Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

I've been training a new Inbound Team writer and gave her a challenging topic to write about. She struggled with it some and then said, "I honestly don't know where to start writing."

Writer's block, where to start, is a common problem for business bloggers. Here's what you can do about it!

Writing Isn't the Problem!

First, know this -- Writing isn't the problem. Instead, what's really happening is that we don't have a clear idea of what we want to communicate. 

Here's the solution ...

Start thinking about your audience. Who would want to read your article? Why? What are their problems or questions. What are their goals and challenges?

Imagine as many questions as you can. You see, it's easy to answer questions -- At least if you know the answer. If you don't know the answer, do some research!

Revisit Your Marketing Persona

If you're an experienced Inbound Marketer, you already have some good marketing personas for your audience. Reconnect with your personas. Who are they? What do they need?

If you don't already have marketing personas, see the links below for a short course in how to create personas.

Audience Analysis or Marketing Persona

Two terms that mean essentially the same thing. The point is to know your audience and write for them. 

• Whiteboard Friday: Creating Marketing Personas - A very useful 20 minute video from SEOMoz. Well worth watching.
  
  
• Precise Prospect Profile - Our resource for taking your persona to the next level.
   
• 6 Core Benefits of Well Defined Marketing Personas - HubSpot's take on how to use your marketing personas to improve your business results.
   
• Develop Personas - Who knew the government cared about Usability! Personas are also used to make usable software. Even though it's not about blogging, this article has good advice and an example persona.
   
• How to Conduct an Audience Analysis - Step-by-step guide to knowing your audience.
   
• How to Write an Audience Analysis - A similar step-by-step guide.

Takeways

What's most important for blogging is the value of your ideas. Value only exists for a specific audience -- Write for them!

If you're ever stuck:

• Remember your audience. If it's a new audience, imagine who they are.
• Know their top questions, problems, or concerns.
• Answer their questions.

Do you ever get writer's block? How do you get unstuck and how do you use personas? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Image Credit: whitakerc1985 

During today's Marketing Agency Insider webinar, Paul Roetzer talked about how important it is to know your Purpose. Then, he mentioned that a lot of people and companies don't really know their purpose.

Paul's comments reminded me of a game I play that always helps people discover unique insights about their purpose. I like to ask questions.  And I ask a lot of questions in the exercise.

Here's how the game goes (This is what I say):

Imagine that I have a magic button for you. (For marketing people, this can be a magic call-to-action button!).

When you press the button, you can have anything you say. Wait, stop!

Don't press the button, yet.

Let's talk for a few minutes to make sure you get everything you want.

So, tell me, what do you want to have from pressing your magic button?

I listen and ask "why" several times. Oh you want to travel the world. Why? My purpose is to clarify and understand. I try to restate and summarize the why.

The game continues ...

So, is that what you want? Are you ready to press your magic button? Wait, stop!

Don't you want something for your kids or your family?

This magic button will let you have anything you say. Don't forget to say "and." I want _____ AND _____. Say "and" as many times as you want!

So, what do you want for your family?

Again more "whys" to clarify and understand. The game continues ...

You can have all the "ands" you want. What do you want for your friends?

This cycle continues through several more questions like:

• What about for me you selfish turkey? After all, I gave you the magic button. What are you going to have happen for me?
  
  Sometimes, I'll hear "I don't know, what do you want?"
  
  "That doesn't matter," I'll say. "What do you want to give me?
    
• I like to play this game in a restaurant. So, I might ask, what would you give our waiter? 
  
  
• Then, I look around and pick out a random person. What would you want to have happen for them?

You see, each of us has natural gifts and things we love giving away to others. It's so natural for us, that we take it for granted, and don't see!

Ultimately, the goal of my game is to learn what a person would give away with no limits or contraints. That's a huge clue to their special purpose. The game helps make that clear.

What's Your Company's Purpose?

Ultimately, you can use this game to learn a business owner's purpose, or as part of branding for a business.

What would you do for your customers and clients if there were no profit or resource constraints?

Takaways

Purpose is the reason for being for an individual or a company. 

Knowing your purpose lets you make the great business decisions that will lead to building a great business. An otherwise successful business that is mis-aligned with your purpose will make you miserable. 

Take the time to discover your purpose, and leave me a comment so I know your purpose!

Image credit: FreeFoto.com.

You've got lots of traffic, but not enough conversions. It must be time to optimize your landing page -- Right?

Well, maybe! It's a mistake to jump into landing page optimization without considering the big picture. A landing page is not an island!

Landing Page Optimization Process

As part of deciding what to test on your landing page, be sure to consider:

• Traffic - Are you getting qualified prospects to your website?
• Alignment - Are you suffering from message mismatch? Are keywords, ads (or calls-to-action), and landing pages aligned and consistent?
• Offer Value - Does your offer seem like a good deal to prospects?
• Clarity - How obvious is your call-to-action?
• Anxiety - What might worry your landing page visitors? How can you help them relax?
• Distraction - What might distract your visitors and keep them from moving forward?
• Friction - What might be hard to use or confusing?
• Urgency - Why should they convert now? 

Let's look at each of these in more detail.

Website Traffic

Do you have a high bounce rate or short time on page? Either would indicate you are getting unqualified visitors. You can't expect unqualified visitors to convert.

Recommendation: Tune your traffic to reduce unqualified visitors.

Message Alignment

Message mismatch is a common problem for inbound marketers. Let's use pay-per-click as an example.

What does the keyword imply about what a visitor expects? 

Is your ad consistent with the visitor's expectation? What promise does the ad make?

Does your landing page deliver on the promise/expectation?

Recommendation: Take a fresh look at your messaging alignment to make sure everything matches.

Bonus Recommendation: If you have two distinct segments mixed together, split them out into separate campaigns with separate landing pages.

Offer Value Proposition

Is your landing page offer valuable for the visitor? Can you make it more valuable?

To many prospects, providing their name and email address seems a reasonable price to pay for a useful PDF download. 

Give us your name and email so our salespeople can pester you is a much less valuable offer!

Recommendation: Know your prospects and their problems. Make your offers more valuable whenever possible.

Bonus Recommendation: Make sure your copy clearly explains the benefits your offer provides.

Clarity

When they want your offer, can your prospects figure out what to do?

Here's a test. Squint at your landing page. Can you still tell what to do?

Here's another test. Show your landing page to a 5-year old. Do they know what to do?

Recommendation: Use a clear landing page layout with visual cues and contrasting colors so it's easy to know what to do.

Anxiety

Might anything about your landing page or offer cause your prospect to worry?

If your visitors have concerns about what will happen after they buy your product or complete your opt-in form, your conversion rates will suffer. Know your prospects and address their concerns. 

Recommendation: Anticipate anxiety. Then, use guarantees, social proof, promises of privacy, etc. to make visitors feel comfortable.

Distraction

Are there elements on your landing pages that could be distracting your prospects?

Choices require thinking. It's work and will reduce your conversion rates. Provide one or two calls to action -- That's all.

Consider your images and design, too. Pretty images can be a distraction that take away from your conversion rates. 

Recommendation: Keep the choices to a minimum and remove unneccessary links or other distractions.

Friction

Friction is the catch all category. Are there any stumbling blocks that might be impeding the conversion?

Do you really need to know the prospect's birthday or the names of their children on your conversion form? If in doubt, leave it out!

To serve the prospect, maybe you will eventually need to know the names of their children. Just, don't ask too early in the marketing funnel. Get their name and email, add value, build trust, and then ask for the names of their children.

Recommendation: Identify and test any potential sources of friction.

Urgency

Why should your prospect take action now?

Prospects are more likely to complete the conversion when there's an immediate reason to move forward. 

Recommendation: Whenever possible, create some urgency.

Landing Page Optimization Testing

Each of the topics mentioned above can generate a rich source of possible improvements.  

Still, each audience is different, and the only way to know what really increases conversions is to structure a well-designed test. Take your best guess on what might be slowing conversions, then test.

Takeaways

Everything affects everything else in Inbound Marketing. So, look at the big picture when considering what could be reducing your conversion rates and what to test.

What do you think? How have you improved conversion lately? Leave a comment to let me know!

Image Credit: gnuckx

It's too common to see business websites that have good traffic and still don't generate enough leads or other conversions. But, why?

You could do a Google search to discover the "proven" tips for landing page conversion:

• Always use red for key points and buttons
• Never use red for key points and buttons

See the problem? The reality is each audience is different -- There are no surefire rules. And even if there was a rule that worked a couple of years ago, it may not work now. People change.

The best plan is to build flexible landing pages and test to see what works for your prospects!

Landing Page Design Principles

The above example is not supposed to be pretty. But it does illustrate key landing page design principles.

• Make your landing page clear. It's harder to write clean, simple copy. Do it anyway. You may have to resist the urge to tell the visitor everything you know. When in doubt, leave it out!
• Make the desired action crystal clear. What do you want the visitor to do? Make it obvious enough that a 5 year old could figure it out. Use visual guides like the down arrow or contrasting button color to focus the visitor's attention.
• Know your benefits. What's in it for the visitor to complete your form? Your landing page has to sell the conversion.
• Whenever possible, only have one action. Sometimes you have to have more. Just know, if you make the visitor think, you'll reduce your conversion rates. And choices make the visitor think!

Landing Page Design Process

Believe it or not, Powerpoint is a very good tool for the early stages of landing page design.

• Most people already have Powerpoint, so multiple people can easily revise the design.
• Powerpoint is easy enough for use by non-artists.
• In the beginning, the point is to communicate. Don't waste time trying to make it pretty! Pay attention to what elements are needed to convince your visitors to convert.
• Powerpoint has good annotation tools that will help your team collaborate.

Designing Landing Pages for Testability

I recommend HubSpot's Enterprise version for landing pages because it makes running tests so easy. Still, you need to consider your testability needs during the design process. Again, Powerpoint can help you define and communicate your ideas.

• Which landing page elements should be editable for testing?
• Which elements should be fixed and not change?
• Do you need video or other special media types? 
• Do you think flipping the layout might help conversion? 

Don't try to answer these questions perfectly -- You can't! That's what testing is for. Take your best guess, and move forward.

Follow this process. You're more likely to end up with a flexible landing page template that will support testing and maximizing conversion. If you need to, you can always go back and modify the template to fix anything you missed.

Please let me know, how do you go about designing landing pages? Leave a comment with your ideas.

Takeways

Build testability into your landing page designs. You'll do more testing and get better conversion rates. 

Bonus takeaway: Download the Free Powerpoint Template to jump start your landing page design. Also, stay tuned for Advanced Landing Page webinars coming soon.

When I was explaining HubSpot's new Marketing Grader, I mentioned gaining 2 points by adding Apple Icons and a Meta Viewport tag. Let me show you how.

How to Create an Apple Icon for HubSpot

An Apple icon is a 57 x 57 pixel graphic that can show up on an iPhone or other iOS device. You can think of this as a giant favicon. What you need to do is:

• Create the 57 x 57 graphic and upload it to your HubSpot images folder. The graphic can be anything you want, but it's usually a version of your logo. Here's ours:
  
• In HubSpot, go to Settings -> Website Settings and find your Header HTML box. Whatever you put in this box will show up on all your website pages.
• Add code that looks like:
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/Portals/13372/images/inbound-team-apple-icon.png" />
  Of course, you'll have to adjust the link to point to your Apple icon.
  In my case, I put this new code right under my favicon link:
   <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
• Scroll down and Save Changes.

Now, if one of your site visitors creates a quick link on their iPhone, they'll see your new, branded icon.

How to Setup a Meta Viewport Tag in HubSpot

The Meta Viewport tells the iPhone how to show your page. All you have to do is add one more tag under your Apple icon link: 

• If you aren't already there, go to Settings -> Website Settings and find your Header HTML box.
• Right under your Apple icon link, add:
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,user-scalable=no" />
• Scroll down and Save Changes.
  

It's 2012, and most companies realize that Inbound Marketing works much better than old-fashioned interruption marketing.There's only one problem -- The number of worthwhile marketing intiatives is overwhelming!

I know, just Google for "best marketing initiatives." Now you're overwhelmed again. And, some of the recommendations you'll find are just plain wrong.

Here's what doesn't work: Trying to trick Google and the other search engines. Google has billions of dollars and over 30K employees including some of the smartest people on the planet. What definitely does work is creating remarkable content that help your prospects -- As long as you do it consistently.

Inbound Marketing Priorities

Here's what I do to set priorities. Have you seen HubSpot's new Marketing Grader? It's free -- Even for non-HubSpot customers. It's the upgrade for their old Website Grader.

The best thing, is that the good folks at HubSpot have already done the hard work of seeing what's important for your Inbound Marketing in 2012. Just don't be disappointed if your score is lower than it was in the old Website Grader. HubSpot is being tough on us to help us have the best possible inbound marketing!

Here's the marketing grader for Inbound Team:

OK, a 76. Maybe, I should have hidden our results. Oh, wait. This is all built from public information. You can run a marketing grader on anyone you want, including Inbound Team! You can even run this report on your competitors (And they can run a report on you!).

I benchmarked us against HubSpot, and they only got an 87! HubSpot created the tool, and even they can't ace it. It's a pretty tough scale after all, so maybe a 76 isn't that bad.

The best part is that HubSpot provides detailed coaching on how to improve your score. In fact, we orginally scored a 74. We were missing some mobile optimization. In another post, I'll show you how, in just a few minutes, we added Apple icons and Meta Viewport tags. As a result, Marketing Grader gave us two more points.

Besides the coaching, Marketing Grader groups the results by Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel, and Analytics. They'll even show how you compare to your competitors in each area. Sure, all of your Inbound Marketing works together. But, it really helps to be able to focus on one key area at a time.

The 2012 Inbound Marketing Challenge

Run, your own Marketing Grader. If you can beat our 76, leave a comment and brag about it! Of course, we're not going to accept our current score, and it will be improving. So you'll have to stay on your toes.

If you can't beat us, then call 800.609.9669 and get some help with your Inbound Marketing.

HubSpot recently introduced a new Prospects tool that provides some amazing real-time data on the people who are visiting your site!

With some work, it's always been possible to mine your server logs and use a reverse IP lookup to see who's visiting your website. That's what HubSpot does, but they've made it really easy to use. To see what I mean, watch a 4 minute video on HubSpot's new prospect tool.

Top of the Sales Funnel Visitors

People visit your web site for all kinds of reasons. They may have come across your site on Google, LinkedIn, or through some other inbound marketing activity. Something about you caught their attention. These visitors are right at the top of your sales funnel, and it could be too early to reach out to them. But, what if they are an ideal target prospect -- A perfect potential customer?

Prospects on your site are much better than people you buy from a list. They really are interested in you! If they seem like a great match for you, why not connect with them via LinkedIn or just give them a call. Just don't lead with "I know you visited our website ..." That might freak them out.

Middle of the Funnel Visitors

Other people may be further along in the buying process and lower in your funnel. Perhaps you  contacted a prospect or even delivered a proposal in the past. Then, nothing. You might have given up to focus on better prospects.

Now, they're back. Fortunately, you've got the prospect tool, so you know they're back. They might be embarrassed that they couldn't purchase from you before, so they're reluctant to call. You, however, can make a timely call and get the sale back on track.

Takeaways

As you saw in the video, it only takes a few minutes a day to see who is visiting your site. Make time for yourself and your salespeople to check this valuable information every day!

How are you going to use the prospects tool? Leave us a comment.

Image Credit: Sean MacEntee

Get prospects into the funnel, work the leads, and make sales. Right?

If you're using Inbound Marketing to fill your funnel, you already know it's easy to get lots of people to your website. And, if you have good opt-in offers, you already know how to turn your visitors into leads. So, why aren't your sales and profits skyrocketing?

The Problem: Some "leads" aren't really prospects

Let's say you are a tax attorney -- You help people resolve their tax problems.

There are a lot of people with tax problems -- Especially in today's economy. And, a lot of these people are doing web searches for help. If you provide a useful opt-in offer, they'll jump on it.

Now you've got a funnel full of people, but many of them aren't qualified. They don't have any money (That may be how they came to have tax problems in the first place). Or, they only have a small tax problem -- It's not worth involving a tax attorney. Worse still, they don't have tax problems at all, but are just curious or bored.

You know the real customers are in there somewhere. So, what do you do? Hire a bunch of salespeople to start contacting your leads.

Now you've got a bunch of expensive, frustrated salespeople. They can't reach any of the leads, and when they finally do talk to someone, they aren't qualified. Even the leads that do seem to be qualified suddenly disappear and won't respond.

For some situations, you might be able to tune up your inbound marketing to reduce the problem. You could discover the keywords that only qualified buyers use, then adjust your AdWords, messages, and landing pages to only get the good leads. However, many times, there just isn't enough information in keywords to let you find the good leads. Everyone uses too many of the same search terms.

Marketing Automation

There's another answer -- Marketing automation. Separate the marketing funnel from the sales funnel, and protect your salespeople from lousy leads. It's marketing's job to filter and qualify leads and only send reasonably good prospects to sales.

Here's what you do:

1. Keep filling the marketing funnel with inbound marketing. Just don't immediately pass new leads to sales.
2. Send email messages to your marketing leads. Are they clicking your links and coming back to your site? If not, they aren't qualified.
3. Add tracking analytics throughout your site to detect when a lead visits a buying indicator page. If you setup the analytics well, you'll discover that visits to a few of your pages indicate buying intent. If they're visiting these pages, pass them on to sales!
4. Monitor social media sites like Twitter to see if your leads are mentioning relevant problems and asking for help.
5. Create middle and lower funnel content and landing pages. Leads who have a vague idea of their problem search with general keywords. They aren't qualified. Good leads who are closer to buying will respond to bottom of the funnel offers.
6. Use lead scoring to segment your list and know when they're ready to buy. Send messages to your leads based on where they are in the funnel to further qualify their buying interest.

With good leads, your salespeople can focus on building trust and resolving concerns. Your marketing automation platform can qualify and warm your leads.

It used to be that only the largest online companies could afford the technology required to implement marketing automation. Thanks to companies like Hubspot, the tools you need have become less expensive and are now appropriate for small businesses.

Takeaways

• Don't waste money and destroy the morale of your salespeople by sending them poor leads.
• If you're a business owner, stop wasting your time on poor leads.
• Use marketing automation to generate warm, qualified leads.

Image Credit: M Glasgow

Having a search box on your website is helpful for several reasons:

• Your visitors can easily find the information they are seeking
• You can analyze the search queries for insights into why people are visiting your site
• For sites with a lot of content (And all Hubspot sites should have a lot of content), your visitors can find information that they wouldn't naturally discover using your navigation

How to create a Google search engine for your Hubspot website

1. To create a Custom Search Engine with Google, go to: http://www.google.com/cse/
2. If you haven't already created a Custom Search Engine, click the big Blue button -- the one labeled "Create a Custom Search Engine.
   
   After you've set one up, you can click the manage your existing search engines link.
   
   
3. Google will ask you to sign in. You'll have to use a "Google Account." This can be any email address that is registered with Google -- It does not have to be a gmail address.
   
   
4. Google will show you a form like the one below. The name and description is only for your internal use.
   
   Make sure you put in the name of your site without the www. This way, Google will search all your sub-domains. Don't worry, this can all be changed later.
   
   Most Hubspot users will want to buy the Site Search that starts at $100 per year. There is a free version, but Google will usually show your competitors in the search results -- not what you want!
   
   If you have a larger site with a lot of searches, you may need to buy one of their more expensive versions.
   
   
   
   
5. Click Next. Google will show you a Preview screen with a search box you can test out.
   
   When you are finished testing, click Next again.
   
   
6. Google will ask for your contact information. Fill out the form, and click Next.
   
   
7. Complete your purchase through Google Checkout.

That's it, you're finished! If you run into any trouble, please leave a comment or call us for help (800.609.9669).

On the last Google Checkout screen, there are links to:

• Edit this search engine
• Go to this search engine's homepage
• View all of your search engines

If you've got HTML and CSS skills, Google will give you sample code that you can integrate with your Hubspot site.

If you need help setting this up with Hubspot, Contact us.

People often describe something as magic or art when they don’t know how to reliably create a result they want. In this case, I know better because I can interview and pick great employees almost every time. Most hiring managers only pick winners 25-40% of the time. I used to have a low success rate, too. Then, I learned how to effectively interview and evaluate and get it right almost every time!

How to Evaluate Talent

• Start with a clear Performance Benchmark. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, how will you know when you find it? How would you know if you got a great employee or not!
• Use Structured Interviewing. There’s a lot to say on structured interviews, but basically, you ask the same questions to each candidate, so that you have a consistent way to compare candidates. I use a chronological interview which starts at the beginning and covers the candidates entire work history. For each job or period in a person’s background, I ask:
  • How did you come to work at __________? (Fill in the blank with the next company or job. This is a transition question. I want to know why they left their old job and how they found the new one.)
  • What was the situation when you started the job?
  • What were your one or two best accomplishments? (Great people will both have accomplishments and want to talk about them.) Once you’ve heard the accomplishment, ask how they did it. You want something they really did rather than something they can just take credit for.
  • What didn’t go as well? It’s easier to get this after they’ve talked about accomplishments. Everyone knows things they could do better, so I keep pushing until I get something.
  • If they were a manager, I’ll ask how many direct reports they had. Then I want to know what they did to improve their team and develop their people.
  • Finally, why did they leave the job?
• Evaluate each candidate against the Performance Benchmark. I grade each candidate against each desired result, skill, etc. Because I used the structured interview, I have a lot of data to back up each grade. I can look through my notes to see where they’ve actually accomplished something similar to the results I want. I want to see accomplishments that are both specific and relevant to my open job. If they’ve done it before, there’s a good chance they’ll produce results for me.
• Once I’ve interviewed and evaluated each candidate, I pick the best one and make an offer. Or, if none of them meet my standards, I start over and generate more candidates.

None of this is all that hard, but it does take commitment and discipline. It does require some work! A good structured interview can take 4 hours for an experienced candidate. That’s a lot of time, but how much time does it chew up to have to fire someone or compensate for poor performance. I’d rather spend a couple of man-days getting it right on the front end than spend man-months cleaning it up later.

So please, take the time to get it right, or hire someone to do it right for you (This is one of the services I offer my clients). There’s just no reason to think it’s art or luck that determines the quality of your hires. Take the time and do the work! With a little practice, you can have great hiring results, too!