged 25-54 on Facebook, Nike can target men 25-35 interested in soccer on Xbox Live.

And they have done it! In June 2012, when the NHL Stanley Cup and the UEFA Euro 2012 were overlapping, Nike maximized the efficiency of its ad budget by directly targeting potential customers using Xbox Live. Soccer fans only saw ads relevant to them, and hockey fans weren’t bothered by soccer ads.

In March 2012, The LA Times reported that the amount of time Xbox Live subscribers spent streaming media surpassed the amount of time playing games. Furthermore, Xbox Live media streaming usage was growing 30% yearly, with users spending 84 hours per month connected to the system. This has grown very quickly and now represents more than half the 150 monthly hours the average American family spends watching television networks (according to Nielsen).

Penny Arcade reported that, according to Microsoft, a single ad placement on its console dashboard receives an average 9 million impressions on a weekday and over 15 million on a weekend. Furthermore, their advertising business has grown 142% yearly since 2010.

Lessons for the Networks

Some of the most forward thinking television companies are beginning to see that in order to compete they have to change their ways of targeting and selling advertising.

Tivo’s recent purchase of TRA, a research company that has found success in recent years with a system that matches up television viewing with consumer buying habits, is a clear indication of where things are moving: increasing ad effectiveness.

Evolving Model

The influence of set-top boxes is helping to shape the new business model. Marketing directly to the audience and the harnessing the way in which consumers interact with their televisions is a top priority for agencies and content producers.

Contemplate the opportunity for a moment. Netflix claims that its subscribers viewed over a billion hours of content in the month of June. HBO GO, the streaming video-on-demand app, has achieved success so overwhelming that the premium network is considering offering a streaming only subscription.

Bottom line? The living room screen is new again. It presents a whole new opportunity to connect directly with individuals within the context of the content they choose at the moment they want it with an engagement or offer that’s unique to them. That’s revolutionary.

The living room screen is not only alive and well… it’s where the action is!

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How OUYA Created a Trending Brand in Less than a Day

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[infobox]UPDATE – June 26th 2013

The day after the crowdfounded Ouya hit retail; the console’s launch could be considered a commercial success. Sold out at Gamestop and on Amazon in many countries, yet some shipping issues regarding the Kickstarter units could jeopardize Ouya’s future.

Many early brand advocates have questioned Ouya’s apology about shipping their product:

– why did retailers get their units prior to early kickstart backers?
– why Ouya’s team has only acknowledge a breakdown with their shipping partner on the day the console hit retailers’ shelves?

If there is one important marketing lesson we can learn from Ouya’s troubled launch it is that catering to your brand advocates is key to growing a community, and that openess and honesty trumps opaque communication.

Is Ouya’s communication going to be its downfall? How many units did Gamestop and Amazon have in stock? Is the “sold out” status of the console another marketing ploy?[/infobox]

Hold on one minute – what is, who is OUYA?

OUYA (@PlayOUYA) is “A New Kind of Video Game Console” – an example of disruption at its finest.

From an unknown name a few weeks ago, OUYA has written the blueprint for what can only be describe to as “viral community branding.” If you do not recognize the name, you’re not alone – OUYA has just had the most successful launch in Kickstarter history by raising over a million dollars in less than 8 hours! Since the fundraising program was unveiled and launched they’ve been trending worldwide on Twitter, have been one of the most searched terms on Google and Bing and the subject of countless articles.

What they accomplished in less than 24 hours is phenomenal. They have now raised more than 5 million dollars in just a few short days.

So what’s the secret behind such a monumental marketing success? There are a lot of factors to consider but all of them have one thing in common: Community.

Harnessing the power of Community has been done before but rarely with such successful execution. There are a lot of steps that have been taken to make sure the brand would be successful. When dissecting the brand identity of OUYA it’s clear that their marketing message is crafted to cater to their audience: gamers. The product is indeed filling a void in the gaming industry, yet what made the branding so efficient is the way OUYA positioned itself as a console for gamers that couldn’t exist without their support.

The people behind OUYA are all “rock-star” veterans of the gaming industry. Julie Uhrman is a former digital distribution VP for IGN (a Newscorp owned company). Ed Fries is one of the fathers of the original Microsoft Xbox. Muffi Chadali is responsible for the Amazon Kindle. And designer extraordinaire Yves Behar is considered to be the heir apparent to Philippe Stark.

By using an effective marketing message and harnessing the right channels to talk to their audience, OUYA’s strategy and message was strong from the outset. They also connected with legendary game designers who had recently experienced overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter campaigns. This gave their product “street” credibility by using expressions like “open source”, “hackable,” and “free to play” which implies positive connotations within the gaming community. This turned community influencers into an active component of development. Crowd funding completed the equation.

What can’t be overlooked is the low entry price point of the device. This is a tremendous advantage, but to achieve the exposure OUYA needed and ultimately received it was imperative to appeal to the consumers and the most vocal influencers in the gaming community. The result was like an out-of-control wildfire that spread quickly.

These are smart and experienced people and this was a well thought out plan that likely produced results better than originally anticipated. It should be noted that this technique of branding is not normally utilized to be self-sustainable. It would be naive to think that the all-star industry veteran team behind OUYA is solely relying on the community for developing its offering.

OUYA was most likely just gauging consumer/developer interest, and had Angel or VC Investors waiting to see how well the Kickstarter campaign did before buying in with a more substantial and ultimately dilutive amount. A good influencer/community based campaign can make a brand and therefore the difference between the terms of the deal, or whether it goes through at all.

There’s no guarantee that OUYA will be a success but they’ve completed a critical phase quickly, establishing their brand, and creating a huge buzz in a very specific community. That alone is an impressive feat. By knowing their audience, they were able to cater to it directly, engage community influencers, listen to their needs, and turn potential consumers into community advocates by giving them a crucial role in the product lifecycle.

Quite simply – “The people have spoken. And they want their Ouya”. – Venture Beat

[notice]If you enjoyed this article you may also want to read: The Rebirth Of The Living Room Screen – Click Here >[/notice]

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MomentumCurator – Clarity. Focus. Context. Content Curation.

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At Momentum, we make it our business to keep on top of the latest developments in marketing and media. Then we share the best links, and our own insights, with our clients as a courtesy to help them grow their businesses. The feedback has been extremely positive. It started as an eNewsletter. Now, as with all things, it is evolving and we’re giving it a name.

Introducing – Momentum | Curator.

“Content curation” is a trending topic in marketing and media. It has come to represent the process of carefully researching, sifting, selecting, and sharing of content with others. Much the same way as a museum curator acquires and displays objects of relevance or an art collector selects and interprets artwork, a modern day content curator chooses and showcases material that is relevant to a particular tribe of users with specific preferences.

We know that our followers want to cut down their search for good reading on marketing and media. They want to understand how changing technology, techniques, and consumer consumption impacts their businesses. We are content curators for our own constituents!

Incredible mass appeal content curation tools are already at our fingertips – Flipboard, Zite, Google Currents, among others. These tools exist for one fundamental reason. In the context of our busy lives it has become a herculean task – nay, an almost impossible one – to navigate the sheer scale and depth of information that is relevant to one specific area of interest.

When we plug-in every morning, we conjure up an image of our clients starting their day – looking for solutions for their business challenges and opportunities. We don’t just blog and tweet about building brands and creating content. We do it every day. That’s why it’s only natural that Momentum is the curator that puts a carefully crafted collection of industry news and insights in our client inboxes and social feeds. We are their thought partners.

It is our absolute privilege and passion to provide much needed and highly valued clarity, focus, and context. We’d like to do it for you too.

Get your complimentary Momentum | Curator subscription now.

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