Inbound Marketing Blog

Inbound Marketing Questions & Answers (Part 3)

This inbound marketing blog article is part 3 in a blog series I have created to help my subscribers, as well as all other interested readers, understand how others are using various inbound marketing elements.

Each inbound marketing blog posts features a different business and includes interview question and answers. In this specific inbound marketing blog article I have answered the interview questions myself. The thought was that I needed a point of reference for those readers with limited inbound marketing experience. This blog post can be used as a guide to certain inbound marketing standards that I believe should be established.

In my next blog, I will continue to highlight and provide interview results from other businesses that were kind enough to take the time to answer these questions. I think they should all help us in learning more about how to create the appropriate inbound marketing campaign. I welcome all comments, good or bad.

To become a featured business and share your inbound marketing experience: Let Us Interview Your Business.

Featured Business: Virtual Support Systems

Business Name: Virtual Support Systems
Business Web Site: www.virtualsupportsystems.com
Business Location: Sarasota, FL
Marketing Decision Maker: Daniel Shlifer
Business Description: Inbound Marketing Consulting, Search Engine Optimization, Blog Development, Social Media Development Through Software & Service Application

What are your current marketing activities?: Web site development & optimization, blog development, social media out reach, lead generation, lead tracking and lead nurturing using specific inbound marketing software.

What is your primary marketing method?: Inbound marketing or Internet marketing

What changes are needed (if any) in your marketing methods?: More aggressive or active social media involvement. Further development of all current inbound marketing activities will help generate more traffic and gain more traction on the search engines and blog subscribers. I also need to further develop my lead conversion strategies through closer traffic analysis. By better analysis, I will be better able to modify all my target marketing activities to achieve high conversion and close ratios.

Do you know what Inbound Marketing is, if so, please define in your own words?: Yes - I am in the inbound marketing business as an inbound marketing consultant. Inbound marketing is the process of creating a compelling offer, getting found, promoting the offer, analyzing the results and making the appropriate modifications.

What percentage of your marketing budget is applied to Outbound marketing vs. Inbound marketing? In 2009 it was 80% of all our marketing budget. It is now 100% as we terminated all outbound marketing activities.

What inbound marketing components are you currently utilizing?: Web site development and optimization, blog post creation, Twitter, Facebook and Linked In status updates, email marketing, lead generation, lead tracking and lead nurturing using comprehensive inbound marketing software.

How are you currently measuring ROI?: I am using an Inbound Marketing software application to generate, track, nurture all leads and ROI. This application monitors traffic, conversion of that traffic, blog subscriptions, social media activity and more.

Have you ever executed a keyword development strategy for your web site?: Yes, as part of my new inbound marketing application.

How are you measuring your web site's traffic?: Yes, Same answer as above coupled with reporting software from Web Position.

How are you measuring your web site's conversions?: Yes, my web site uses landing pages as part of creating compelling offers and converting traffic to leads so I am able to separate all landing pages and all offers and analyze leads generated from these pages as well as the blog and social media activity.

What search engine strategy has been employed?: We have created every web page with a specific keyword and message targeted. This also applies to each blog post and social media message.

Are you using a blog? If so, how often are you posting a new article?: Yes - 3 blog posts per week minimum.

Who creates each blog article?: Me

Does your business have a Linked In account?: Yes - http://www.linkedin.com/in/vssseo

Does your business have a Twitter account?: Yes - @SEMSEO1

Does your business have a YouTube account?: Yes - inbound marketing condition video

Does your business have a Facebook account?: Yes

How would you define your lead generation system?: I use lead generation software.

How would you define your lead tracking system?: I use lead tracking software.

How would you define your lead nurturing systems?: I use internal autoresponders and Mail Chimp email marketing software

Have you considered developing an Inbound Marketing Plan, if so, what are your challenges?: Yes, I am using a comprehensive inbound marketing solution and I would say my current challenges includes securing better search engine rankings, blog subscribers and a better conversion rate.

On a scale of 1-10, how important is developing a focused inbound marketing program?: 11

How soon do you plan on developing a better inbound marketing plan?: Started a complete inbound marketing program in January 2010. This was developed from an already existing search engine optimization applied over the past 2 years.

What would be your first step in creating a better inbound marketing plan?: Better social media strategies.

Part 1: Inbound Marketing vs. SEO vs. Just Using A Web Site
Learn from what others are doing (& not doing).

Today's blog is part 1 in a new series of blogs created to help all business and business professionals understand what others are doing in reaction to all the new Inbound Marketing technologies & lead generation software available. 

As an Inbound Marketing Consultant I have learned the biggest challenge for business, developing various inbound marketing applications, maybe to much information resulting in confusion. Inbound marketing is such a new and quickly developing marketing solution that many businesses know they need to get involved but don't fully understand all the options and methods. This translates to a lot of trial and error situations that many times end in frustration. As I speak to more and more business needing and wanting inbound marketing solutions, I hear the same type of questions:

• Do I need to redo my web site?
• What condition is my current web site in now?
• Do I need SEO - What is SEO?
• Do I need SEM - What is SEM ?
• How do I isolate my best keywords?
  
• How often should I blog?
• How long should my blog be?
• How does video work in a blog?
  
• What should I blog about?
• Should my blog be under my main URL?
• How can this social media craze help me - where do I start?
• Are my current social media efforts efficient and/or effective?
• Will Twitter really help?
• Should I use Facebook or Linked In?
  
• How do inbound links work and how do I get more?
• What is the difference between impressions, traffic, leads?
• What is a landing page and how do I use it to my advantage?
  
• How do I generate more leads?
• How do I track leads?
• How do I nurture leads?
• How do I find time to do all of this?
• Why can't I just use what I am used to, it's worked in the past?
• Doesn't my web master handle of of this?

If you're an Inbound Marketing Consultant, you have heard all these questions in one form or another. If you are a business owner, marketing director or other business professionals you probably have asked many (if not all) of these questions in one form or another.

My short answer to these questions are:

1. Take a deep breath and relax a moment.
2. Understand that each Inbound Marketing plan will be different because each target marketing is different.
3. Make sure you get a clear picture (inbound marketing analysis) of where you are starting from or continuing from.
4. Speak with a few Inbound Marketing Consultants in an effort to find one you trust. Find one that gives you a reason to be confident in his/her knowledge and specific solutions.
5. Look for a method that is comprehensive and easily manageable under a few or even one application.

In an effort to shed some more light on both sides of this equation, I have taken the time to sit down and speak with business owners of all types and ask them what they are doing, what they believe, what they are concerned about, and what they would like to do going forward in the world of Inbound Marketing.

As stated earlier in this blog, this is "part 1" in a new series. Each new blog in this series will have the results of a new interview with a different business. These interviews consist of general questions, the subject's responses to those questions and some suggestions to resolve the obvious obstacles and challenges.

My hope is that this open communication will help business owners understand more about what is needed and the Inbound Marketing Industry will be better equipped to address these needs as they are stated from the client's point of view.

Featured Business Name: Pain Medicine Associates
Business Web Site: www.painmedicineassociates.net
Business Location: Sarasota Florida
Marketing Decision Maker: Rosana Anatra
Business Description: Medical Office with 15 professionals with focus on pain management.
Overall Assessment: As I stated earlier, all businesses are unique and demand a unique approach to developing an inbound marketing startegy that works best. In this case, no real Inbound Marketing strategy has been developed. You can see by the answers below that this business does understand the importantce of marketing but feels they have success using a more traditional methods. After an initial conversation, PMA understands that they are ready to upgrade at least their representation and image online by creating a new web site. Once this is finished, they will slowly and systematically apply more inbound marketing elements. After this interview I can see that this business is different than many others in that they were not effected as greatly by the economic downturn. Their revenues have contionued to increase in 2009 and 2010. What I did notice was that even though they are taking in new business and growing each month, they are starting to understand the future and what technologies may help them support their future growth and marketing management.

Interview:

How would you describe your current marketing activities: Peer to peer communication, yellow pages, Physicians Guide (annual publication), networking with other physicians.

What is your primary marketing method?: Peer to peer communication

What changes are needed (if any) in your marketing methods?: More frequent marketing, diversify marketing efforts, the addition of some form of Internet marketing.

Do you know what Inbound Marketing is, if so, please define in your own words?: Yes - You bolster your internet presence in an effort to become more visible online and reach out to your target marketing in a non-invasive market responsive way so that they can reach you as their needs dictate.

What percentage of your marketing budget is applied to Outbound marketing vs. Inbound marketing? 50% - Our efforts are shiftly from focus on print to other types that are web site driven.

What inbound marketing components are you currently utilizing?: Web site development. Our web site is being recreated.

How are you currently measuring ROI?: Detailed analysis of new patients and their referral sources through traditional methods measurement.

Have you ever executed a keyword development strategy for your web site?: No

How are you measuring your web site's traffic?: Not

How are you measuring your web site's conversations?: Not

What search engine strategy has been employed?: Limited SEO with no real results, we think.

Are you using a blog? If so, how often are you posting a new article?: No

Who creates each blog article?: Nobody

Does your business have a Linked In account?: No

Does your business have a Twitter account?: No

Does your business have a Facebook account?: No

How would you define your lead generation system?: Don't really have one

How would you define your lead tracking system?: Old fashion paper system

How would you define your lead nurturing systems?: Thank you cards, phone follow up, written follow up, updating referring physicians

Have you considered developing an Inbound Marketing Plan, if so, what are your challenges?: Yes, enough time to create, budget and a better understanding of what we should do first.

On a scale of 1-10, how important is developing a focused inbound marketing program?: 4

How soon do you plan on developing a better inbound marketing plan?: within 24 to 36 months

What would be your first step in creating a better inbound marketing plan?: completing and then optimizing our web site.

Stay tuned for Part 2 In this blog series with Inbound marketing perspectives from other businesses.

Marketing campaign software thats well synchronized with your marketing objectives can be a powerful combination.

Comprehensive marketing campaign software is still very earlier in it's overall development, availability and effectiveness. The capabilities of developing and managing every component of our Inbound marketing or Internet marketing plan under one roof or umbrella is a very attractive thought and we are not as far away from this as we might feel. We could probably all agree that having one tool or resources in the form of comprehensive marketing campaign software would make it easier. more effective and efficient for us to:

• Define your online target markets.
• Connect the most powerful keywords to those markets.
• Evaluate the real time condition of your web site and marketing objectives.
  
• Monitor the activity of those important keywords over time.
• Create the content that includes the keyword prominence and density that will serve us (and our market) best.
• Further optimize and expand our pages for target market accuracy and reach.
• Develop and manage our blogging.
• Develop, manage and connect our social media accounts and efforts.
  
• Develop and manage our inbound links
  
• Develop and test landing page idea
• Manage an appropriate PPC project
• Lead generation
• Lead tracking
• Lead nurturing
  
• Analyze all of this for ROI
• More & more & more...

The better and more complete the marketing campaign software is, the closer you will be able to meet your marketing objectives.

Currently there are a great deal of available marketing campaign software options but the challenge is to avoid developing your marketing campaign execution strategy using 25, unrelated, unconnected, unsupported and completely independent software components. You'll get the job done to some degree but it won't be the most efficient method and most likely, even in the sort run, it will be come less and less efficient as this industry develops.

Inbound marketing, Internet marketing, SEO, PPC are all still very new and to some, very different methods of marketing. In many cases we are seeing a large array of organizations gravitate towards making these methods their primary avenues of marketing. Some aren't even realizing this as it's happening.  It appears more like plugging leaks or throwing darts.

Companies need to analyze, evaluate and prepare more for our changing times and one powerful results should be isolating and applying a comprehensive marketing campaign software solution. Rather than getting pushed and pulled by the speed at which blogging, linking, social media and search engines are growing, a company needs to access the current condition and create a real answer and a real marketing campaign software solution with marketing objectives that are in alignment.