Posted by Daniel Shlifer on Tue, Mar 30, 2010
Inbound Marketing Successes & Experiences Shared
Today's blog features a graphic design firm in Norwood MA and is an interesting Inbound marketing participant. My assessment is that this firm absolutely understands the movement from outbound marketing to inbound marketing and understands this from first hand experience. Like many business Peartree is and has been studying and experimenting with various internet marketing options. They have used SEO, sponsored advertising, blogging, social media and traditional marketing methods. Peartree graphic design's inbound marketing strategy, like many of us in the business world, has evolved over the past couple of years. They used to do "this and that" but learned that maybe they really need to "try this and that" instead. For the record, this is exactly why I created this inbound marketing blog series. It seems to me that with companies like Peartree willing to share these experiences, all readers can avoid mistakes that have been made by others. We don't all need to recreate the wheel.
I believe this graphic design firm is close to isolating a system that meets it's needs and budget. The important thing to learn from this case is their desire and efforts to learn and listen. Even more importantly, this company has shown to be willing to take risks and apply inbound marketing elements in an effort to grow.
Featured Business: PearTree USA Graphic Design
Business Name: Peartree USA
Business Web Site: www.peartreeusa.com
Business Location: Norwood, MA
Marketing Decision Maker: Kevin Poirier
Business Description: Graphic Design, Logo Design, Brochure Design Services
What are your current marketing activities?: Yellow pages, email marketing, Google Adwords & now business.com. We used direct mail in the past with some return success.
What is your primary marketing method?: Email marketing
What changes are needed (if any) in your marketing methods?: A more aggressive strategy with alternative methods and execution, analysis is front burner for us to understand what we need to focus on first.
Do you know what Inbound Marketing is?: Yes - Driving people to contact me and our web site.
What percentage of your marketing budget is applied to Outbound marketing? 30%
How are you measuring ROI?: We use tracking codes for all of our promotional activity so either direct mail, email marketing or web site coupons, we track any activity through these codes.
Have you ever executed a keyword development strategy?: Yes, we hired an SEO company about a year ago and that was part of the first steps.
How are you measuring your web site's traffic?: Google analytics
How are you measuring your web site's conversions?: We use a contact form for site conversions while we ask all inbound callers how they got our name.
What search engine strategy has been employed?: We started with a Google Adwords campaign and other than securing one good client, we haven't seen any impressive results. Last year we hired an SEO company to optimize our site with limited results. We are now trying business.com with the idea that we will receive more qualified traffic.
Are you using a blog? If so, how often are you posting a new article?: Yes, 2 a month but I know I need to do more posts. I have a hard time creating subject matter and don't really understand why a business will take any time to read random information about graphic design. I do understand that in theory, its an important tool and I will continue to develop my blog.
Who creates each blog article?: I do
Does your business have a Linked In account?: Yes - Kevin Poirier
Does your business have a Twitter account?: Yes - PeartreeUSA
Does your business have a Facebook account?: Yes
How would you define your lead generation system?: No specific software being used but we are researching options.
How would you define your lead tracking system?: Tracking (promo code) through inbound phone call records and contact form.
How would you define your lead nurturing systems?: I don't believe a newsletter would make sense for some of the same reasons I have trouble grasping the blog value. I do think I need to discover new methods of interaction.
Have you considered developing an Inbound Marketing Plan, if so, what are your challenges?: Yes - Driving qualified businesses to my site
On a scale of 1-10, how important is developing a focused inbound marketing?: 8
How soon do you plan on developing a better inbound marketing plan?: This has started as explained earlier.
What would be your first step in creating a better inbound marketing plan?: We are in the middle of investigating more complete Internet marketing solutions. Our biggest concern with some solutions is the costs to start the process. Some of the solutions we looked at involved migrating our site at a significant cost so we were then locked in to using a specific CMS. I don't like that idea.
Stay tuned for "Part 5" by subscribing to this inbound marketing blog.
Posted by Daniel Shlifer on Thu, Mar 11, 2010
What's the first thing a company or business professional needs to understand when they begin or advance an inbound marketing plan?
My short and quick answer is this. They need to "get it", "understand it", "embrace it".
If you asked me to isolate one of the most significant challenges as an inbound marketing (Internet marketing) software & services provider, it has to be getting my clients (and prospects) to understand as many of the basic changes taking place in the world of marketing and message delivery. Then react and embrace those changes.
Even more significant is... If you asked me to isolate one of the most significant challenges for my business owner or business professional clients, it would be the same challenge.
The most useful way for me to explain this point for other (interested) inbound marketing professionals and all business that need to consider employment of these strategies is sharing this latest experience.
Client: The Corporate Sedan Service
Client Location: Philadelphia, PA
Client Background: Provides sedan and limousine services to major airports in the tri-state area.
Client Size: 29 corporate style sedans, 7 limousines, 5 shuttle vans, 2 mini-buses
Client History:Ground transportation service provider since 1996.
I (Virtual Support Systems) have been working with this client for a few years on a number of different projects. The relationship started like many as goals were established and the related work and performance was dictated in the form of instructions. Beginning an SEO project would be a good example. The client thought better search engine position would be beneficial to the marketing efforts of his business so the project was handed off to my company, we did the required work and reported the results to the client and everyone was happy.
Fast forward to current times and as most of us can see, the demands of today's business leaders are changing and they are required to "get more involved".
As part of a "new strategy" discussion with this client last year, I explained as clearly as possible that new times, demanded new strategies. I continued to explain that these new strategies would demand fundamental changes in thinking and some of the old ways of managing our marketing must change. I further explained that as Operations Officer of this company, he would need to take part and pay regular attention to some or all the following:
- Evaluating current content on the web site.
- Dictate specific modification needed to web site content.
- To help develop new, powerful and relevant content for web site.
- Establish profiles on Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, etc.
- Use Google Reader to subscribe to related industry information.
- Regularly read & stay current on industry content.
- Create & develop a blog.
- Utilize his new social media accounts to communicate to his customers.
- Learn traffic analysis skills.
- Brainstorm new offers & develop landing pages.
- Answer and coment on other industry blogs.
- Answer target market's questions on blogs & other social media.
- Teach company employees to contribute to blog and other content.
These and other changes are not easy for business owners who have been employing traditional marketing strategies for many years. Thats what makes this challenge so real and so critical.
In this case, almost to my amazement, the client started to relax, absorb and understand the new power he himself has over the future success of his business in this fast changing climate. Keep in mind that the ground transportation business is old school, blue collar and probably not first on my list to embrace change. To illustrate and drive home this point, do a quick search of regional or local limousine web sites and you will quickly see they are dangerously behind. It's not difficult to see that a web site has had no real attention for 5 years or more.
Conclusion: The better a business owner, professional or leader understands what changes are taking place, the better a client understand their new role, the better a company executive understand the specific methods they can accelerate their performance... the more loyal the client and the more successful the client will become. The first step is to teach the client to understand the real time condition of the web site.
To other Inbound Marketing Professionals: The better the communication and educational skills, more we can help our clients.
Thanks for reading!
Inbound Marketing & Blogging
How to Blog Effectively for Business (GF101)
Posted by Daniel Shlifer on Wed, Feb 24, 2010
What is search engine marketing software and how can I benefit?
Search engine marketing software can come in many forms, formats and price tags. For most web site project managers or web site owners, search engine marketing software is a collective menu of separate and independent applications developed to handle a single element of the search engine marketing process. For example, here are some general terms and descriptions of search engine marketing software used today:
- CMS (content management system) like Word Press or Joomla for web page management and development.
- Blogger.com is blog Development software used to create, manage and develop your blog activities.
- Wordtracker to research and build your master keyword database.
- Web Position for certain analytics and reporting and other SEO activities
- Google analytics to help analyze traffic
- Twitteriffic to help post tweets
- Many others...
All of these applications (search engine marketing software) can help a web site owner get found, promote, convert and report on the productivity of a search engine marketing campaign.
In 2010, efficiency goes hand in hand with effectiveness. What do I mean? Other than the obvious reasons, any business or web site owner trying to harness the increasing power of inbound marketing (Internet marketing) needs to understand how fast thing have been changing and will continue to change in the world of search engine marketing and search engine marketing software. This is why finding a more complete suite of search engine optimization or search engine marketing software is becoming more critical.
Think about just some of the components that a good search engine marketing software package can address and help manage:
- Keyword research and evaluation - usage, competition and difficulty
- Web page development - design and presentation
- Web page optimization - configuring title, description, keyword, header and image tags
- Blog management - creating new article posts
- Social media optimization - updating status and message out reach
- Lead Generation -internal software that configures lead generation
- Lead tracking - lead management
- Lead Nurturing - communicate and nurture leads through sales cycles
- Linking strategies - developing inbound links from other web sites
- Content development - expanding, advancing and managing your growing content.
- Evaluation - specific measurement of all inbound marketing strategies
- Reporting - creating real time data as needed for critical decisions
Even if you find this partial list of search engine marketing elements daunting, not to mention the underlying complexities and detail that make up each element, it ultimately can make the difference between Internet success or failure. Comprehensive search engine marketing software can equate to a much higher degree of efficiency and effectiveness. This is easy to see when you understand that:
Inbound marketing now delivers the #1 ROI (return on investment) when compared to all other marketing mediums.
- Inbound marketing now delivers the #1 ROI (return on investment) when compared to all other marketing mediums.
- Search engines are now the #1 resource used by consumers to find goods and services.
This issue reflects the fast moving world of inbound marketing. Many businesses can now see (in one form or another) that inbound marketing and it's related components are becoming more effective and more affordable than the 40 year old methods of outbound or "interruption" marketing. It's as if a light is slowly getting brighter in a dark room and we are all scrambling to gain internal control so we can take advantage of this marketing revolution.
Whether you hire an SEO professional, employ your own team or even do some of these tasks yourself, a comprehensive search engine marketing software package will make the job easier, more productive and ultimately could be the difference between Internet explosion or a complete business implosion.
Securing the right search engine marketing software and being able to manage all the details of search engine optimization, search engine marketing or inbound marketing should be on the top of every web site owner's to-do list.
Free Search Engine Marketing Report
