Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn (GF202)

If you’re jumping on the social networking bandwagon, consider LinkedIn and Facebook. Interaction on these popular sites will help your business gain momentum. A good strategy for any social media objective includes:

1. Strategically connecting with people in groups who share common expertise in your industry.
2. Creating unique content that is valuable to your audience.    
3. Enticing your audience to interact with you.

Make connections 

Connections are extremely valuable to the growth of your business. The more like-minded people you establish connections with, the more resourceful your network becomes. Your connections not only create job opportunities, they introduce you to a community of experts willing to share their knowledge with you. When you run into tough questions, tap into the wisdom of your peers to find answers. Be choosy about the connections you make. Focus on building quality connections rather than quantity of connections.

Gain referrals

LinkedIn and Facebook are great places to get business referrals. A connection who’s pleased with your work is likely to refer you to one of their peers. If you run into a project beyond your area of expertise, it’s easy to find helpful vendors through your peer network. Establish a mutual referral system between connection vendors – refer web design work in exchange for copywriting work.      

Stir interest with unique content

Create valuable content on your LinkedIn and Facebook pages. If your content is useful to your target audience, they will follow your work. Promote your social network by posting links to your website or blog from your LinkedIn and Facebook pages.  Post fresh content frequently so you keep your audience engaged. Make your content unique and informative. Resist overusing it as a means of self-promotion. People get turned off when content reads like spam.     

Stimulate interaction

Engage your audience by commenting regularly on their postings. This stimulates interaction and allows opportunity to showcase your knowledge. Encourage interaction further by posing questions on your blogs and responding to public queries.  Your thoughtful responses are a demonstration of your expertise. People will view you as an expert in your field and a go-to person when making referrals.     

Professor: Elyse Tager, Silicon Valley American Marketing Association

I've been reminding clients that trying to use tricks in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is at best a waste of time. Here's one reason why! Google just announced a crackdown on content farms that have a lot of poor or duplicated content.

Image By: warrantedarrest

Sites with meaty, original content are not affected by the changes in Google's algorithm. But, people who have been trying to use SEO tricks to manipulate the search results just lost out!

Google has an army of highly intelligent PhD's who spend all day, every day working to deliver the most relevant information to their customers -- People who are searching the web looking for information or answers to their problems.

I know some SEO companies claim to have secret methods for making a page rank highly on Google. These tricks may work for a little while, but ultimately just waste your time and money.

Simply, there's a better way. It's not as sexy as the tricks are, but will deliver a good ROI over the long term. The answer?  Consistently create relevant content that addresses the needs of your target persona.

Business blogging is a perfect way to regularly create the needed content. Over time, you'll build up a library of relevant, valuable articles that your target customers can find via Google.

Sure, you want to optimize your posts and build links, too. Just do it in the right way -- By adding value for your audience!

If you want to know more, there's plenty of information on the details of Google's change to eliminate low-quality content.

Have you been burned by trying to use SEO tricks? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Social Media and Building Community (GF201)

Is your focus about you or your customers?

Does your business revolve around your product, personal goals or yourself? If you answered yes to any of these, you need to reconsider your focus! Your business is not all about you – it’s about your community of customers and their needs. Give your customers what they want! If your product doesn’t address their needs, why should you expect them to buy it? Your customers want to know what you can do for them, not what they can do to bolster your profits. Rather than focus on how to sell people on your products, focus on how your products help people succeed.  

Do you know what your customers need?

Consumers respect businesses that listen to what they have to say. Listen to what your customers are telling you. Their words are like instruction manuals for creating products that sell. Listen and acknowledge them. Acknowledgment demonstrates that you are personable and serious about catering to their needs. Community-building is the best way to hear the voice of your consumer base. Encourage them to express their opinions about your products. Allow them to ask questions and make suggestions. Never presume to know what they want. Ask them instead. Their input will only help your business grow!    

Take action!

Ever heard the saying, “actions speak louder than words?” Well, guess what? It’s true! Take action with the input your customers give you. Don’t allow their feedback to go in one ear and out the other. Acknowledge it and do something constructive with it! When you set their ideas into motion, they’ll realize just how much you value them. If you want your customers coming back for more, give them more of what they’re looking for.          

Go beyond social networking sites

When it comes to social networking, Facebook and LinkedIn are hard to beat. Just don’t limit yourself to them alone! Be active in building a Web community where your customers can interact. Foster a fan base through writing blogs or host a forum on your website where you can interact with people on an intimate level. Praise your customers for their innovative ideas and valuable feedback. People are far more likely to feel good about your company if you treat them like you would your closest friends.  

Professor: Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs

Make Your Business Blog More Interesting Images make your blog much more interesting. Having Images in your business blog is a best practice both for the entertainment of your readers and to improve your inbound marketing and obtain a better search engine position. Look at this image. Doesn't it add color and interest to this blog post? The right image will be both beautiful and interesting for readers and will help emphasize your message.

Photo By tiarescott

1. Visit the Attributions License search page to find a suitable image. This license means that you can use the image as long as you provide attribution through a link. Thanks to HubSpot, here are some other great sources of free images.
2. Always identify your target keywords first, before writing your post. Then, search for an image that emphasizes the key point of your blog post.
3. I started with a search for "freedom," and ended up with a search for "island sail" before finding an image I liked.
4. Watch the video, and then learn how to add the image to your blog.

What's your best idea for finding images for your blog post?

SEO Crash Course: Get Found to Generate Leads & Sales (GF102)

SEO is the most important marketing strategy to generate leads and conversions. By making your site more search engine friendly, it will rank higher in search results – meaning, better visibility and better results.

Get found through the words you use

Keywords are the words that exist in the minds of your target audience. Which words are they most likely to use when searching for your product or service? Coming up with solid keywords requires getting to know the needs of your audience well. In order to rank high in search results, you need keywords that are relevant – words that best describe what you have to offer. Optimize your content for the keywords you target. Remember, keywords matter…a lot!     

Search engine friendly sites are easy to find

You can’t make it easy for customers to find your products unless your content can be found easily by search engines. Web crawlers index text, so you must use results-driven keywords in your content. Add fresh content regularly to reinforce your keyword vocabulary. Site architecture is also important. Search engines can find you more easily if your site structure is logical and easy to navigate. To drive traffic to your site, you need to demonstrate to search engines that your site receives good search results.   

Links, links, and more links!  

To boost your search engine rankings, you need lots of strong inbound links. A strong link is one that ranks high in search results. One of the most effective ways to attract links is to create remarkable content and promote it on social networks. If people find your content useful, they will link to you. Schmoozing with the big boys pays off – affiliation with reputable links will do wonders for your rankings!       

How does your site perform?

Optimize your site by monitoring its performance over time using analytics. It’s useful to pay attention to several key performance indicators. Some important ones include number of indexed pages, rankings, quality and quantity of inbound links, social media traffic, and conversions. You want to maintain a positive user experience on your site – if visitors run into crawling errors, they’re likely to become frustrated and move on to another site.       

Professor: Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing

Blogging, when done consistently, delivers SEO magic. Google and the other search engines love relevant content. A blog with regular posts will move you up in the search engines and get your company found.

How to Blog Effectively for Business (GF101):

• Know your audience, their needs, problems, and pain.
• Develop a persona that represents your audience. More on: How to Create Personas.
• Be the Expert for solving your audience's problems.
• Ask for comments in your blog post & start a conversation.
• Use social networks to listen and see what people want to talk about.

Professors: Ann Handley & Mack Collier, MarketingProfs

Now, I know business isn't exactly the same as dating. Still, there are some interesting comparisons!

According to the video, to be more attractive, you should use:

• Aromatherapy - Well, at least for now, web browsers don't support aroma. That's probably a good thing as some business websites stink!
• Smiles - "We're biologically primed to prefer people who seem to be interested in us." Is your site about your customers and prospects, or all about you?
• Eye Contact - Are you really interested in serving your customers and prospects? They can tell!
• Hand Gestures - Is your content interesting and compelling? Why should anyone care?
• White Teeth - Do you care enough to take care of the small things? Do you have readable text and good grammer?
• Good Posture - Is your site structured so that search engines can find you? Can your visitors easily find information?
• Name Dropping - Are you focused on the needs and questions of your customers and prospects? Do you really know who your customers and prospects are?
• Red Clothes [Optional] - Color and design do matter on the web, but having remarkable content and good readability matters more.

For Lead Conversion, you don't need a pretty website! You just need to be Attractive.

What do you think?

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team -- The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

SEO, blogging, PPC, landing pages, social media, video -- All are important tools. But, don't forget to find and help the potential leads who are already on the web looking for help!

Recently, I found a post on a forum that was about some of the key software tools I use -- Hubspot and Infusionsoft. So, I looked up the woman who wrote the post and called to see how it was all working for her. Really, I was just curious about her business and what she was doing.

But, it turned out that she had some challenges I could help with, and my casual, curiosity phone call turned into a sales call!

Sales is all about connecting with people that you can help. So, don't forget that "listening" to the web is part of inbound marketing, too. It's not all about writing content. Make sure you spend some of your marketing time:

• Commenting on blog posts
• Surfing the posts on relevant forums
• Searching on Twitter
• Just being curious and open to connections

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

Infusionsoft Double Your Sales Promise Overall Grade: B+

Recently, their focus may have shifted. But, over the last year, Infusionsoft has talked a lot about their product being able to Double Your Sales. Is this true?

Actually, it is true for many small businesses. If your business fits into the following, you have a good chance to Double Your Sales with Infusionsoft:

• If you have revenues less than $1M. Obviously, it's easier to grow your business from $200K to $400K than it is to go from $10M to $20M in a short time.

• If you have a good product or services and a clear, differentiated strategy. If you have a poor or "me too" product, then doing a better job of communication and follow-up still won't help.

• If you are willing to spend your time and/or money to improve your marketing or follow-up. Sometimes, people allow themselves to believe that all they have to do is spend $200-300 with Infusionsoft and their sales will improve. Of course, this won't happen by itself. It takes a real effort to realize the potential of Infusionsoft.

• You're an established business and already have a list of customers. Startups can still benefit from Infusionsoft, but it's going to take longer and cost more.

Infusionsoft loves to talk about doubling your sales. One example company had a good product, was established, had a contact list of almost 6,000 customers, and had revenues of $200-300K when they started. So that had a good starting point. The one thing that isn't always pointed out is that Infusionsoft supplied some of their top people to provide consulting help. The company may have paid for some of the improvements to their website, but they didn't pay for the top consulting help.

Doing better at attracting leads, building your contact list, and following-up will help any business, and Infusionsoft is very helpful in facilitating this process. Plus, Infusionsoft will help with your education-based marketing programs.

The key is to provide value to your prospects and customers. I know this is obvious, but I talk with people all the time who have the idea the technology like Infusionsoft is the secret. Infusionsoft is a good tool for many companies. But, you have to know your customer, provide value, and communicate clearly. At GreasedSkid, we help Infusionsoft clients accomplish exactly these goals.

So, why a B+ instead of a higher grade? Some of Infusionsoft's marketing reinforces the idea that if you just buy the product, your sales will quickly double. As described above, it can. Just be prepared to do the needed work!

Greased Skid Marketing is now part of Inbound Team --The Atlanta, Georgia Inbound Marketing Agency specializing in helping businesses grow with online marketing.

I am an Infusionsoft consultant (CMAC), and I work with a lot of Infusionsoft customers. If I hated Infusionsoft, I wouldn't be in this business! It's got it's strengths and weaknesses, and since I work with it every day, I'm going to try and help you decide if it's a good fit for you.

Since I may work with you in the future, I want to paint a realistic picture of where it's good and who it will work for. It's not good for me to have to tell clients "No, Infusionsoft can't do that."

In case you don't know, Infusionsoft is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Email Marketing product. It gives you a database to store all your customers, and makes it easy to send follow-up email messages to them. Since most businesses don't do a good job of following up, this can really boost your business.

Their system is specifically targeted at small businesses. The typical starting price is $200 or $300 per month (At the higher price, you get more contacts and features). This price includes 2 users, so if you have more than two salespeople who will use the system, you'll need to add additional users at $59 per month. Infusionsoft is not recommended for companies with more than 25 users!

Infusionsoft is very aggressive with it's sales and marketing. I understand their desire to sell their product, but I think it would be better if they were more consultative in their sales approach. The sales people seem to say "Yes" to almost any question regarding the capabilities of the system. I think their sales and marketing aggressiveness is the number one reason for Infusionsoft complaints.

So, I'm going to try to help with a balanced review of their features and service. I'm going to go through each of these in the next several days, and if a link isn't active, please check back.

And, if you are or become an Infusionsoft user, please Contact Us when you need some help!

Comments are always welcome here, so if you have a specific question, please leave a comment.

Infusionsoft Features

• Email Marketing Grade: A-
  4-8-2011 Since I originally wrote this review, Infusionsoft has upgraded the product, so I increased their Email Marketing grade from B+ to A-.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Grade: A

• Smart Automation & Multimedia Marketing Grade: A+

• Shopping Cart Grade: D

• Affiliate Module Grade: C-

• Double Your Sales Promise Grade: B+

Infusionsoft Technology and Support

• Technical Support Grade: B+

• Customer Support Grade: C-

• Software API Grade: B-

• Overall Architecture Grade: C

I hope this information helps you make a wise choice for your business. As you can see, Infusionsoft does some things very well, but you have to make sure the gaps don't get in the way of your business.