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.
Let’s Talk Inbound Marketing
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A well-conceived and properly developed digital strategy is absolutely critical to most every successful marketing plan. When executed, it will leverage all your internet, social, and content marketing initiatives in a way that will generate leads and result in new revenue incredibly fast.
Every business is different. The only common denominator is that all business –regardless of industry – is evolving at an exponential rate. For this reason, it is critical that marketers access the best expertise available to design and create an effective ecosystem that is optimized to deliver the desired results.
The digital ecosystem schematic will illustrate how internet traffic (demand) will be generated and how it is commandeered and routed between web site, blog, audio, video, ebooks, eNewsletters, as well as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social sharing platforms.
All internet marketing, social media, and content initiatives must facilitate discovery and inspire social sharing across all appropriate platforms. All content should be shaped specifically for the venue in which it is deployed. And above all, clear rules of engagement must be implemented to avoid public relations disasters.
When working with a good digital agency, it’s not necessary that you have all the answers. Your digital experts will guide you through the process and begin delivering results your business needs and deserves.
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Associations, whether national, regional, or local, are essentially communities. They are comprised of groups of tribes or individuals who are united by shared goals, interests, or preferences. Associations are, by their very nature, social.
This presents a unique and especially prescient opportunity for associations to leverage the power of new social communication, marketing, and media techniques to achieve their goals like never before. Whether they are professional, charitable, trade, political, cultural, or otherwise, associations may need to fulfill multiple mandates: advocacy, awareness, fund raising, education, communicating, lobbying, among others.
Chances are your association’s key initiatives include:
• Communicating with members
• Demonstrating value to the membership
• Advocating on behalf of consumers at large
What Social Can Do
Utilizing social marketing can open a community of engaged advocates, both members and non-members, who are willing to share your message across their respective social networks, generate awareness, and solidify your associations mandate with the public at large. However your association will have to engage with those advocates and leverage the power of social channels effectively. Here’s how.
Three Key Factors In Harnessing Social Channels
1. Be In The Community
Your association needs to be an active participant on all of the obvious networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. This means you need to go where your members are, and they are everywhere.
2. You Need A Plan
Simply signing up for an account on any given social platform does not mean your association has fulfilled its obligation. Social connections via your chosen networks are not obligations but opportunities to engage directly with your members. This direct connection requires a clear plan with regard to infrastructure, integration, and most importantly a set rules of engagement policy. There is nothing more important than a planned and coordinated process for responding to negative comments.
3. Content
Well-crafted and professionally produced text, audio, and video that clearly communicate your organization’s message are core to a great content marketing strategy. Content is the essential asset that will drive readers to your association via online and mobile. Since many associations are in the enviable position of having a business model based on providing information to their members, the raw materials for stellar content is often at their fingertips. Niche by definition, associations that create well crafted, shareable, and SEO friendly content can effectively push their message online.
Harness The Power Of Social Channels
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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.
Let’s Develop A Content Strategy
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The New Rules For Reaching Retail And Institutional Investors
The key factor behind the bottom-line of any investor relations professional is valuation. The art of effective communication to achieve the highest possible valuation for your company or client is the driving force behind successful, profitable investor relations campaigns.
The internet has fundamentally changed the way in which investor communication is disseminated to investors and potential investors. Early on, the IR section of your company website was a “nice to have” but not a necessary feature. However, in today’s market not only is it expected that your organization maintain an in-depth IR section on your website, governing regulatory bodies now provide guidelines on requirements for those web pages. Communication with investors via your website and the industry standard email subscription newsletter may feel like an effective means for getting out your message but are you effectively harnessing all available channels?
The exponential growth and relatively fast adoption of various social platforms on today’s internet provides IR professionals with an even deeper set of tools to tell their story. You only need to take a look at IR Web Report’s current social media section (click here >) to understand the importance these tools now play in the marketplace. Publicly traded companies are harnessing social channels to communicate with potential investors and shape their brand message. The key to utilizing these essential social channels is a cohesive brand message across all platforms with the understanding that this is a direct connection to your audience; a connection that well exceeds the usual email newsletter approach.
With this direct connection comes a new set of considerations:
1. Cohesion Across Platforms
Across all social platforms, your investors, both retail and institutional need to be viewed as one audience. Retail or institutional, both require the same information. Just as social cannot be the only means for disseminating timely investor information no longer can your website and newsletter be relied upon as the sole means of communication.
2. The Benefits Of Immediacy
Social content pushed through the appropriate channels now places higher than the most meticulously crafted SEO optimized content when searching on Google. Why? Many searches are now based on relevancy and how timely the indexed information is that is being searched for.
3. Shaping Your Message
Monitoring and tracking what is being said about your brand online provides your organization with the ability to engage in conversations that previously occurred beyond your reach. The effective shaping of your corporate message and the governance of a cohesive rules of engagement plan assists in mitigating the inherent risks.
Social media, on all platforms, is no longer a tool solely intended for consumer communication. B2B, HR and now some of the most innovative IR professionals are beginning to appreciate the value in social. We are seeing the emergence of fully socialized businesses in all sectors including those that are publicly traded.
Want to Harness Social For IR?
We can help evolve your social strategy, right now. We begin every client engagement with a Marketing Assessment. And that process begins with a simple conversation.
Fill out this form. We’ll send you more information and follow-up with you personally. Let the work begin.
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Here are some steps that with the help of a good marketing firm you can implement right away to dramatically improve the quantity and quality of inbound investment leads.
1. Generate More Web Traffic – Investor relations professionals constantly tell us that their single biggest challenge is getting more potential investors to visit their website. By developing an inbound marketing strategy, you will be able to attract qualified prospects to your company.
2. Create Custom Content – With the help of media marketing experts, you can publish your press stories, blog posts… even audio and video as compelling, searchable editorial content that can easily be deployed across multiple channels, exponentially increasing opportunities for investors to find you.
3. Utilize every social channel – Whether Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or others, consumers increasingly rely on social mediums to connect and discover information. Furthermore, 81% of US consumers consider blogs to be a reliable source of advice and product information.
4. Optimize every communication – Using highly developed inbound marketing software, it is possible to determine the best possible keywords and phrases that will best appeal to your target and incorporate them into all the content, to aid in search and discovery.
5. Generate Leads – It is highly desirable to collect, monitor, and chart all your prospective investors activity on your site, to build a relationship, and pre-qualify them with a series of on-site initiatives.
6. Nurture Those Leads – Consumers will be drawn to your site to read/consume general industry information, learn about social and green initiatives, or to pre-qualify themselves on the investment potential of your business. You must harness these leads and nurture them to fruition.
7. Measure. Refine & Repeat – These essential cutting-edge must be tracked and measured. Based on the results every campaign must be tweaked for optimum performance.
Social Media Is A Valuable IR Tool
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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.
Let’s Talk Marketing Strategy
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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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The push is on to put SEO to the bottom of the pile and for good reason. The web has become a sea of discoverability, no longer dictated by outdated SEO placement tactics and replaced with what can only be described as a true content push.
Your users or customers are less and less fooled by the SEO tactics of the past and are now drawn into content that has personal value. Strong content pushed to social circles by friends, followers and business peers is now drawing as much, if not more, audience than any well placed search term.
Large scale online properties, such as The Atlantic, are now pushing traffic through social channels much more effectively than through SEO based placement.
[info]“Sixteen months ago we received the same number of monthly referrals from search as social. Now 40% of traffic comes from social media,”
Scott Havens, Senior Vice President of finance and digital operations at The Atlantic Media Company.
[/info]
The creation and dissemination of content may be what binds your marketing message together, however, that content now needs to be offered with in the right context. Pushing that content within the right context requires deep, cohesive strategy that goes well beyond key words and a strong headline. Contextual content that your readers are compelled to share to their respective networks is the key to a successful strategy.
There is a deep shift occurring in how people find what they are looking for online. This shift is not solely based on algorithms and programming but also takes into account – location, browsing habits, relevancy and social connections. Users are now provided with web search, particularly Google, that is predictive in nature.
With the advent of Google Now users are beginning to see the shift in how they will search for online content. By combining predictive search technology with real time visualization we can see Google’s continual shift from a simply a search engine to a predictive, personal assistant that will understand what you are searching for within context. Google Now achieves this by accessing your email, calendar, contacts, text messages, location, shopping habits, payment history, music choices, books read and movies you have watched. For some this may seem to be a deep breach of privacy and those privacy parameters are yet to be fully established. For others, like myself, this appears to be the natural progression of technology to become the personal assistant we have only seen in science fiction until now.
The key motivator for this shift in contextual search results is, without a doubt, the deep market penetration of mobile devices. Predictive in its results, this type of search technology is pushing information to you based on what information the device already knows about your likes, habits and social connections.
So how will effective marketing campaigns have to reshape themselves within a world driven by predictive, location aware search results?
Effective marketing campaigns will now have to adopt an active listening approach to fully incorporate customers in the feedback loop. The consumer voice has never been so strong and those businesses that pay attention to active consumer voices will see the rewards. Your companies reputation online has never been as important as is it now. Products and services spoken of favorably online will, without a doubt, see themselves pushed to the top of predictive search results.
In addition to active listening, inbound marketing becomes an important factor in an effective marketing strategy. Focusing on being found by your customers by providing high value content that is relevant to their wants and draws them into contacting you is now the strongest tool in attracting potential clients. As your content takes shape and becomes distributed across networks your offering obtains authenticity. For many marketers this is a drastic shift from the traditional outbound model, however, brands that do not shift a portion of their marketing budget to an inbound marketing model will have more and more difficulty conveying their message.
So does this mean that SEO is still a relevant means to garner traffic for your online properties? Probably yes. However, predictive search technology does create some division in how content will be optimized depending on the platform you are focusing your efforts on. With mobile access now exceeding desktop access for many online services, a deeper focus will be weighed on relevance and reputation in regards to predictive search results.
It’s all about location, location, location.
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No matter the industry, it has never been tougher to engage prospects in a sales conversation than it is right now.
Let’s face it. No one – you and me included – wants to be “sold.” Most people avoid incoming cold calls like the plague. With texting, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so many other ways to communicate, most desk phones are starting to sprout cobwebs!
Professionals still buy the products and services they need every day. But the impetus now begins with buyer. They seek out the information they need – usually via the internet – and they reach out to those that they perceive have the expertise, solutions, or goods they want and are prepared to acquire.
The challenge of B2B marketers is to:
1) Be easy to find – everywhere
2) Communicate a clear and consistent value proposition
3) Demonstrate industry-leading expertise (in your niche)
4) Allow easy sharing of your collateral and online sales assets
5) Be absolutely approachable and instantly responsive
No one wants to be sold. When they have pain, they want to connect with a trusted expert who can deliver real solutions that solve their problems. Someone who can help them move their business forward. It’s even better if the service or product comes recommended from within their known network.
If your sales approach is limited to cold calling and old school interruptive marketing techniques, you are missing a huge opportunity to connect with buyers on a whole new level.
Content marketing, advertorial campaigns, social media activity, and other relationship-building initiatives are all tools you can use, in tandem with traditional techniques, to establish expertise, make connections, and start conversations with prequalified prospects almost immediately.
Producing sales is more difficult and the old way is dead.
The great news is that, although it can be daunting at first, the new way is a lot more fun!
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