Five Inbound Marketing Resources Every Marketer Should Know

5 SMART Goal Example For Business Development

February 14, 2025/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

A SMART goal is basically what the acronyms from the name suggest. It is specific, measurable, attainable, and relevant and time bound. The Smart Goal process provides a frame where you can create a long term goal. It also provides a time limit for you to work on the same goal. By doing this business’ are 70% more successful in achieving their goals thanks to regular check-ins, updates and group accountability. Below are a few smart goals examples for business development that will help you understand the system better and enhance your business.

Smart Goal Examples for Business

“I Want To Increase My Profits”
“I Want To Improve My Response Time to Customer Complaints”
“I Want To Improve My Employee Retention”
“I Want To Be More Efficient In My Business Operations”
“I Want To Grow My Business Operation”

“I Want To Increase My Profits”

Specific: I will increase revenue while cutting down on expenditure. Moving to a more affordable premise that will cut my rent by 7% will reduce the operational costs.

Measurable: I will increase sales over the next 3 months by signing in 5 more potential clients.

Attainable: I will improve my current customer relationships and promote the business through referrals, networking and through social networks. This will help me find more leads and therefore see to an increase in revenue for the business.

Relevant: moving to a cheaper establishment will reduce the operational cost of my business and therefore give room to the growth of profits.

Time-bound: I will have increased my profit by the end of the coming three months.

Also Read: Maximizing Profitability: How to Calculate and Improve Customer Lifetime Value

“I Want To Improve My Response Time to Customer Complaints”

Specific: I will improve the response time to customer complaints by increasing my customer service staff from 3 to 8 in the next one year.

Measurable: the increase in customer service staff is scheduled to take place within one year. It should bring the number to a total of 8.

Attainable: as I plan on moving to a new establishment I will ensure the place has enough room to accommodate the additional staff members I intend to have in the next one year.

Relevant: I will find ways to manage the complaints meanwhile in order to maintain the customer base I have and strive to grow the client base even further to match the additional customer service staff.

Time-bound: I will have hired the customer service staff by the end of one year.

Learn More about: Creating Measurable Social Media Goals

“I Want To Improve My Employee Retention”

Specific: I will improve the employee turnover by 15% in 90 days by putting up training for the new employees to let them know what is expected of them and have a program for them to get used to the operation systems. I will also have one-on-one meetings with employees so that I get to know what challenges they could be facing.

Measurable: the improvement in employee turnover is scheduled to be by about 15% and should take place within 90 days.

Attainable: trainings and one-on-one meetings will ensure the employees are prepared for what is expected of them when they get into production. It also give me a hint of what’s on their mind concerning general operations of the business.

Relevant: outstanding employees will be put up for a reward system. For the ones that might be having a difficult time, there will be motivation trainings for encouragement.

Time-bound: employee turnover will have improved within 90 days

“I Want To Be More Efficient In My Business Operations”

Specific: I will improve my efficiency in business operations by challenging my sales department to increase their closing ratio from its current 45% to at least 60%. They could also work on improving the delivery time from 72hours to at least 12hours maximum.

Measurable: the sales people are supposed to increase their closing ratio from 45% to 60% and the delivery time improved to 12 hours from the initial 72hours

Attainable: I will conduct a survey to find out what both the clients and the sales team think about the idea. I will implement it as soon as the idea passes as valid.

Relevant: increasing the number of motorbikes and pickups that will do courier services for us will help make the plan a success

Time-bound: this should happen in one year.

“I Want To Grow My Business Operation”

Specific: open three more branches countrywide within five years

Measurable: the objective is to increase operations and revenue for the business. This will, in turn, facilitate the growth to three more branches.

Attainable: increasing my current selling space by 25% will mean more production. This can help me save for the planned growth to 4 branches countrywide.

Relevant: increasing production, operations and revenue will mean a larger client base thus the need for more branches will not be a wasteful idea after all.

Time-bound: establishing the branches should be within the next five years.

Learn More About: How Smart Goals Should Align With Your Business Goals

As much as an organization will work to ensure that its business goals are smart, they will never be flawless. It is, however, essential to ensure they give their teams tasks within their capability and make decisions using accurate data from their past operations while setting new smart business goals. The rest will work out just fine.

SMART Goal Examples That Will Make You a Better Marketer

January 21, 2025/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

When creating your inbound marketing strategy, it’s important that you set smart goals for marketing as part of your planning process. Without smart goals, you won’t be able to judge the performance of your inbound marketing tactics. This means you’ll have no idea whether your money is being put to good use. When you have goals in place, you can make adjustments to underperforming tactics. However, one of the mistakes many brands make is to set goals that are vague or too broad, such as “increasing brand awareness” or “building brand authority.” This article will talk about good smart and examples that are helpful in marketing.

What Are Smart Goals?

SMART goals are goals that are (S)pecific, (M)easureable, (A)ttainable, (R)elevant, and (T)ime-bound. They are clearly defined goals that are realistic, quantifiable, and focused. By implementing these goals, you’ll know exactly what kind of results you’re aiming for and how to accomplish them. The following is a more detailed breakdown of SMART goals:

Specific goals – Specific goals are metrics that you want to improve, such as leads or visitors.
Measurable goals – To track the progress you’re making, you need to quantify your goals. For example, a type of event increased the number of visitors to your site by 20 percent.
Attainable goals – It’s important that your goal is something that’s actually possible. For example, doubling the number of visitors to your site in one month is probably unrealistic. Increasing your visitors by 10 percent may not be, especially if you managed to increase your visitors by 5 percent the previous month.
Relevant goals – Make sure that reaching the goals you’ve set will actually have an impact. For example, hitting your goal to increase your website traffic by 10 percent may not mean much if you have a high bounce rate or if none of these visitors are converting.
Time-bound goals – Set a deadline to meet your goals so that there’s some pressure to actually accomplish them.

Examples Of How Smart Goals Should Align With Your Business Goals

SMART Goal Examples

The following are a few SMART goal examples for marketing to give you an idea of how you can implement SMART goals in your marketing strategy:

Bring in more web traffic – Increasing web traffic is a very general goal. The SMART goal version of this might be to increase web traffic by 10 percent within one month. This includes the use of SEO, social engagement and content marketing to increase lead generation.
Increase email subscribers – Email marketing is an excellent way to nurture leads. A SMART goal version could be to increase your email subscribers by 20 percent within one month using your Facebook ad budget on blog posts that have previously captured the most email subscribers.
Gather a webinar audience – If you are planning a webinar, then you can use a SMART goal to help measure its success. Let’s say you’ve already collected 100 signups within two weeks. The seminar is scheduled in one month. Your SMART goal might be to double your signups for your webinar by the webinar date through social, email, and blog promotion in order to close more sales.

These are a few SMART goal examples in marketing. These SMART goal examples take some very basic marketing goals and make them more actionable and measurable. The use of SMART goals in marketing can really help you get the most out of your marketing dollars. This is because you can use the results (whether you end up meeting your goals or not) to set future goals that may be more realistic and impactful.

The Importance of Earning High Quality Backlinks

January 14, 2025/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Search & Social, SEO /by Nicole Wagner

One of the major goals of an inbound marketing campaign is to be found online. There are many tactics that you can implement in order to achieve this. One such tactic is through link building, especially high-quality backlinks. Link building refers to getting other websites to link to your content.

Why Are Backlinks Important?

The more high quality backlinks that you earn to your website, the more traffic you’ll receive. Because of the nature of high-quality backlinks, there’s a good chance that this traffic will consist of high-quality leads. Because of this, you should try to earn as many high-quality backlinks as possible.

High-Quality Backlinks Benefits

There are two major benefits of high-quality backlinks. The first is that a website that links to your content is doing so to provide its audience with a quality source that they think will benefit them. This means that your content will be exposed to an audience that is likely going to be relevant to your brand. Backlinks from websites with particularly big audiences are going to result in a lot of web traffic to your site as well, which can result in more potential leads.

The second benefit of earning high-quality backlinks is that they indicate to Google that your content is of high quality. After all, a reputable website wouldn’t send its audience to your page if the content wasn’t helpful or relevant. As such, Google factors the number of high-quality backlinks that your content earns into its page rankings. This means that the more high-quality backlinks you earn, the higher your page is probably going to appear on their SERP. As a result, you’ll gain more exposure and more organic web traffic.

Also Read: Content Marketing Misconceptions

How to Earn High-Quality Backlinks

Earning high-quality backlinks might seem like a matter of luck. After all, you have no control over whether another website decides to link to your content. However, this isn’t necessarily true. There are several ways that you can increase the chances of being linked to. The following are a few tips on how you can earn more high-quality backlinks:

Create high-quality content – The first thing that’s required to earn backlinks is to have content worth linking to. This means that you should focus on creating high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience and that is helpful or informative in some way. Be sure to get your content out there too by promoting it. For example, link your content to your social channels and add social share buttons so your readers can help expose it to more people. The more exposure the content is, the more likely it is that another website will stumble onto it and link to it.
Optimize your content for SEO – The higher your content ranks on Google’s SERP, the more likely it is that another website will find your content when doing research for their own blog content. If they end up referencing your content, they will link back to it.
Build your brand authority – The more brand authority you have, the more you’ll be trusted as an expert in your field. As a result, websites will be more willing to link to your content as a valid source that they can use to strengthen whatever argument they’re making or information they’re providing in their own content.
Build relationships with influencers – Find the influencers within your industry on social media and begin building relationships with them. Once they know you exist, they may link to your content. Not only can you earn backlinks this way, but the additional exposure can result in more backlinks in the near future.

Also Read: The Power of an Influencer Marketing Strategy: How and Why It Works

Write guest blog posts – When you write a guest blog post on another website, that website will link your guest post back to your own blog. This means that you’re automatically earning backlinks for every guest post your write.

Also read: Blog Vs. Vlog: Why Your Business Should Begin Vlogging

Link to other websites – Link your content to other high-quality websites. Doing this can result in them returning the favor.

How Businesses Can Use a Blog To Strengthen Their Online Marketing Efforts

Avoiding Low-Quality Backlinks

The thing about backlinks is that they only help in SEO if they come from a reputable website. A low-quality website isn’t going to send you a whole lot of traffic, after all. Additionally, Google will evaluate where your backlinks are coming from to ensure that they are from a reputable source. The reason they do this is because websites would try to trick Google into providing high page rankings. They did this by buying backlinks from websites that sold them, known as link farms. This was a common blackhat tactic that is now very difficult to get away with. If you buy backlinks, Google will penalize you by either lowering your page ranking. Or they’ll kick your page off of their SERP.

Understanding why backlinks are important, the importance of earning them should be a key tactic in SEO that everyone invests in. Doing so can help to increase the exposure of your brand and your content. Help bring in traffic from other websites, and help boost your SEO rankings, thereby attracting more organic traffic from Google.

The Use of Inbound Marketing in the Manufacturing Industry

December 19, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

When it comes to B2C marketing, inbound marketing has long surpassed traditional marketing as the most popular way to advertise a business. However, many businesses, especially manufacturers, still assume that traditional marketing is the best way to go when it comes to B2B. This is no longer true. In fact, there are some real benefits when it comes to inbound marketing for manufacturers that you will want to take advantage of.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The big difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing (which would include TV commercials, print ads, direct mail, etc.), is that inbound marketing is essentially done online and focuses on positioning your company to be found by other businesses. For example, instead of sending out a pamphlet highlighting your manufacturing capabilities, you would publish content relevant to the manufacturing industry (and whatever niche within that industry you occupy) online. This content lives online from that moment on, giving visitors the chance to find it at any point.

Inbound marketing involves using a variety of strategies (such as creating a user-friendly website, producing high-quality content, using SEO, engaging on social media) that makes it easy for your target audience to find you online and to do a majority of the research about your company and services on their own. This is different than traditional marketing, which involves finding your audience and directly advertising to them.

How Can You Keep Up With the Future of Inbound Marketing?

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing for Manufacturers

The following are four reasons why you should strongly consider implementing an inbound marketing strategy for your manufacturing business:

1) Businesses are doing research online first

Around 70 percent of buyers will do research about manufacturers online before they make the decision to reach out to a potential partner. For example, maybe a buyer is looking for a PCB (printed circuit board) assembly manufacturer for their electronic products. They will probably begin researching PCB assemblies by looking for general information online. This will lead to them to a variety of blogs with informative content that they can read at their own time. Content that strikes them as particularly helpful will stand out, and they will do more research into the manufacturer that published that content. If you do not have an online presence, then you’re missing out on buyers like these. A good inbound marketing strategy will help position yourself online to be found by buyers who are doing research.

Also Read: Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

2) Inbound marketing provides long-term results

As you build your online presence through inbound marketing techniques, you’ll have the opportunity to nurture many potential leads over the long term. For example, let’s say you’re a PCB manufacturer. You have a blog on which you regularly produce PCB-related content (such as, for instance, the benefits of flexible circuits). There may be leads out there who read your content regularly and have done so for years. They may build their own PCBs in-house and a change in strategy has resulted in them deciding to outsource its build. At that point, they’ll be familiar with your site and will be more likely to reach out to you. Traditional advertising doesn’t have such a long-term impact.

3) What worked once won’t always work

You may have had a lot of success with traditional marketing methods–and you may continue having success with those efforts. However, if you expect to grow your business, then you’ll want to expand your customer base, which means that you shouldn’t limit your advertising efforts. Otherwise, the day might come where your traditional marketing efforts aren’t as effective as they once were, and you’ll be left scrambling to implement an inbound strategy.

Also Read: Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

4) Find out what your audience needs

Unlike traditional advertising, inbound marketing allows you to engage directly with your target audience, making it easier to develop relationships, receive feedback, and discover the needs of your leads.

As you can see, there are many benefits to inbound marketing for manufacturers. By implementing an inbound marketing strategy in your advertising efforts, you can position your company for marketing success well into the future.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

The Importance of Hiring an Integrated Marketing Agency

December 5, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

There are hundreds of tactics you can use to advertise your business, whether you’re using inbound or outbound marketing. As a result, it can take a long time and a lot of effort to create and execute a successful marketing strategy — especially if you want long-term results. It’s why many companies will work with a marketing agency instead of trying to do it themselves.

However, you’ll find that most marketing agencies focus on specific types of advertising. For example, some agencies focus on direct marketing, while others focus on building websites. If you want to work with a single agency that can handle all of your marketing needs, then you should consider working with an integrated marketing agency.

What is Integrated Marketing?

Integrated marketing is the practice of making sure all of your marketing efforts are aligned to deliver the same core message. It’s an overarching strategy that uses various channels to reach people at every stage of the buyer’s journey. Integrated marketing allows businesses to deliver a consistent message across different mediums, including print and digital media.

For example, a company might use a TV commercial to draw attention to its new website. For this to work, the message conveyed on the TV ad must be consistent with the messaging on the website. If the tagline or logo on the commercial is even slightly different than what’s on your website, it will confuse people.

What is an Integrated Marketing Agency?

Integrated marketing agencies use a holistic approach to marketing. They can address all the advertising needs that a company might have. Basically, it means that they can do everything you need as far as marketing goes so that you don’t have to hire multiple agencies. For example, they can help:

Build your brand and design branding elements.
Develop a traditional outbound marketing strategy.
Develop an inbound marketing strategy.
Create your inbound and outbound marketing materials (from print ads to your website)
Develop a public relations (PR) strategy to engage with your target audience across many channels.

What are the Benefits of an Integrated Marketing Agency?

There are many benefits to working with an integrated marketing agency instead of an agency that has more specific focuses (such as an agency that only produces commercial videos). The following are a few of the primary benefits of using an integrated marketing agency:

1. A more cost-effective marketing solution

Hiring multiple agencies to address different parts of your marketing strategy can be expensive. An integrated marketing agency can take care of all your marketing needs, making it a more cost-effective option.

2. A more cohesive long-term marketing plan

Because an integrated marketing agency is experienced in every facet of marketing, they can audit your existing strategy. Additionally, they will consider your company’s needs and audience to develop a more unified long-term marketing strategy.

3. More personalized services

Most agencies use a general blueprint to implement their solutions. As such, their marketing efforts follow a guideline or template for every one of their clients. Integrated marketing agencies customize their marketing solutions to the specific needs of the clients they’re working with. Futhermore they will take a unified approach that will result in a comprehensive and unique marketing strategy.

4. Branding consistency across all channels

If you lack branding consistency (for example, if your messaging and tone is different from one channel to the next), it will hurt your brand identity. Consequently, people will get confused about who you are and what you offer.

An integrated marketing agency can help develop a unique branding strategy so that your business will have a consistent message across all channels. By using integrated marketing, you’ll ensure that your brand identity remains consistent.

5. A better understanding of the buyer’s journey

Integrated marketing agencies are experienced with both traditional and digital marketing. As a result, they have a greater understanding of the buyer’s journey and how to reach customers at every stage of their journey.

6. More effective cross-channel marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns that function separately won’t be nearly as effective as if they were designed to work together. Integrated marketing agencies are more capable of creating cross-channel marketing campaigns designed to achieve a shared goal.

Our Integrated Marketing Solutions

Here at Stevens & Tate, we offer integrated marketing solutions tailor-made to your company’s needs. Not only do we take into account your business and your customers, but we also take into account your budget. With that in mind, the following are some of the integrated marketing solutions that we offer:

Storybranding:

We can help develop your brand and brand story by identifying competitive advantages and mission statement. We can also create a slogan and tagline, identify your value propositions, and develop your message and story.

Marketing strategy:

We develop a comprehensive marketing strategy by implementing a meticulous process. This process includes a thorough consultation, SWOT analysis, budget evaluation, marketing plan development and execution, communications strategy, and messaging approach.

Research:

We perform thorough market research to help build your marketing strategy. This research includes competitive market analysis, brand audits, target audience segmentation, website analytics, customer experience research, and more.

SEO and social:

We can develop comprehensive social media and SEO strategies to increase brand awareness and authority. We use various tactics, including blogging, content creation, social media campaigns, PPC ads, engagement strategies, and organic search marketing.

Public relations:

We offer a wide variety of reputation management services integrated with your overall marketing strategy. These services include press release writing, product launch advertising, online syndication, and marketing promotions. We can also improve your reputation via thought leadership, content marketing, media relations, and more.

Customer experience:

We develop various strategies to help improve your customer experience. We can help with package design, brand development, contests, promotions, pricing structures, and more.

Digital marketing tactics:

We can plan and execute digital marketing efforts as part of your ongoing marketing strategy. These efforts may include SEO, video production, PPC advertising, social media advertising, mobile and web app implementation, content creation, and more.

Traditional Advertising:

In addition to digital marketing, we can also help develop a traditional advertising campaign integrated with the rest of your marketing efforts. Some of the traditional advertising services we offer include print ad design, radio scripts and audio production, photography, logo development, video production, sales brochures, and more.

Improve Your Long-Term Marketing Using Integrated Marketing Solutions

To create an effective cross-channel marketing campaign, you need integrated marketing solutions. Moreover, integrated marketing is the best way to strengthen your brand, grow your business, and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry over the long term.

Find out more about the integrated marketing solutions we offer by contacting us to request a free marketing consultation at Stevens & Tate today.

8 Important Questions To Ask When Hiring Inbound Marketing Agencies

November 13, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Inbound marketing is a force to be reckoned with. For businesses, that lack the time or adequate resources to take care of their own inbound marketing, these agencies offer a solution. Inbound marketing agencies work on search engine optimization, social media campaigns, and all-around content marketing. They do all the heavy lifting so that your business can focus on important details.

There are many agencies on the market that can offer you with professional inbound marketing solutions. Selecting the best agency to provide these services can be quite confusing. Below are some of the questions you can use. These questions can help you identify if an inbound agency is right for your business. You can use these questions to determine if an inbound agency aligns with your business direction.

Questions To Ask When Hiring Inbound Marketing Agency

1. Areas of expertise and experience?

Your prospective inbound marketing agency should be able to work with different types of businesses. Take time to understand the scope of their services. Most agencies should be able to handle B2B or B2C solutions with ease.

2. What service packages are available?

When looking for an agency to fill your marketing solution shoes, you need to take wholesome packages into account. These packages usually cover the basics. If you want more specialized solutions, you need to be sure the agency can satisfy your order. The prospective inbound marketing agency should take care of lead generation systems and SEO optimization among other things in the package.

Read More – Benefits of Inbound Marketing

3. What are your performance benchmarks?

For you to understand and analyze the process that the agency will take, you have to understand how their scoring system works. How do they actually measure the performance of their marketing strategies? What scale do they use? Feel free to ask more case study questions or make recommendations so the agency can provide tailor-made solutions.

4. What strategies seem fit for my business and do you have the required resources?

An agency’s influence is tied to its power in resources. Your inbound marketing agency must have the ability to come up with marketing strategies and follow through with them. It is retardant to deal with an agency that always needs your financial backing. Cost should be mentioned upfront.

Read Read: Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

5. How much time will it take?

Depending on the agency you want to work with, the completion time for projects will vary. Look for those who will work within the time frame you have provided.

6. What is your client retention status?

You can tell a lot from a business and the amount of clients they retain. High retention rates indicate high turnover. You want to work with a business that is trusted and supported with a number of people.

7. How do you integrate your team?

As a business looking for a marketing agency, you want to be sure that everyone involved understands your goal. Work with agencies that are open to taking direction and involving you in major/minor decisions.

8. How is ROI measured?

There are agencies that do not provide these services or only provide these services in limited function. It is better to work with agencies that do detailed ROI measurements. This way you can easily track how your investment is progressing.

With these questions, we are confident you will be able to select the right agency for your company. Look for an agency that gives you a creative edge and allows you to focus on your sales. We wish you all the best!

Five Inbound Marketing Resources Every Marketer Should Know About

November 7, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

If you’re tuned in to inbound, you’ve surely found some valuable resources on the internet. There are some failsafe, go-to websites out there that can help you hone your marketing skills. They can also help you develop better content, and drive traffic more effectively. Here are some of our favorite top 5 inbound marketing resources:

5 Inbound Marketing Resources

1. HubSpot

Arguably the world’s leader in inbound marketing software, HubSpot has more than changed the game of online marketing. As a matter of fact, they practically wrote, broke, and authored the rules of inbound as we know it.

From HubSpot’s comprehensive blog covering everything from marketing to sales and everything in between to the highly lauded HubSpot Academy, there’s something for every marketer. For instance, HubSpot has an interactive course dedicated to content marketing that can provide you with a big picture view of everything you need for a successful content marketing strategy. Subscribe to their updates, and you’ll have access to free webinars, marketing kits, and endless tools as they evolve.

One of HubSpot’s most valuable tools is it’s Website Grader. Enter your website and email, and the Grader will score your website in four categories: performance, mobile, SEO, and security. Use this as a starting point to improve your site’s visitor experience.

Also Read: Hubspot vs Mailchimp Differences

2. Content Marketing Institute

Great content is the cornerstone to any inbound marketing strategy, and the Content Marketing Institute is a must-visit for any inbound marketer looking to pump out quality work. The CMI has pooled together many industry experts to create a comprehensive white paper and ebook library. These are full of techniques for how to engage readers, keep them connected, and tell better stories.

Read More: 8 Important Questions To Ask When Hiring Inbound Marketing Agencies

3. Moz

Creating excellent content is a great start to establishing expertise in your field and against your competition; however, attracting folks to your page is a whole different idea all together. Moz is the go-to expert for all things SEO. Their endless SEO learning library offers invaluable insights and data. Elevate your SEO game with Moz’s comprehensive resources.

Also Read: The Secret to SEO and 5 Tips on Optimizing Your Results

4. Canva

Canva is a free website which allows you to design visually appealing cover photos, social media posts, and presentations. It is used throughout the industry by some of the biggest names in inbound. Canvas also holds a complete library of how-to’s for all things Canva and design related.

The resources available through Canva can help you generate infographics, Facebook cover photos, posters, and more without guessing what dimensions you should work with. Canva’s pre-sized canvases optimize your content for the end digital user without skewing graphics or pixelating fonts.

Once you’ve published your content, created some stylish Canva graphics, and SEO’d your blog posts, turn to Social Media Examiner for helpful tips on how to get your content in front of your social media followers.

As SEO trends and Google’s algorithms constantly change, social media has updated its algorithms. If you’re doing it alone, you’re taking shots in the dark, but thanks to Social Media Examiner, you can stay ahead of the constantly changing world of social media.

A marketer's guide to advanced automation

5 Benefits Of Marketing Automation

October 29, 2024/in Content Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

When researching purchases online, customers expect timely responses to their questions. Organizations that are able to respond quickly and provide content that addresses that customer’s specific needs are more successful. A Harvard Business Review study found that companies are 60 times more likely to qualify a lead, if they follow up within one hour.

Marketing automation helps enable organizations to respond to those requests quickly, engage leads with relevant content, track and score each lead’s behavior, and deliver better quality leads. Read more

Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

October 22, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

Inbound marketing is a strategy that focuses on attracting customers using valuable content instead of traditional advertising methods (such as cold calling). Successful inbound marketing solutions help make your company easier to find online and nurture potential leads through the buyer’s journey. Inbound marketing is incredibly effective because it’s a long-term strategy that allows leads to be nurtured at their own pace.

The Difference Between Inbound Marketing And Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing is a strategy that relies on interrupting potential customers with advertising messages. Outbound methods include cold calling, TV commercials, and direct mail. These tactics are often intrusive and can be easily ignored or blocked by consumers.

Inbound marketing is the exact opposite of outbound marketing. Rather than bombarding potential customers with ads, inbound marketing relies on providing valuable content that draws customers in. Inbound methods include creating blog posts, articles, ebooks, white papers, social media posts, and podcasts. These tactics are designed to help potential customers learn about your company and the solutions you provide.

When it comes down to it, outbound marketing casts a wide net, forcing your message on a large audience in the hopes of reaching potential leads. It’s a strategy that’s short-term in nature. Inbound marketing solutions focus on positioning your business to be found by your target audience on their time. Whereas outbound is considered an “interruption” strategy, inbound is a “permission” strategy that’s more long-term in nature.

The Four Stages of Inbound Marketing

A successful inbound marketing strategy should engage potential leads at every stage of the buyer’s journey. As such, you can separate inbound marketing into four distinct stages:

Stage One: Attract

The first stage is all about attracting potential leads to your brand. This stage requires various tactics to generate brand awareness and make it easy for potential leads to find your website. For this stage to be successful, you need to understand who your target audience is. It’s why many businesses will start by developing their buyer personas first.

Stage Two: Convert

Converting visitors to leads is the next step once you’ve attracted them. The idea behind this stage is to educate visitors and earn their trust using high-quality content. They will then be more willing to sign up to an email list via lead capture forms on your website or blog. Many businesses will use gated content, such as downloadable eBooks or free trials, as incentives for leads to provide their contact information.

Stage Three: Close

Once you capture your leads, you’ll need to nurture them through the sales funnel using personalized content. You can do this by sending them offers and nurturing them via an email marketing campaign.

Stage Four: Delight

The last stage focuses on delighting customers with exceptional customer service. You can do so by using follow-up emails, social media interactions, cross-selling opportunities, and more.

Also Read: What Are Marketing Qualified Leads And Why Do They Matter?

The Essential Inbound Marketing Strategies

There are a few primary inbound marketing solutions that every business should implement. However, it’s essential to understand that these strategies function best if you plan and execute them in conjunction with one another. Your best chance of success is when the following inbound marketing strategies work together.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is crucial to inbound marketing. Without content, you’ll have no way to attract potential leads or nurture them. You’ll want to create content that addresses every stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to advocacy.

High-quality content that addresses the needs of your target audience is likely to be shared more and to rank higher on Google’s search engine. As a result, it will make it easier to be found by prospects in the awareness stage. Additionally, by creating informative and educational content, you’ll engage your leads and build trust, which will make it easier to convert them.

You can implement many inbound marketing solutions in your content marketing strategy. For example, you can blog and create downloadable content offers to encourage email sign-ups and email marketing.

There are 4.62 billion people using social media as of this year. As such, social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience and engage with your leads. By creating pages on the social channels (such as Facebook or Twitter) your audience uses, you set up another platform to help spread awareness of your brand. After all, you can post content that can be shared and drive users back to your website.

The ability to engage directly with prospects also functions as a PR strategy. As such, your social media presence can help increase your brand reputation, building trust with your audience as a result. The following are a few examples of social media inbound marketing solutions you can use:

Addressing negative comments: If a prospect has a negative experience with your product or service, addressing them on social media can help resolve the situation and improve customer loyalty.
Keeping followers engaged: Asking questions, providing valuable content, and running contests and giveaways are all great ways to keep followers engaged.
Posting website content: Simply posting new content published on your blog can help drive traffic from your social media pages to your website.
Building relationships with influencers: Social media influencers have huge followings on social media. By identifying influencers in your industry and building relationships with them, you could boost awareness of your brand (especially if they share your content with their audiences).
Live streaming: Many social channels allow live streaming, which can be a great way to connect with your audience in real-time. You can live stream all types of video content, including product launches, interviews with team members, and behind-the-scenes footage.

Also Read: The Top 10 Strategies for Mastering Inbound Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content so that it appears as the top result for relevant keywords in search engines. When people use Google, Bing, or other search engines to find information, products, or services, you want your website to be one of the first results they see.

SEO is an ongoing process that requires continual effort. You’ll need to research the right keywords, optimize your website using those keywords, and track your results. However, keyword usage isn’t the only SEO tactic in the book. Google takes great care to rank pages based on the quality of the content, which means that your content has to provide value.

Secondly, Google determines content quality using engagement metrics, which includes:

External backlinks you’ve earned from high-quality websites
Social engagement, such as shares and likes
Number of visits
Page load speeds
Mobile-friendliness

As such, ranking well on search engine results pages (SERP) requires a comprehensive and robust SEO strategy.

Also Read: The Importance of Earning High Quality Backlinks

Inbound Marketing is Critical to Your Success

Inbound marketing combines all the tactics previously discussed: SEO, social media marketing, and content marketing. It’s the process of attracting leads to your website through the use of relevant and helpful content. When properly implemented, inbound marketing solutions can be extremely effective in generating leads and converting customers over the long term.

How a Strong Public Relations (PR) Strategy Can Benefit Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

October 16, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Public Relations /by Dan Gartlan

Inbound marketing focuses heavily on increasing brand awareness and building brand trust. As such, people sometimes confuse inbound marketing strategies with public relations (PR) strategies. After all, public relations is about maintaining the integrity of your brand. However, they are actually different from one another — although they do depend heavily on each other for success. The following is a breakdown of the differences between inbound marketing and PR and how they can work together.

The Difference Between Inbound Marketing And Public Relations

Inbound marketing is a multi-faceted strategy that consists of a range of tactics for promoting products and services as well as for educating consumers. The ultimate goal of inbound marketing is to attract and convert more leads in order to generate more customers. The goal of PR isn’t to generate and convert leads and customers. The goal of PR is to maintain and improve the public perception of your brand. Basically, a good PR strategy will help you build a favorable reputation. Unlike inbound, PR focuses as much on targeting shareholders and employees as it does on potential and existing consumers or clients.

Also Read: Your Brand Reputation and Public Relations

How Good PR Can Benefit Your Inbound Marketing Campaign

Trust is vital to your ability to convert new leads. The more brand trust you generate, the easier it becomes to close new sales. As such, a good PR strategy can supplement your inbound strategy. When it comes to PR, it’s not just about putting out good publicity and improving your brand reputation — it’s also about preventing a bad reputation.

PR requires that you get on top of situations that can damage your rep. For instance, if customers are leaving bad feedback on your social media pages, you can’t just ignore it or it will hurt your public perception. As part of a successful PR strategy, you would address poor feedback. Show that your brand cares about the experience of its customers. In fact, if you handle such feedback effectively, you could even turn it into a win that actually boosts your brand trust.

PR also includes publishing notices about new products and services, or about upcoming events. These announcements double as promotional content for your business. This can pique the interest of your target audience, thereby bolstering your inbound marketing capabilities.

Public Relations (PR) Strategies That Can Boost Your Inbound Marketing Success

The following are a few of the public relations (PR) strategies that can go a long way towards improving your inbound marketing efforts:

Publish high-quality content – PR is a form of content creation. As such, you’ll want to make sure that whenever you release a press release. Make sure it is well written, properly optimized, and targeting a specific audience. Your PR content can double as inbound content, after all.
Focus on executives – Putting a face on your brand can help improve brand trust. As such, use your executives for interviews and quotes when releasing new PR content. Doing so can also help establish the people behind your brand as thought leaders, thereby increasing brand authority.
Promote award wins – When your company or the people in your company win industry awards, be sure to announce those wins. Such content will showcase your company’s expertise, which will improve your reputation as well as your authority and trust.
Publish press releases – Your press releases can help drive new leads to your inbound marketing or sales assets (as long as those press releases are of high quality).

Implement A PR Strategy As A Part Of Your Inbound Marketing Efforts Today

A good PR strategy can help you control the public perception of your brand, thereby ensuring that you maintain a good reputation. Such a reputation is vital to building brand trust and, as such, can help to bolster your inbound marketing efforts.