Online marketers’ top priority at the top of their funnel is to increase reach. Increasing reach on the web has long meant increasing the size of a company’s email marketing database, and email is a hugely important tool for online marketers to help drive leads and sales.

Despite the power of email, it is quietly beginning to be replaced; however, it’s not being replaced by text messages as many marketers may think. Instead, the distant competitor picking up speed is the text message’s close relative: push notifications.

What is a Push Notification?

Do you have a smartphone? Increasingly more people are buying smartphones, and many of these devices allow push notifications. When a smartphone owner downloads an application, he or she has the ability to accept push notifications from the app. These notifications appear like text messages on the phone and alert the user to a change or action that has happened within the app. These alerts could be a message from another user, a breaking news story, a change in the weather, or a notification about the latest sale. Push notifications are a real-time interaction with users and provide a utility and experience that email can’t match.

Push Notifications Are The Content Marketing Of The Mobile Web

Text message marketing was made popular by now current President Barack Obama during the 2008 election campaign, and while more than half of American’s send text messages, text message marketing has yet to hit mainstream adoption. During this time, the popularity of mobile applications for smartphones has grown, and users now rely on these mobile applications for social networking, media consumption, and daily tasks (like checking the weather) while they are on the go. When an individual downloads a application, it is a better quality opt-in. People are protective of their cell phone numbers; they want privacy. However, the average smartphone user downloads nearly five mobile applications per month. They aren’t as worried with privacy, because the can simply delete the app if need be or turn off push notifications.

Additionally, users only download the app because it provides some use or utility to them. Push notifications are the content marketing of the mobile web; businesses have to build mobile applications that provide value and education in order to expand reach. For text message marketing, users can simply opt-in but quickly forget what they did and become confused with how to opt-out of future messages.

Reach is important, but so is engagement and conversion. Which of the two, text messages and push notifications, will prove to have the best conversion rates over time?

Integrating Mobile Applications Into Your Marketing Strategy

Mobile might seem like a distant priority in your overall marketing mix, but taking a look at some mobile usage and growth statistics may demonstrate that it is closer than you may have thought. It is important to have the basics done well before adding mobile to the mix. Your website needs to be optimized, and you should have your search engine optimization and social media strategy in place. Think of a mobile application as an extension of your content marketing strategy. Your content is what is currently driving your search and social media marketing success.

Think about the same problems that you are working to solve for your customers with the content you have been creating, and then think about how those problems impact your customers and prospects while they are on the move outside of the office. Build an application that helps to solve your customers problems, and while doing so, determine how to best integrate push notification in the process to improve the experience for your customers and to positively impact reach and conversions for your business.

Are you using mobile applications and push notifications as part of your marketing strategy?

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We’ve already discussed what you need to think about before you even begin your redesign, now we’re going to discuss what SEO elements you need to keep in mind once you start the process. Once again we turned to our well versed team of HubSpot Partners to gain insight into how they approach the process.

Don’t Lose Sight of Your Old Site

Sure, your website might need a redesign, but that doesn’t mean everything you currently have is terrible. Partner Tony Meister of NetSolutions Group says “the biggest mistake…would be to leave out 301 redirects consequently sacrificing all the work that was done to get the rankings. On that end, another mistake would be to neglect [thinking] about navigation structure and how the [old] site effectively leverages SEO in the subpage hierarchical navigation.”

Even if you do decide to completely redo the navigation, Tony’s first point holds true. Your old site hopefully had some SEO rankings that you, at some point, invested time (either in content creation, keyword research or more) to get. Make sure everything is done correctly in order to not waste the time you’ve already spent on it.

Make Sure SEO is Always Being Evaluated

Yes, SEO is not the end all to be all when you are redesigning your site. However, that doesn’t mean that it should be overlooked in favor of design, content, etc. Top Line Results’ Todd Hockenberry states, “SEO is [often] an afterthought and not the primary driver that it should be.” While SEO might not be as visually appealing as a great website header or logo, think about which one is more likely to bring leads to your site and invest your time wisely.

The SEO Scoop

Sure there are some people who get downright giddy when they talk about SEO. You may or may not be one of those folks. But even if you aren’t, any good website designed with inbound marketing in mind takes into account SEO strategies. No matter how gorgeous your new site looks, if visitors can’t find you online, no one is going to be able to appreciate your hard work and you certainly won’t see the benefits.

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Generating traffic to your website and blog is all well and good, but if you’re a B2B company, chances are traffic isn’t enough. In your case, turning traffic into leads and ultimately sales is where it’s at.

In this week’s top inbound marketing article, Chris Brogan shares some simple steps you can take to turn the traffic you’re getting into coveted leads and sales.

1. How to Convert Traffic to a Sale

Author: Chris Brogan on chrisbrogan.com

If you’re looking to get the most of the traffic coming to your business blog, Brogan’s article can help by highlighting some preparations you should make.

His tips include creating simple calls-to-action, weaving your offer into the article more than once (and making it obvious), using graphical buttons, taking more than one approach, considering disabling comments, and not overselling.

Marketing Takeaway: Convert traffic to leads and sales by optimizing your blog for lead generation.

2. How to Use Social Media Monitoring Tools for Outreach Marketing

Author: Joe Hall on Search Engine Land

The topic of this Search Engine Land article is outreach marketing, or as Hall puts it, “the practice of seeking out individuals or organizations that have a shared interest in what you or your company has to offer.”

Hall mainly discusses ways in which you can utilize social media monitoring tools to help with outreach marketing. He walks readers through the importance of choosing the right keywords and audience. In addition, he emphasizes that engagement is at the core of outreach marketing and can make or break a campaign.

Marketing Takeaway: If you’re thinking of doing an outreach marketing campaign, take advantage of social media monitoring tools to facilitate engagement.

3. Top 10 Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful

Author: Amy Porterfield on Social Media Examiner

Are you looking to improve your Facebook presence? Why not take a look at some Fan Pages of brands that are doing it right?

This Social Media Examiner article highlights 10 examples of successful Facebook Pages and discusses why they’re successful. These examples will help you understand what a great Page looks like and how you can adopt similar techniques to increase your own Page’s success. Among top company Pages mentioned are Red Bull, Coca-Cola, and Oreo.

Marketing Takeaway: Learn by example!

4. Five Things to Consider Before Starting an SEO Campaign

Author: Kevin Gibbons on the Econsultancy blog

So you’ve made the decision to dedicate more time to search engine optimization. Good for you — SEO is a great way to generate quality, organic traffic to your website! Before you get going, consider these tips from the Econsultancy blog for managing your SEO team, whether it’s in-house or based in an agency:

1. Manage your expectations.
2. Set goals.
3. Brace yourself for the long haul.
4. Involve your staff.
5. Be prepared to get involved.

Marketing Takeaway: While SEO can produce great results, be prepared to dedicate time and effort to its ongoing maintenance.

5. Avoid Blogger Burnout: 5 Tips to Save Your Sanity

Author: Georgina Laidlaw on ProBlogger

As any seasoned blogger knows, it takes time to go from new blog to successful blog. So how do you stay sane and motivated to keep pumping out posts when the rewards seem few and far between? This ProBlogger article just might speak to you.

Laidlaw lays out some of her best suggestions for avoiding blogger burnout, which include doing what you love, taking it one step at a time, planning (and planning … and planning), allowing for downtime, and realizing that everyone has bad days.

Marketing Takeaway: Like any great successful venture, results don’t always come instantly. Keep at it, and your blog will eventually help achieve your business marketing goals.

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Publishing content online is simple; maybe too simple. When you click publish, share or tweet, do you instantly forget about the information you just shared? In a social media culture where the hunt for the next big trend constantly exists, putting aside published content to move on to the next topic is a natural reaction. This mode of thinking makes all of us online publishers often forget one very important thing: Online content is forever.

A notebook can get thrown in the trash, and a digital document can sit in a crowded folder and be ignored forever. Blog posts, tweets, ebooks, Facebook updates, and all other content published online, however, doesn’t go away. It continuously reappears in search results across different sites. Even if you delete content that was previously published online, odds are that it is still cached somewhere on the web or has been copied by someone and placed on another site. While this may seem a little scary to some, it is also one of the key factors that has helped level the marketing playing field.

Why Forever Is Great for Marketers

With traditional marketing like direct mail and print ads, your content was disposable. Once the next trade magazine issue came out, your message was in the trash. Because of this, the only way to keep a constant flow of messages in the marketplace was to keep spending money. This gave the power to large companies with bigger budgets. In online marketing, it is much less about marketing budgets or company size; the main success factor has become agility. In online marketing, you have to be able to create content your customers want and publish it quickly.

This gives the leverage to companies that are agile. If your business takes a month to approve a tweet, then a smaller startup can easily compete in the world of online marketing due to their ability to create content and engage with customers more frequently. Because content is forever, the effect of being able to create high-quality content regularly quickly snowballs and creates more and more leverage as each month ticks by.

3 Steps for Leveraging Forever

When you are a marketer, forever is your friend. The fact that content is forever helps you build a vault of online content that new and existing competitors won’t be able to overcome. Whether you are a marketer who is new to online marketing or a veteran who is looking to squeeze out every ounce of your marketing investment, then consider these three pieces of advice.

1. Conduct a Hard Drive Audit – Set aside some time and look at the documents, videos, and other types of content that are filling up your hard drive or that might be hiding in a marketing folder on a server somewhere. As you are looking through content, think about which items could be posted online that could help you target keywords, generate search traffic, or help answer prospect and customer questions. Odds are, you have at least a few items that can help with this but have never made their way onto the web. Work to add them to your blog or corporate website.

2. Make PDFs Friendly – Marketing departments are PDF-creating machines. The problem is, while PDFs provide some search engine opportunity value, the same content presented in a different way would have a much stronger, long-term benefit. Use content that is in PDF form when possible and move it to an HTML page where you can have control over the page title, headers, and other factors that can improve on-page SEO. You don’t need to do this with all PDFs. For example, if you have a PDF download behind a landing page for lead generation, that is fine. However, if you have a PDF of a product manual, that content would work much harder for your marketing team if it was no longer in PDF form.

3. Promote Past Content – Content that is old to you isn’t necessarily old to a prospect just learning about your company for the first time. We have explained some best practices for promoting evergreen content in the past, but it is worth revisiting the issue. If you write 50 blog articles a year, it is likely that many of them aren’t time-sensitive. Take this evergreen content and reintroduce it to social media subscribers who may have only begun following you in the months following the publication date of that blog post. Promoting existing content is a great way to improve thought leadership and leader generation without dedicating the time needed to write a new article.

How do you leverage forever?

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Online marketing is unique for each business. For large businesses that rely on channel partners to sell and distribute products, the online marketing process can be a challenge. With many channel partners across multiple locations, how can a business make sure that partners have the leads they need to help grow the business?

In a recent conversation with a channel marketing manager I was asked, “What can I do now to get my partners and resellers found?” As with many channel marketing managers, their time is very constrained, but the need to do more lead generation for their resellers is ever present. Additionally, they often talk about how their resellers do a great job once someone is introduced to them, but often their own websites are not helping them bring in new leads. After asking me that question, she said, “I wish I could just give them a few tips to get them started in Inbound Marketing and getting website traction”

5 Tips For Channel Partner Lead Generation

1. Identify Longtail Keywords -  Find 10 keywords that are in the longtail for your services or products and provide them to your resellers and partners to use.  Keywords need to be used in a consistent way on each webpage in the page title, the URL, the page headers and text. By doing the background research and providing a starting point, your partners or resellers can quickly optimize their pages.

2. Provide Partners with Lead Generation Offers -  Create an offer such as a ebook or webinar that can be downloaded or accessed from each partner’s website. Maybe your company provides security software and you have a tool that does a quick, free sweep of their network to test for vulnerability. Another option would be to offer a free assessment that will help prospect better understand which product offering best fits their needs. By creating these downloads, you are giving your reseller network an offer they can give visitors that come to their websites.

3. Create a Landing Page Template – Create a standard landing page that every reseller can put on their main page of their website to both capture lead data, and provide an offer. 70% of visitors to a website are in the “early stage” of buying. They are not ready to purchase, but are starting to investigate. Instead of having them visit your site and then “drive on”, give them an offer in exchange for collecting some of their information, even if it is just an email address. This will allow you to stay in touch with them via email offers or turn over the lead to your sales team for qualification and follow up.

4.  Develop An Email Template and Campaign – Email is an important part of the lead generation mix. Create a great email marketing campaign with an offer that each partner can send to new leads. Maybe it is a free assessment of a website, or an opportunity to attend a free consulting session. This campaign is to help move leads further down the funnel and to help increase a partners lead-to-customer percentages. Often channel managers have the ability to give marketing funds for offers, so why not provide them the email message to use as well.

5. Share Partner Successes –   If one of your partners is finding an offer is converting leads well or a free assessment is leading to more business in the door, let the network know! Inbound marketing may be new, but closing a deal is well understood and anything that drives more business to one partner will help the overall brand and network as well. Share the success!

What have you done to help improve inbound marketing for your channel partners?

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Here at HubSpot, we get a lot of questions around website redesigns. When should they be done, how should they be done and what mistakes not to make. In this three part series, we’ll examine some of the common pitfalls you might fall into and ways to avoid them.

One thing that all of our partners agreed upon, is that before embarking on any redesigns, companies should truly understand their goals and their customers. Without these necessary prep steps, you’ll wind up designing a website in a vacuum and wasting money. Here are just a few of the key questions that you should ask yourself before you change one pixel:

What Are Your Goals?

We also heard from HubSpot Partner Kelly Ward, of Digital K, who believes that “it’s important to take a top-level view of the website. [Figure out] what are you trying to ACHIEVE with your website? Are you trying to attract new customers? Service existing customers? Portray a new image for your company?”

What Are You Currently Doing Right?

HubSpot partner Keith Moehring of PR 20/20 echoes just these sentiments. He says that “Prior to doing any type of redesign … a company needs to look at what keywords are driving traffic and to which pages, and what pages have incoming links…Another area that needs to be evaluated thoroughly is who is coming to the site and what is drawing them in.”

Are You Doing This For the Right Reasons?

Top Line Results’ Todd Hockenberry feels that sometimes website redesigns happen for the wrong reasons. First, there’s the “redesign as part of new management.” He writes “Not having a clear, strategic reason why they are redesigning is one I see regularly. Companies still look internally for that answer way too often – new manager, new logo, re-organization, don’t like the design.”

Todd also thinks that sometimes, companies build a site as a means of fixing all their business issues, without looking deeper at their true problems. He says, “We deal with a lot of small to medium sized manufacturers and there are many who think a new website will be a field of dreams.”

So, What are the “Right” Answers?

This last question is actually a trick question. There is no one right answer to these questions; every company has different motivations and goals with a redesign. However, take the time before starting to make sure that you’re investing your time and money wisely. To ensure that you are being true to your company’s needs & goals, really analyze if a redesign is necessary and what you want to accomplish.

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The four most important social media channels to marketers are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube (See the 2010 State of Inbound Marketing for data). But which one(s) are the most active for your industry? HubSpot recently analyzed 33 industries to find out. An overview of data from our new ebook, the Online Marketing Opportunity Report is displayed below:

So what does this data mean for your business? To begin with, low activity doesn’t necessarily equate to low opportunity; it may just mean that you need to adjust your strategy for that channel.

HubSpot put together a comprehensive guide to applying this type of data to your business, along with a more detailed analysis of all 33 industries. Download our free eBook to read more.

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The following is a guest post by John McTigue, Executive Vice President and Co-Owner of Kuno Creative. Kuno Creative is a Certified HubSpot Partner Agency based in Avon, OH that specializes in building brands and capturing sales leads.

Crafting a good whitepaper isn’t easy. Creating one that will capture leads is an even bigger challenge. Although there is no standard definition of what constitutes a whitepaper, most people would agree that they differ from blogs in scope, style and intent:

Scope

Whitepapers are usually in-depth reports on a specific topic, like a research paper intended for publication on the Web. Typically at least 10 pages in length with illustrations, charts and references, the average whitepaper is not designed for casual browsing and usually requires several readings to glean the full extent of its information. Readers expect a high degree of expertise backed by solid research that is fully documented by references. It can take weeks or even months to write and polish a good whitepaper.

Style

Whitepapers are usually serious in tone and professional in appearance. You can expect your readers to include people who are considering purchasing your products or services, so you want to make sure your whitepapers are written well, edited well and formatted to represent your brand on the same level as your brochures and website. It’s a good idea to enlist the services of a graphic designer to layout your pages, images, fonts and colors for best results. Have at least two experienced writers review your document for grammar, spelling and accuracy. Make sure your management team has reviewed it to avoid possible problems with content or strategy.

Intent

Blogs are intended for reaching out to the general public, to update them on your ideas and strategies. More often than not, blogs are opinion-based. Usually blogs are informal and often playful. Whitepapers are for capturing leads – it’s all about business. You are providing something truly valuable for your target audience. Good information backed by well-documented research is worth its weight in gold. When someone signs up for your whitepaper on your landing page they are connecting with you and allowing you to connect with them further, i.e. move them further down the sales funnel. They will gladly do this if your whitepaper provides useful information and insight they can’t get elsewhere.

So what constitutes a great lead-generating whitepaper?

1. Find a topic that feeds a need. You must know your target market, what do they want to know and what’s already out there? You can explore topics in social media and community sites that generate a lot of comments. If you have expertise in one of those topics, get to work.
2. Put your heart into it. Don’t just patch together a bunch of other peoples’ work. Analyze the data and add value by evaluating options and presenting them to your readers in an easy to understand way.
3. Make it substantial. Cover the ground. Make an outline first, and organize it well into chapters or sections. It’s a good idea to make each section a “bite-sized” chunk, maybe one page with charts or graphics that covers a certain point.
4. Make it authoritative. Do your homework and make sure you mention previous authoritative work on the subject. Your mission isn’t to be the only expert in the field – it’s to be the latest expert with the freshest insights.
5. Create a great landing page. Include a summary and topics to let people know what the whitepaper’s about. Tell them why it’s important to them, and with time and exposure, include some snippets from comments and reviews.

Here are some examples of whitepapers on inbound marketing:

• Inbound Marketing Blueprint for the C-Suite (Kuno Creative)
• Inbound Marketing Gameplan (PR2020)
• The 7 Universal Laws Of Pull Marketing (PullnotPush)
• Internet Marketing Whitepapers (HubSpot)

Tell us about some great whitepapers you have downloaded and why you liked them.

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Here at HubSpot we sing the praises of Inbound Marketing from the rooftops. Yes, it is an amazing way to see growth in your SEO goals, website traffic, leads and customers. It helps you develop a deeper engagement and establish yourself as a thought leader. But, that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Proper inbound marketing can take a lot of hard work.

We asked the HubSpot Partners what they think the hardest part of inbound marketing is and how they work through these challenges.

Partner Teicko Hubert of Focus to Grow believes the hardest part is the understanding “of the cultural shift that has to happen to make inbound marketing work” and that “a website is merely fiction unless you understand how inbound marketing works.” That said, Teicko believes that this change can be overcome, but, “it takes diligence and a hyped focus on refining your story telling skills and probing skills.” This is a great point, just like learning any other skill, inbound marketing takes hard work and there’s an adjustment period.

Another successful partner, Phillip Johnson of Fatiguana Endeavors, says that he feels the biggest challenge is having the time to create content. However, by “creating both long and short term strategies for content creation and broader Inbound Marketing tactics” you can start to see benefits sooner and the reward of all the time you are investing. Seeing shorter term results often gives you a boost of confidence that you are on the right path and can help direct your long term strategy.

Of course once you get started with inbound marketing, you have to keep it up. Inbound Marketing Experts’ Andy Xhignesse reminds us that inbound marketing has to be an ongoing part of your daily routine. While positive results are great, you cannot stop as soon as you they occur. Instead, see them as a sign that you’re on the right track and keep going!

Finally, our always wise partner Dale Berkebile of Brandwise, chimed in to remark that inbound marketers always need to keep their priorities in order and remember “quality over quantity.” It’s great if you have a large reach but keep in mind, you also need to engage with them. As Dale says, “500+ Facebook fans + 9000 follower[s] + no interaction = disaster.”

So what do all of these partners’ suggestions have in common? Well first, don’t give up! Inbound Marketing can take time. Second, there’s no one “thing” that you can do to guarantee success. It’s not just followers, it’s not just content creation, it’s not just having a great website. It’s what happens when all of these pieces, and more, come together to form a unified inbound marketing strategy.

   

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Twice a year Professor Christine Moorman at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business surveys hundreds of CMOs to get an overall measure of what is happening in marketing as part of a project aptly called The CMO Survey.  Below are a couple highlights from the latest report, released today.

Marketing Spending Should Increase

The CMOs reported that on average their budgets would increase 9.2%, a much larger increase than any of the other surveys done in the past 2 years.  Clearly companies are starting to invest in marketing as they see the economy improving.  Another factor might be that budgets that had been cut before during the recession might now be allowed to grow back to their previous size.

Internet Marketing Spending to Grow

The CMOs also reported that on average they were going to grow their spending on internet marketing by 13.6%, a much larger increase than in any other area.  Just like 6 months ago, CMOs are cutting spending on traditional advertising.  It seems that the better marketing ROI from internet marketing and inbound marketing is influencing the investment decisions CMOs are making.  I would personally love to know if this spending is still online advertising focused or if CMOs are starting to invest in more content generation and community management to leverage inbound marketing, but that was not included in the survey.

Social Media Marketing Spending Increasing

As part of that increase in spending on internet marketing, the survey reports that social media marketing spending is increasing over time.  Unfortunately it is not clear from the data if this is just more spending on advertising on social media websites like Facebook, or if companies are making an investment in inbound marketing by hiring people to create content and build relationships with their target market online.  This latter type of investment is the type of activity that can transform your marketing to be a lot more effective.  Merely advertising on Facebook instead of the local newspaper is not going to transform your marketing.

What do you think?  Do these CMOs have it right?  How would you allocate your company’s marketing budget if you ran the show and could start with a blank slate?

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