The proven and successful inbound marketing strategy is a great way to generate high quality leads.

Therefore inbound marketing is known as the “riskless” marketing strategy because of the activities done which are long lasting and bring an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.

Why is this inbound marketing such a great way to generate leads?

Inbound marketing offers you a strategic and smart approach to be and to stay several steps ahead of your competition.

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses “earn” their way to the customer and his loyalty, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes: Content creation like blogging, video, photo, whitepapers, eBooks, podcasts, press releases, comments in social media and other blogs and forums, Social media two way communication, lead generation, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

How can Inbound Marketing help you?

A. It saves you up to 62% of your marketing budget
B. Makes you stand out of your competition
C. Helps to generate a massive amount of leads
D. Gets you up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
E. Increases your customers and sales

Infographic: Inbound Marketing Rising

TOP 42 Reasons to Jumpstart your Inbound Marketing NOW!

1. 60% of companies will execute an inbound marketing strategy in 2013.

2. Marketers dedicate 34% of their department budgets to inbound tactics, but only 11% to outbound.

3. 48% of marketers will increase spend on inbound marketing in 2013.

4. 34% of all leads generated in 2013 come from inbound marketing sources.

5. Inbound practices produce 54% more leads than traditional outbound leads.

6. 17% of marketers say traditional advertising and direct mail are less important than they were 6 months ago.

7. Traditional advertising and PPC deliver the least leads of any form of marketing.

8. Only 6% of marketing leads originate from advertising or PPC campaigns.

9. 34% of businesses cannot or don’t calculate overall inbound ROI in 2013.

10. Adopting a marketing/sales agreement saves companies with more than 200 employees $195.84 per new customer.

11. Only 24% of companies have a formal process for marketing/sales handoffs.

12. Companies who test are 75% more likely to show ROI for inbound marketing.

13. Inbound marketers double the average site conversion rate, from 6% to 12% total.

14. The average website conversion rate is 10%.

15. 81% of companies integrate inbound marketing with larger marketing goals.

16. Marketers spend 55% more of their time than their money on blogging.

17. 82% of marketers who blog on a daily basis have acquired a customer through blog content.

18. 57% of marketers who only blog once a month have acquired a customer through blogging.

19. Inbound marketers plan to hire an average of 9.3 people this year.

20. Only 18% of marketers are purely focused on developing quality content in 2013.

21. 25% of marketers cite reaching the right audience as their top priority for 2013.

22. Only 5% of marketers have no integration between inbound marketing and overall marketing goals.

23. 50% of marketers consider their companies primarily customer-focused.

24. 17% of sales teams and 11% of executives fully support inbound marketing efforts.

25. 73% of marketing agencies are implementing inbound strategies.

26. Only 41% of nonprofits report adopting inbound tactics for 2013.

27. Just 21% of enterprises assimilate inbound marketing with their overall marketing strategy.

28. 47% of CEOs and CMOs ignore formal marketing/sales agreement development.

29. Marketing is 125% more likely than sales to provide inbound resources.

30. Increasing total lead volume is the top priority for 21% of marketers.

31. Customers average a total of 9,100 leads after 1.5 years of inbound marketing.

32. 67% of marketers produced a blog last year.

33. Only 20% of marketers without a blog reported a positive ROI for 2012.

34. 27% of marketers report that both social media and email marketing produce the lowest total average lead costs.

35. 15% of marketers say SEO leads have the highest sales conversions.

36. Social media delivers 14% of all leads and 13% of all customers.

37. 52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook.

38. 43% of marketers have found a customer on LinkedIn.

39. 36% of marketers have found a customer on Twitter.

40. 41% of marketers have adjusted their budget due to the success of inbound marketing.

41. 41% of CEOs report inbound delivered measurable ROI.

42. Marketers with more than 15 blog posts per month average 1,200 leads per month.

Source: HubSpot 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Annual Report. FREE Executive Report on Inbound Tactics and Strategy – Insight from 3,339 Marketers

WRONG!

Increasingly prospects shift from traditional to the digital media.

They research about products and services on search engines, forums, and blogs and in social media to get the best products and services for their money!

To get found online when future prospects are looking for products is one of the major challenges businesses are facing today.

Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.

Trust is a major factor when it comes to get new customers acquired.

Companies need to understand that they need be there before they ask for a sale. They need to establish themselves as an authority and trusted source in their industry.

Social media platforms are today serving as a great inbound marketing tool for building credibility, brand awareness as well as community of people with same interests. These people than become aware of the businesses products and services and can become paying customers.

The most popular channel to share content is social media, the advantages of platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for business and to win customer loyalty are known. About 76% of marketers say they used a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

Successful companies use every possible communication channel to get in touch with their target audience. They are interested in what their recent and future customers are thinking and communicating about them.

In a recent survey conducted, 72% of the marketing consultants have agreed that they are using social media marketing for their businesses online.

This tells the importance of social media marketing tactics and inbound market solutions for businesses online.

A new research of Pew Research Center shows that 69% of adults use social media!

What do you think how are the chances that none of your prospects are included in that majority of adults using social media?

If you still have doubts that your prospects are active in social media feel free to try the advertising targeting platforms of any of those social networks. There you can segment your target audience at no cost. Then you will see by yourself.

Social media is a powerful communication channel to get and to stay in touch with prospects, future and current customers and to build relationships with industry influencers. You can also connect with reporters who are looking for industry experts on upcoming stories like you to interview them. This could improve your credibility and bring you additional free exposure, prospects, leads and customers for your business!

As simple as that!

Infographic: Lead Generation

What do you think about social media for business? Let me know your toughts in the comment section below!

In the past years Pay per click marketing has been a quick and easy solution for businesses to generate leads. But to do paid advertisements is no long-lasting and holistic marketing strategy to depend on!

When you do PPC than you generate leads as long as you pay. When you stop your PPC campaign then you will not generate leads anymore! As simple as that!

Nevertheless PPC are still a great vehicle to get the word out but only when they are incorporated within a smart and holistic marketing strategy.

The proven and successful inbound marketing strategy is a great way to generate high quality leads. Therefore inbound marketing is known as the “riskless” marketing strategy because of the activities done which are long lasting and bring an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.

Why is this inbound marketing such a great way to generate leads?

With inbound marketing businesses earn their way to the customer, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes Blogging, Social Media, Lead Conversion, Lead Nurturing and Closed-Loop Analysis.

How can Inbound Marketing help you?

A. It saves you up to 62% of your marketing budget
B. Makes you stand out of your competition
C. Helps to generate a massive amount of leads
D. Gets you up to 55% higher lead conversion rates
E. Increases your customers and sales

Example: The backbone of successful inbound marketing is the content creation strategy. To create outstanding in a corporate blog improves the trust, visibility and traffic to a business online. Published articles once done are literally online forever, are indexed through search engines and can be found from future customers.

The more articles you publish the more „digital outposts“which you build for your business and you get an increasing stream of future customers to your offers.

Businesses brand them self by creating and publishing original content. Businesses that create and publish remarkable content on the web and in social media:

• Establish thought leadership
• Elevate brand visibility and buzz
• Boosts SEO

Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:

Blogging companies get up to…

1. …55% more Traffic
2. …97% more Inbound Links
3. …434% more indexed pages in search engines
4. …25x times more business leads

A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!

Infographic: The Rise Of Content Marketing

PCC can’t deliver such results!

But you can incorporate Pay per Click Marketing into your Inbound Marketing Strategy.

Some thought how you could use PPC to increase your visibility:

PPC drives you quick results and you can use it to bridge over the time until your content marketing starts to show effect.

To get a better idea of what your audience is looking for before they hit your website and to adjust you’re SEO, you could start a PPC campaign. Look at the initial keyword data in your Google AdWords account and see which keywords have the highest click through rate (CTR). So you get the most popular keywords and custom tailor your content and your next PPC advertising.

You should bid on your own corporate terms, for example your business name or the names of your products. So when a interested person is researching online for your business, products and services the chances are good even if you are not in the top five Google Search result they will find you through your PPC ads.

Especially for local businesses PPC is a great way to get a targeted location based positioning to attract locals to the business front door. Local businesses can do advertising for a very specific location and do bidding on keywords related to this location. So they get laser targeted traffic from people who are maybe living around the corner in the next street.

There is not only Google AdWords where PPC campaigns can be done to reach the buyer persona in a great way.

Businesses can also do PPC ads on Twitter, Facebook and for B2B on LinkedIn.

One more thing to keep in mind when doing paid adverting!

You should direct your traffic to dedicated landing pages to convert those prospects into leads.

Take care to prepare a great offer on your landing page to motivate those prospects to leave their contact to follow up with them later and to get them into the lead nurturing process to convert them to sales.

What exactly are infographics?

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.

Infographics can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends and this is what made them a powerful marketing tool for businesses.

Infographics are shared on the web, Twitter and Facebook more often than other content online.

Infographics are easy to understand, to consume and to share. On Twitter, LinkedIn und StumbleUpon Infographics get more retweets than other content.

Marketers love Infographics because they offer an easy and powerful viral marketing tool to spread the word about the company’s products and services.

B2C and B2B also love infographics as they explain sophisticated facts in a very easy understandable way.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

The most popular Infographics are about business with about 12.7%, technology with about 10% and social media with about 9%.

As infographics are able to explain sophisticated topics in an easy way they are very popular for technology.

Infographic: The State of Infographics

Source: Top Marketing Schools/NowSourcing

What are your experiences with infographics? Tell me in the comment box below.

Content creation, marketing and content distribution in social media are proven ways to make interested people aware of your business.

Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.

When people want to buy products and services they turn to the web, to search engines like Google, Yahoo, social media and their friends and relatives to get information and recommendations about products and services.

Original content builds you trust, customer loyalty and can position your business as trusted experts in your field. It offers the so called value ad for customers

Content marketing has established as a powerful way to engage customers. An increasing number of B2C and B2B marketer are faced with the challenge to produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers to their products and services.

By publishing interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites and content curators will link to you which increases your Page Rank and improves your search engine visibility also!

So when you publish expert content on the web you will be recognized as an expert in your field.

On the web you are what you publish… Think a minute what do you publish on the web and in social media? … Exactly! That’s what you are on the web!

If you miss the opportunity which content marketing offers to you, your business will vanish in the dust.

The best way to start content marketing for business is to start a corporate blog.

Recent and future customers can interact this way with your business. You show expertise and offer valuable information to solve your audience’s problems. This gains trust.

Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:

• 1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
• 2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
• 3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
• 4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!

The customer chooses by himself through research on search engines like Google, with the help of friends, relatives and his social networks which product to buy and which not.

Did you asked yourself what future customers will find when they research your industry for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?

How many people hit your site and how many business leads do generate daily?

Businesses who publish and share content on the web do not only increase the number of “digital outpost” but moreover increase their visibility and build trust with the future customers. Trust is the main motivation to buy. When your audience trusts you, then you they are willing to do business with you.

Actually the best way to increase visibility is content marketing. With content marketing businesses demonstrate thought leadership; prove themselves Trustworthy and Boosts SEO by increase Backlinks to their website.

Remarkable and helpful content is also a great to build customer loyalty. It offers the so called value ad for customers

Content marketing has established as a powerful way to engage customers. An increasing number of B2C and B2B marketer are faced with the challenge to produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers to their products and services.

A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!

With great content you position your business and the people of your business who create the content as trusted experts in your field. Content Marketing is great to build your online reputation.

Here are some marketing tips you can use right away.

Give away free content

Give away free content in form of a corporate blog where you write about topics your audience is most interested in. You can get great ideas for blog articles when you go through email and support requests. This will give you a ton of possible blog article topics.

You can also take a camera and explain a task, for example how to use one of your machines and what to take care of. Or you can use photos and testimonials of satisfied customers and publish them too.

You need to invest time/ money to produce content

To find the time to produce remarkable content is the most common problem business face. But as you need to spend time for your business you also need to understand that marketing and content creation is an important part of your lead generation. Therefore you need to set time free to produce remarkable content which will attract new customers to your business.

No matter if you do it by your own or you hire an Inbound Marketing Agency, content marketing is not free. You have the choice, do you want to invest your time or do you want to set a marketing budget and hire a professional Inbound Marketing Agency.

Give away GREAT content

Great content is valuable. It is worth reading and sharing it. Therefore you need to be specific with information which should benefit your future customers. Don’t be afraid to give away “secrets” because this kind of content attracts the most people. And be the end you are the professionals and the future customer will turn to you when he is ready to buy.

Are you in control of your traffic and the volume of your business leads? Do you think you can be in control of your business leads and revenue?

I have a message for you: You can be in control of your business leads and revenue!

There is a way how you can increase qualified traffic, business leads and revenue. Content marketing!

Content marketing has become a powerful way to engage customer’s right where they stand.

To share published content in social media is not enough. Content creation and content marketing as a holistic strategy must be performed on regular basis to gain measurable and profitable results on the long term.

Businesses brand them self by creating and publishing original content. Businesses that create and publish remarkable content on the web and in social media:

• Establish thought leadership
• Elevate brand visibility and buzz
• Boosts SEO

Content marketing improves the search engine rank and the content has more chances to get shared on social networks, which also improves brand reach and direct more future customers to landing pages where they can convert to qualified leads.

By generating interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites will link to the businesses website and blog which increases the Page Rank and improves the search engine visibility.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

Infographic: The Anatomy of Content Marketing

The best way for businesses to start with content marketing is blogging!

Companies who operate a corporate blog on frequent base get up to:

• 55% more Traffic than companies who do not blog
• 97% more Inbound Links than companies who do not blog
• 434% more indexed pages in search engines than companies who do not blog
• 25x times more business leads than companies who do not blog

To get found online when future customers are looking for products is one of the major challenges businesses are facing today.

Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.

A recent research from media and marketing services firm Valassis shows that 12% of the surveyed grocery retail executives go from usage of 12% social media in 2012 to a 65% usage in the next five years. They also plan to increasing investments in online marketing in general. The have understood the advantages of facebook for business and other networks to build customer loyalty.

An increasing number of B2C marketers are faced with the challenge to attract buyers to their offers.

This problem can be solved with Content marketing which has established as a powerful way to engage customers in social media.

Also an increasing number of B2C marketers are faced with the challenge produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers on the web and in social media to their products.

The most popular channel to share content is social media, the advantages of facebook for business and to win customer loyalty are known. About 76% of marketers say they used a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

Successful companies use every possible communication channel to get in touch with their target audience. They are interested in what their recent and future customers are thinking and communicating about them.

Infographic: How Brands Listen in the Digital Age

This communication ability helps them to better understand and to serve their audience, which sets them apart from their competition and gives them wide advantages in their business field.

Businesses which are willing to communicate with their audience in blogs and social media show that they care about the people who spend their money with them.

Curata results also showed that 85% of those marketers focus their main objective of content creation to establishing a thought leadership, 80% of those marketers see also brand building and buzz as a goal of their content creation strategy.

The most popular channel to share content is social media. About 76% of marketers say they used a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

Content marketing has become a powerful way to engage customer’s right where they stand.

To share published content in social media is not enough. Content creation and content marketing as a holistic strategy must be performed on regular basis to gain measurable and profitable results on the long term.

But what is more powerful curated content or original content?

A business brands its self by creating and publishing original content on. It establishes thought leadership, elevates brand visibility and buzz and boosts its SEO by creating and publishing original content the web and in social media.

This improves the search engine rank and your content has more chances to get shared on social networks, which also improves brand reach and direct more future customers to your offers.

By generation interesting and remarkable content other blogs, news sites and content curators will link to you which increases your Page Rank and improves your search engine visibility also!

The biggest challenge for marketers when doing content creation is the time investment!

Research results show that about 70% of marketers say they did not have enough time to devote to the process of content creation and content marketing. Also the marketers stated that is difficult for them to create original content to share with their audience.

Infographic: A Brief History of Content Marketing

Here are some numbers to try to compare the effectiveness of Twitter and Facebook for marketing:

An average Facebook user has an average of 130 friends compared with a Twitter user and his average 300 Followers. Twitter users share 1.5 more times tweets than compared with Facebook users which share wall post messages 0.65 on average. Massages shared on Facebook reach 45k of people there on average compared with 105k reach on Twitter.

These numbers give you a small idea of marketing effectiveness of booth social media platforms.

How can you profit from Twitter’s great opportunity to reach your target audience and increase business leads, sales and profits without spending a truck load of ad money on Twitter?

Twitter is a great tool to do real time communication with your audience. Users expect companies to response quickly to their requests. The quick response and serious reaction to requests or events on which happen is an essential part to profit from Twitter communication which breaks out.

Customers often reach out to brands to learn more about new products and services. If a brand is able to publish important product and services related news exclusively to their Twitter network first, this would help to improve loyalty with their network. This can also result in an improvement of revenue in the long term.

4 Reasons why companies should leverage Twitter:

• Increase brand awareness
• Humanize B2B companies
• Establish as thought leader
• Connecting easy and effortless with customers and prospects

7 Steps how can you profit from Twitter?

1. Start a Twitter presence and complete your profile
2. Research for industry related Tweets, discussions and people. Follow those people
3. Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening
4. Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in Twitter and ask for feedback and opinion for your publication
5. Build landing pages and offer Twitter exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related leads from Twitter
6. Measure your activities
7. Improve your activities and repeat

Infographic: Twitter Marketing

Sometimes there are users in my network who make the impression they are bothered through this information. Social media is for connection and for communication. People who don’t want to be “bothered” by information which they don’t like for this moment should take into account that maybe this information they don’t like at this moment can benefit other people.

Social media is a democratic way of communication and this means that everybody is free to publish any information which can benefit others.

Not each piece of content which a business or a private person publishes in the social media channel is of interest or value for all. But the more content and information is published the higher are the chances that under this mass of content parts exist which benefit other people.

To publish and to share content is a sign of generosity. And if there is content or any information you don’t like than you are free to express your personal opinion on this, but keep in mind your opinion must not be universally applicable.

Content sharing is an essential part of knowledge and communication and improves the online reputation.

Infographic: Social Sharing Trends

What do you think, how does content sharing in social media benefits you?

Recent stats show that those marketers spend less than 20% of their marketing budgets on social media which includes the outreach to target audience on social sites, advertising and maintaining a social media presence.

Most marketers have or plan to increase their budgets for social media marketing by up to 25% in 2012.

Content marketing has established as a powerful way to engage customers in social media. An increasing number of B2C and B2B marketer are faced with the challenge to produce and publish buyer persona oriented interesting and remarkable content to attract customers on the web and in social media to their products and services.

The most popular channel to share content is social media. About 76% of marketers say they used a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

Successful companies use every possible communication channel to get in touch with their target audience. They are interested in what their recent and future customers are thinking and communicating about them.

This communication ability helps them to better understand and to serve their audience, which sets them apart from their competition and gives them wide advantages in their business field.

Businesses which are willing to communicate with their audience in blogs and social media show that they care about the people who spend their money with them.

Businesses which avoid an open and authentic communication in blogs and social media show exactly the opposite. Why should the customer than care about to make any further business with them?

Successful businesses in B2C and B2B have embraced the wide opportunities which blogs and social media offers to them to spread the word and to reach their audience where there are around.

Infographic: How Brands Listen in the Digital Age

Today businesses need to react in real time with their audience.

Business can gain a massive competitive advantage when they become able and are willing to communicate with their audience in Real Time.

The most frequented Real Time Communication Channels are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn only to name some of them.

Here is the audience which demands brands to communicate in real time and show they care about their recent and future customers.

Real Time Communication is a powerful way for businesses to learn more about the demand their audience has and this sets them into the position to custom tailor products and service for the price their audience want.

As business recognizes the Real Time Mindset and the importance of speed they can set them self apart from their competition the smart way for a fraction of the cost of old school campaigns but with much more better results.

A Real Time Mindset ads an smart additional way of marketing to the businesses marketing arsenal, which means that business still can go forward with the marketing activities they still do and then compare investment, effort and results with this new Real Time approach.

Numbers do not lie and every business owner will go on to use the marketing strategies which bring him the most for his buck and cancel those one who do not.

The size of an organization can make real time communication difficult. Because of the simple question who does what.

But great examples like ZAPPOS have proven that even organization with 300 people can communicate in real time for example on Twitter which has set them massively apart from their competition. They became so successful that AMAZON acquired them and let them work further as ZAPPOS without changing anything inside, especially not the successful way of real time communication.

Sure size matter, but when you want it and you understand the benefits, than you can do it no matter how big or small your organization is.

The secret to get Real Time Communication successfully achieved so that it brings your business huge profits is to lower control which needs to hand over a high amount of trust to your employees. If you see them as responsible adults and demand for their responsibility they will react this way.

You will need to set flexible rules about communication which leaves your employees enough space to breathe and to react in your favor.

Let me know what you think about Real Time Communication!

We live in a customer centric time powered through social media and the rules of marketing and PR has dramatically changed.

The customer chooses by himself through research on search engines like Google, with the help of friends, relatives and his social networks which product to buy and which not.

Then it counts what and if he can find your business on the web.

Marketers need to understand that most people do not go online to buy something. The primarily go online to research for products and services. This is valid for B2C and B2B!

Businesses who publish and share content on the web do not only increase the number of “digital outpost” but moreover increase their visibility and build trust with the future customers. Trust is the main motivation to buy. When your audience trusts you, then you they are willing to do business with you.

Trust can only be build with a long term approach, because what you publish reflects what and who you are.

With great content you position your business and the people of your business who create the content as trusted experts in your field. Content Marketing is great to build your online reputation.

Here are some marketing tips you can use right away.

Give away free content

Give away free content in form of a corporate blog where you write about topics your audience is most interested in. You can get great ideas for blog articles when you go through email and support requests. This will give you a ton of possible blog article topics.

You can also take a camera and explain a task, for example how to use one of your machines and what to take care of. Or you can use photos and testimonials of satisfied customers and publish them too.

You need to invest time/ money to produce content

To find the time to produce remarkable content is the most common problem business face. But as you need to spend time for your business you also need to understand that marketing and content creation is an important part of your lead generation. Therefore you need to set time free to produce remarkable content which will attract new customers to your business.

No matter if you do it by your own or you hire an Inbound Marketing Agency, content marketing is not free. You have the choice, do you want to invest your time or do you want to set a marketing budget and hire a professional Inbound Marketing Agency.

Give away GREAT content

Great content is valuable. It is worth reading and sharing it. Therefore you need to be specific with information which should benefit your future customers. Don’t be afraid to give away “secrets” because this kind of content attracts the most people. And be the end you are the professionals and the future customer will turn to you when he is ready to buy.

Infographic: The Rise of Content Marketing

Six great reasons to consider content marketing to generate more business

Companies who operate a corporate blog on frequent base get …

…up to 55% more Traffic than companies who do not blog
…up to 97% more Inbound Links than companies who do not blog
…up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines than companies who do not blog
…up to 25x times more business leads than companies who do not blog

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

Every businesses which ignores these facts will vanish in the dust of today’s networked and quick economy and that’s good.

To get found online when future customers are looking for products and services is one of the major challenges businesses are facing today.

Millions of businesses competing for paying customers and it have become a difficult task for most of them to stand out of the crowd and to make future customers aware about their offers.

Businesses need to understand that future customers B2B and B2C primarily do not go online to buy something. First they go online for research. They research for products and services and if they found something of interest they research about information about the company. They ask friends, family and their social networks for recommendations and if they know the company the have recently found.

Did you asked yourself what future customers will find when they research your industry for products and services you also have to offer, will they find you or your competitor?

How many people hit your site and how many business leads do generate daily?

Targeted traffic is a result of many tasks which need to be done before you even get the chance to get found by future customers through Google, Yahoo of Bing search.

Actually the best way to increase visibility is content marketing. With content marketing businesses demonstrate thought leadership; prove themselves Trustworthy and Boosts SEO by increase Backlinks to their website.

Remarkable and helpful content is also a great to build customer loyalty. It offers the so called value ad for customers.

The great success of content marketing is the result of giving away valuable information – remarkable content for free to attract people to your business like a magnet.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

This marketing system works 100% for any business!

Content marketing can also work for you to attract new customers to your business like a magnet.

To empower your content marketing start with a corporate blog!

Blogging companies get…

• …up to 55% more Traffic
• …up to 97% more Inbound Links
• …up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
• …up to 25x times more business leads

The next steps of content creation are to craft further buyer persona oriented content like:

• - Press releases
• - Pictures
• - Whitepapers
• - How-to’s
• - EBooks
• - Video

In blurbs buyer personas analysis sheet from inBlurbs

Include a call to action in each of your content pieces. This ensures that the user exactly discovers what to do next.

Each of your content pieces is an outpost of your businesses which increases your visibility and improves trust and directs more future customers to your business.

The more content you publish on the web the more online outposts you get in exchange and your chances to get found increase. Other sites will find your content valuable and link back to it. People will share and comment on your content, which also will increase reach and visibility. You increase Backlinks and customer loyalty through content marketing. As simple as that.

Trust is a major factor when it comes to acquiring new customers.

Companies need to understand that they need be there before they ask for a sale. They need to establish themselves as an authority and trusted source in their industry.

About.com conducted a survey where they find out that 84% said that brands must prove themselves trustworthy before they buy or interact in any other way!

Reviews (customer generated content) are a way how brands can gain trust with future customers said 41% of the surveyed people.

This brings us to the most effective way how to gain customer trust before you ask for the sale.

Content marketing is a proven way to engage customers.

A seriously executed content marketing strategy can be responsible for 25x times more business leads and boosts your revenue by up to 40%!

One of the most popular channels to share content is social media. About 76% of marketers use a social network as the main channel for content distribution.

To share content in social media is not enough. Content creation and content marketing must be executed as a holistic strategy and have to be performed on regular basis to gain profitable results on the long term.

Companies utilizing content marketing strategy report an up to 2,000% lift in blog traffic and 40% boost in revenue.

How to start content marketing?

The best way to start content marketing for business is to start a corporate blog. Recent and future customers can interact this way with your business. You show expertise and offer valuable information to solve your audience’s problems. This gains trust.

Blogging has great advantages and here are the most important:

1. Blogging companies get up to 55% more Traffic
2. Blogging companies get up to 97% more Inbound Links
3. Blogging companies get up to 434% more indexed pages in search engines
4. Blogging companies get up to 25x times more business leads

All of this above builds trust and increases brand visibility. As a result this brings more interested people to the offers and can increase revenue in the long term.

There is a simple answer: There is no difference in communication.

But you should understand your audience and communicate in that way that your communication is worth for them to get noticed.

You should know who you want to attract to your offers. And when you know who your audience, your buyer personas are than you can create interesting and remarkable information for those people.

How to know what your “buyer personas” are interested in? Just ask them what they are interested in. You can do this in social media on Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter. You can also take a closer look to your email archive and the requests there. You should be able to put together an interesting catalogue of topics your “buyer personas” are interested in.

Now you are able to give valuable answers to these questions. An effective way to get the attention of your audience is to write this down as blog articles and to publish this content on the web and in social media. This should attract the right buyer personas to these articles and in the next steps lead them to dedicated landing pages and to your products and services.

Infographic: The Inbound Marketing Multiplier

As you can see there is no difference in the doings to attract the right buyer personas. If you offer something of value you will attract a steady stream of fresh leads. You decide which they should be, B2B or B2C.

Recent stats show that those marketers spend less than 20% of their marketing budgets on social media which includes the outreach to target audience on social sites, advertising and maintaining a social media presence.

No matter the popularity, this described budget size seems to be small compared with the power of the social web for businesses. Most marketers have already or plan to increase their budgets for social media marketing by up to 25% in 2012.

The most known challenge is to measure social media ROI. For example marketers measure their social media success with click through rates and likes (Facebook).

A great way to measure the ROI of social media marketing is to drive interested audience to dedicated landing pages where they can request more information. This way is the most successful one to measure social media ROI in the long term.

Social Media Infographic

You can achieve a better social media ROI when you follow these four easy steps:

1. Create remarkable content and publish it on the web and in social media

2. Encourage the readers of your content with a call to action included in the footer of your content to request more information from you. For example a personal consultation, whitepaper or eBook

3. Drive them to dedicated landing pages which give you the opportunity to track from channel your leads are coming

4. Nurture your leads and analyze time to deal, deal size and channel where your business is coming from

The more landing pages with different offers you publish the better. Your funnel becomes wider and wider which ensures you a steady growing stream of fresh and hot business leads.

More and more businesses focus on online marketing, social media marketing and online business lead generation. They all compete for the attention of their target audience.

The buyer also increasingly researches for products and services on the web and in social media. He asks his network contacts, business partner, family and friends for their opinion and for recommendations about products, services and brands.

The development of mobile devices like smart phones, tablet pc and mobile apps give them all the power to research and to buy on the fly.

This is valid for business to consumer (b2c) and for business to business (b2b) related industries. Nobody can escape this buyer centric market when he wants to stay successful in the future.

But to make a person aware of your products and services they need to find you. You need to be there when and where they are looking. How to do that?

A great way to catch a customer’s attention is by publishing great content. Each piece of content is an outpost of your business on the web and can help to find you when your audience is looking in social media and on search engines.

Content creation is the most successful strategy to attract the right buyer persona to your offers.

As content creation is the most successful strategy to attract the right buyer persona it is increasingly used and the quality and competition for good content is growing.

The only thing what can help businesses to set them self apart from their competition is to be and stay creative.

A recent research from Triton Digital found out that the most people still trust more Traditional Media like TV, Radio and newspaper than news and information from the internet and social media.

So it looks like that social media is obviously not the #1 news machine. What to do now?

A great way to show creativity in content marketing is to do Real Time Marketing and PR by Newsjacking.

Newsjacking is the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business. – David Meerman Scott

Regarding to David Meerman Scott, the bestselling author, the rules have changed. The traditional PR model—sticking closely to a preset script and campaign timeline—no longer works the way it used to. Public discourse now moves so fast and so dynamically that all it takes is a single afternoon to blast the wheels off someone’s laboriously crafted narrative.

And here we are!

I will not describe here how exactly to do Newsjacking. For this you should buy David Meerman Scott great book to learn the exact tasks.

But I will try to give you a small idea how Newsjacking can work for your business.

When you go through the daily media, like news on TV, radio, newspaper social media updates on Facebook, Twitter, etc. do you see sometimes news which grab your attention because they relate to your industry in any way?

We learned that still most people trust traditional media. How would it be to get piggyback on breaking news and profit from the public excitement and the life of a news story to increase your businesses reach and awareness with future customers?

So by using the reach and the trust of traditional media you can reach far more people with your message than before. But you need to be very quick!

There is no question Newsjacking is the most creative and one of the most effective ways to get attention, and the best on it, anybody can do it!

Businesses are always interested to increase the reach of their brand to get in front of future customers.

Brand building can be a though thing if not done the right way. To build a brand a huge budget is not necessary but more the right strategy.

The past and the present (still for some) of marketing:

There are a lot of ways to inform future clients of a brand, like advertising, TV and radio spots, newspaper ads, snail mail, pay per click marketing, trade shows, etc. But the hook with most of those marketing ways is they are expensive, mostly not measurable and not long lasting. As soon you stop this paid advertising than your visibility decreases again.

There is a strategy which delivers guaranteed, long lasting and measurable results for a fraction of the costs of old school advertising.

The marketing strategy:

Inbound marketing offers you a smart strategic approach to be and most important to stay steps ahead of your competition.

The inbound marketing strategy focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses “earn” their way to the customer by publishing helpful information for example on a corporate blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes: Content creation like blogging, video, photo, whitepapers, eBooks, podcasts, press releases, comments in social media and other blogs and forums, Social media two way communication, lead generation, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Summary what you can expect from inbound marketing:

• A. Save up to 62% of your marketing budget in the long term
• B. Make you stand out of your competition
• C. Generate a massive amount of qualified and hot business leads
• D. Improve your lead conversion rate by up to 55%
• E. Increase your loyal customers and sales

Brain vs. Budget = Inbound Marketing

View more presentations from inBlurbs

Time frame for inbound marketing brand building?

As every doing in business inbound marketing also depends on what you put in. The more you do the better results you will get and expand your brand reach faster.

To establish a brand takes about 2-3 years, depending on product, service market and customer demand.

But the difference is, with inbound marketing you have an up to 62% lesser cost per lead and an up to 55% higher lead conversion rate. Which is a much lesser marketing investment than old fashioned advertising, and your doings are long lasting.

For example: Created content which you have published stays online as long you want it to be, attracts people which research online for products and services you also have to offer and still delivers qualified visitors to your lead capture – landing pages.

You do tasks like publishing a blog article–– one time and they deliver traffic to your lead capture – landing pages where you convert them to leads and later to paying customers.

By executing a serious inbound marketing strategy for your business you can set you apart from your competition, reach more future customers, improve your brands reach and visibility and become trusted industry source.

How much is inbound marketing?

Again, as every doing in business inbound marketing also depends on what you put in. The more you do the better results you will get, expand your brand reach and get more customers faster.

As inbound marketing is the most powerful marketing strategy in the marketing actually, it is also difficult to execute through its complexity without any professional help.

Moreover about 70% of businesses which try to execute an inbound marketing strategy without professional help fail within the first three months, remain 30% of business fail thereafter.

To start with inbound marketing for your business you should calculate $2,000 – $3,000 per month or maybe more. The size of your inbound marketing investment also depends on your goals and the pace you want to achieve results.

As we discussed brand building earlier you should take into account a minimum time frame of 18 months or more for your brand building, and this also depends on several factors like the market and competitive situation, your products and services only to name some of them.

As many marketers and businesses, I use Slideshare, DocStoc and other document hosting sites to upload content to make it available to different audiences.

For a couple of years now I used DocStoc to upload more than hundred documents for the reason of content marketing which in exchange brought me a small amount of interested visitors to our website and blog.

Today I went again to upload information to several document hosting sites and also on DocStoc. After I have done my upload successfully I discovered that only thirty documents are visible in my documents library.

I try to research what happen with the other documents which I have uploaded in the past years. Because all documents uploaded on other document hosting sites are still there, visible and deliver targeted traffic to our blog and website.

I was not able to find my remain articles so I decided to send an support request to DocStoc to clear what happen with my document where I have put time and effort to produce ant to upload to DocStoc.

Here is the email I have sent to DocStoc:

Several hours later I received a response mail from DocStoc:

Yes, you read it right. By the way you are able to read, obviously “Jane” from DocStoc was not…

DocStoc deleted my account!

Nobody asked them to do so. “Jane” from DocStoc didn’t answer my support request but deleted my work.

When I started out with document hosting sites, my first choice was the market leader Slideshare, which has been acquired from LinkedIn several weeks ago. After some research I discovered further document hosting sites and registered there to spread the inBlurbs content, like whitepapers, articles and press releases.

We use a paid Slideshare account which offers also a lead generation and analytics feature. As I used Slideshare and the other document hosting sites like issuu.com and scribd.com I never discovered any problems.

Marketing Tip: Ensure that sources where you invest time and effort to spread content are reliable to not waste your time.

Did you have the same experiences with DocStoc? Post them here in the comment section below.

Consumers are discussing companies and even criticizing brands online, whether or not these brands are active in the social space. TNS found in 2011, that 64% of consumers worldwide wrote about brands online and 52% said they did so to criticize a brand.

Still companies lag behind when it comes to track what customers are saying in social media about their brands and following up on that feedback.

In January 2012, a survey made from customer experience management software company Satmetrix where they survey over 1,000 B2B found out that only 27% of B2B companies that both tracked mentions and followed up on them. Compared to B2C companies (53%) both tracked mentions and followed up on them.

Companies should track what are being said and following up on comments when it is appropriate.

Satmetrix found that the most popular process companies used was having a dedicated team that monitored and responded to customer feedback.

Tracking social media mentions is easy and there are a lot of free and paid tools to do so.

• Google Reader
• Tweetdeck
• Google Alerts
• Socialmenation
• Seesmic
• HootSuite
• Facebook Page Insights

Infographic: Brand Story Telling

First you should register with more than one tool. Configure the tool with the necessary keywords, means your brand name, your and the names of your staff, product and services names, your competitor brands, names, products and so on.

As the second step you should take care of not oversee to the messages and alerts which come in. Monitor those alerts and take action if appropriate.

Time after time you will discover which of those tools you are using are the most useful for you and you will focus on them and leave the others behind you.

An increasing number of people who like a brand page are looking for valuable and helpful content.

COLLOQUY find out that promotions in the long run do not have an impact to customer experience!

Customer loyalty can be won and kept by encouraging them to spread the word about the brand they are satisfied with and help those customers to become brand advocates.

The today customer depends on his friends, family and social network when he is researching for new products and services on the web. Furthermore the today customer wants to be entertained and informed from brands and not overwhelmed with sales pitches.

Customers want brands to listen and to respond to their needs, wishes and complaint because this is what makes them feel understand.

The top five most popular things customers expects from a brand are:

1. Providing a great 24/7 customer service

2. Rewarding them for purchases, their feedback and referrals they bring in

3. Sending them exclusive and relevant offers and specials

4. Provide them with personalized products and services

5. To know them when they visit or call a brand

How can you utilize those above information to set your business apart from your competition and to fulfill your customer’s needs?

Ask yourself, what will future customers find about me when they research for products and services on the web which I have to offer also?

When the above described customers ask friends and family for recommendations on products and services, will they recommend you or your competition?

As people go online to research, and customers want to be informed and entertained, what do you do to inform and/ or to entertain your existing and future customers.

In simple words, how do you separate your brand from the competition?

To separate your brand from your competition you need to understand that those above stated five points are your business advantage when used wisely. When you are able to improve these points than you will be always several steps ahead of your competition, but only as long as you do not stop improving what you do!

Inbound marketing offers you a strategic and smart approach to be and to stay several steps ahead of your competition.

Inbound marketing is the marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers when they research online for products and services your business also has to offer.

With inbound marketing businesses “earn” their way to the customer and his loyalty, by publishing helpful information on a blog, in social media and forums.

Inbound marketing includes: Content creation like blogging, video, photo, whitepapers, eBooks, podcasts, press releases, comments in social media and other blogs and forums, Social media two way communication, lead generation, lead conversion, lead nurturing and closed-loop analysis.

Infographic: Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing can help you to:

• A. Save up to 62% of your marketing budget in the long term
• B. Make you stand out of your competition
• C. Generate a massive amount of qualified and hot business leads
• D. Improve your lead conversion rate by up to 55%
• E. Increase your loyal customers and sales

What do you think are you willing to take the effort by doing the above?

Ok, rumors are one thing and facts are another!

Marin Software, an advertising management company, proved that Facebook ads work, especially Facebook’s new ad units, Sponsored Stories which work in a social context are doing very well for social media marketing.

The simple reason why firms are not successful with their Facebook marketing is they do not understand that people go online to research and not to buy thing. In the case of Facebook marketing the people go to Facebook to connect, exchange ideas and to communicate. They go to Facebook to discover new things (research).

Companies which do Facebook marketing do some major mistakes when performing paid campaigns.

One major mistake is they attract the Facebook user to click on their Facebook ad and lead him or her away from Facebook. This is a bad idea as the people on Facebook want to communicate and learn about new things on Facebook and they do not want to be led away.

To avoid this mistake companies which perform Facebook paid ad campaigns should be creative and lead these ad attracted visitors to their Facebook page, for example with an exclusive offer. This would for sure improve the marketing results.

Another major mistake when businesses do Facebook social media marketing is, they do not take the opportunity to communicate with those ads attracted new visitors of their Facebook pages. Social media is about communication and connection with people. It’s not about selling and sales pitches.

Businesses should take the time to communicate with their network and carefully listen to them. This can result in a massive revenue growth when done right.

Also a major mistake is to think, to be on Facebook as a brand is enough and the audience will follow. Why should they follow your business page on Facebook? Do you have something remarkable, valuable and interesting to share with your audience? Did you take this chance to build trust and position you as a professional resource there?

A great way how you can position your business and your brand in social media sites like Facebook is to publish and share remarkable, valuable and interesting content!

You can expand your brand reach very easy and quick by expanding the reach of your content through “Facebook Sponsored Stories”. So your content reaches wide more people and the best thing is it reaches the right people. The way of social targeting helps to reach the right persons and attract those future customers to a business page.

This way you build trust and brand awareness the smart way.

The success of “Sponsored Stories” is huge. An increasing number of advertisers are using this smart marketing way to expand the reach of their custom created content.

Infographic: A Brief Insight Into Facebook Marketing

Here are five ways how you can make Facebook Sponsored Stories work for you:

1. Start a corporate blog and create and share content in social media like Facebook in which your audience is interested in

2. Create eBooks, whitepapers, how-to’s, etc. and offer a free download in exchange of the visitors contact information on a landing page. This way you generate targeted leads

3. Set this landing pages under Facebook apps, so the user never need to leave Facebook

4. Start “Facebook Sponsored Stories” and direct the ad link to one of your Facebook landing pages

5. Encourage your audience to give you feedback regarding your content. This way you start the conversation

How about you, did you use “Sponsored Stories” yet and how is your opinion?

Those users expect companies to response quickly, in less than a day, to their requests. The quick response and serious reaction to requests or events which happen is an essential part to profit from the communication which breaks out. To wait hours to give comments or answers could cost the essential market and marketing advantage.

But customers do not only contact brands for support requests they also often reach out to them to learn more about new products and services. If a brand is able to publish important product and services related news exclusively to their network first this would help to improve loyalty with their network. This can also result in an improvement of revenue in the long term.

About one third of surveyed customers expect to reach a customer service representative or product expert when they reach out to a brand.

The possible benefits for companies who stick to serious social media communication can be huge. They can build a solid base to build brand advocates who spread the word on their behalf.

One of the most successful ways to start the conversation is to publish interesting content on a blog and spread it to social networks where the target audience is around. Content marketing is the name of this strategy.

Companies which publish remarkable and buyer persona oriented content, means you should talk about topics your customer is interested in rather than abut topics you are interested in, show their expertise and build trust with their audience.

4 Reasons why companies should leverage social media:

• Increase brand awareness
• Humanize B2B companies
• Establish as thought leader
• Connecting with customers and prospects

Social Media has proven to be a great source of targeted high quality leads for B2C and B2B. An increasing number of marketers see lead generation as their greatest online marketing challenge.

Infographic: Social Customer Service

7 Steps how you can you profit from social media?

• Start a social media presence. Complete your profile there
• Research for industry related groups and people. Become a member and invite those people to your network
• Listen to their discussions. If you have something valuable to contribute than do it, otherwise go on listening
• Start a corporate blog. Write about topics your audience is interested in. Share your blog articles in social media and ask for feedback for your publication
• Build landing pages and offer exclusive and valuable content for download. So you generate laser target high quality industry related leads
• Measure your activities
• Improve your activities and repeat

Social customer support is your great chance to showcase the quality and dedication of your company. Use every request as an opportunity to make a WOW feeling with the person who reaches out to your company.