Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

How To Increase Website Traffic

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

May 15, 2012

All business marketers want to increase website traffic. Finding the right and suitable ways to do so is just not easy.

Here's a good introductory article on how to increase traffic to your site. 

Inbound Marketing and How to Increase Website Traffic

Search engine optimization is about ways to get your website to the top of search engines. To accomplish this, what you have to do is to focus your content to the keyword related to your topic. Doing these will definitely improve your ranking in search engines! 

You just have to remember to be creative to increase your site traffic. Write a good content, focus the right keywords and even add image to make it more attractive and readable. 

Read the full article on "How to Increase Website Traffic..."                                                 

more

Topics: Inbound Marketing, SEO


Inbound Marketing Trap -- Over-optimized Marketing

Posted by Clarke Bishop

May 13, 2012

I'm a guitar player -- Well, sort of. I was thinking of buying a special learning guitar from Fretlight. It has LEDs built into the neck to show you where to put your fingers!

Here's what happend, Fretlight lost my trust due to over-optimized marketing. I'm no longer a prospect.

Over Optimized Inbound Marketing

Like many people, I rely on reviews and opinions from other people. And, the reviews were all great -- This thing was supposed to play just like a Fender guitar. Plus, it would help you shorten your guitar learning curve.

The reviews were so good, I got curious and did a search for "Fretlight negative review." That's when I started seeing stories about how Fretlight was aggressive in suppressing negative reviews and getting non-guitar players to write glowing reviews. Then, I found people talking about some serious quality problems and playability problems.

Fretlight may have a good product, I don't know. The point is that I'm too put off to find out! If their product really does help you master guitar, I wish they had put more effort into improving their product than perfecting their marketing.

The safe way to get search traffic is to create great content that helps your prospects solve their problems. Anything else and Google will getcha.

Google's Penguin Update and SEO

Speaking of over-optimized marketing, you may have heard about Google's recent Penguin update. Google is now penalizing sites for having over-optimized links.

Let's say you want to rank for a keyword like "inbound marketing." And you have lots of links that all have the same exact anchor text that includes the optimized keywords. 

Google figures this couldn't have happened naturally -- You must be manipulating the links. If it were natural, at least of few of the links would say "Click Here" or something equally irrelevant. ("Click Here" is the anchor text even though this link doesn't go anywhere.) 

Takeaways

What works and will always work is creating great content and serving your prospects. Anything else can work against you.

  • You can't fool Mother Google. Don't try.
  • Always, Always, Always, make sure you are serving your customers first.
  • Have a great product. If you don't, improve the product until it is great.

Learn how to grow sales the right way with
our free special report: Boost My Sales.

  Click me

 

more

Topics: Inbound Marketing, SEO


Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Website & Get More Customers

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

May 9, 2012

Driving traffic to your site is a good way to attract more customers but sometimes, it's just not enough. 

It's important that you understand the behavior of your website visitors so that you can have better advantage and knowledge.

Sinead's article, "The Easy Way To Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Website & Get More Customers", provides insight on improving your site rather than merely driving traffic. More visitors that are annoyed by your website won't help you!

In-page analytics is a report in google Analytics which allows you to see which links users click, thus, allowing you to see how effective the links on your pages are and track where your visitors go.

Inbound Marketing and Google Analytics to attract more customers

Google Analytics will help you determine the links which are effective in your site and the ones you need to improve on, for you to get more site visitors, thus, generate more customers.

Read the full article on "The Easy Way To Use Google Analytics to Improve Your Website & Get More Customers."

What's your best Google Analytics tip? Please leave a comment and let us know.

more

Topics: Inbound Marketing, SEO


8 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Site Using Google+

Posted by Devine Mae Loredo

May 7, 2012

Great content is essential for Inbound Marketing. Still, you have to get visitors to your site or your great content is useless!

Marc Pitman has an interesting article on Social Media Examiner on how Google+ can send you more traffic.

Google has developed a new and advanced way to drive traffic to your site. They call it, “Search, plus Your World”. It’s all about tailoring a person’s search to include results based on their social media profile.

Google knows that people would want to see results based on their own personal history and things their friends like. Now, when you search, you may see a post from someone you know, or someone who also knows someone you know. 

inbound-marketing-google-plus

Google+ will definitely help you get more traffic.

Read the full article on 8 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Site Using Google + ...

Leave a comment and let us know the best idea you get from this article.

Click me

 

more

Topics: Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing, SEO


Business Blogging: What to do about "Writer's Block"

Posted by Clarke Bishop

April 10, 2012

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!

Business blogging avoid writers block

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. 

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 

more

Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing, SEO


Why are you here? What's the Purpose of Your Marketing Agency?

Posted by Clarke Bishop

March 1, 2012

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.

inbound marketing know your purpose

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.

more

Topics: Small Business Marketing, Inbound Marketing


A Landing Page is Not an Island

Posted by Clarke Bishop

February 28, 2012

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

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!

  Click me

Image Credit: gnuckx

more

Topics: Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing, Conversion


Maximize Conversion: Advanced Landing Page Design

Posted by Clarke Bishop

February 16, 2012

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!

advanced-landing-page-design

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.
Click me

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.

more

Topics: Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing, Conversion


Inbound Marketing Website Design: Apple Icons & Meta Viewport

Posted by Clarke Bishop

December 30, 2011

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.

Mobile Website Optimization s

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:
    Inbound Team Apple Icon
  • 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.
Depending on your situation, there are a lot of geeky ways you can adjust the Meta Viewport tag to control how your pages display:

How to Enable Mobile Website Optimization in HubSpot

I've assumed that you already enabled Mobile Website Optimization. If not, it's easy:
  • In HubSpot, go to Settings -> Website Settings and find the Mobile Theme Optimization section.
  • Click to select Enable Mobile Optimization.
  • If you want to know how it will look, click the Preview the mobile theme ... link.
  • Scroll down and Save Changes.

Takeaway

It's quick and easy to add Apple Icons and a Meta Viewport tag. And, it get's you two points on your Marketing Grader!

If you have trouble, you're always welcome to leave your questions in a comment below.

Of course, some Inbound Marketers would rather have help with technical items. If that's you, call 800.609.9669 and we'll set this up for you.

more

Topics: Small Business Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Social Media


Inbound Marketing: What To Do Next?

Posted by Clarke Bishop

December 30, 2011

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:

inbound-team-marketing-grader-improved-resized-600

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.

more

Topics: Lead Generation, Blogging, Inbound Marketing, SEO, Social Media