Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

The world of online marketing is buzzing over the newest breakthrough release of HubSpot — HubSpot 3. For weeks now, talk of the new and improved HubSpot have been swarming the internet, making online marketers curious and excited about the upcoming features HubSpot 3 will provide.

It's already common knowledge that HubSpot helps businesses grow. 

So who can resist Hubspot 3? As Rachel Ergo cited in her article, HubSpot 3 is quickly blossoming into being a marketer’s one true love.  Read the full article on “HubSpot 3 Workflows – Integrate, Automate and Love!” and discover what HubSpot is all about.

Change is constant in this world for only with change comes growth, especially when it comes to business. Innovation and modification should always be at hand especially if you know that you’re doing it for the love of something you truly believe in, which is your business.

True, iPhone 5 is expected to have a larger screen, work over higher-speed wireless networks, and have other goodies. But, will it help you grow your business so you can afford all those new iPhones for your employees?

At Inbound Team, we are a HubSpot partner, and yes, we love HubSpot. Still, it’s rare to see a new software release that offers as much as HubSpot 3.

Have you ever called a customer “service” number where they ask you to punch in your account number. Then, when you finally get a representative, what do they ask? “Could I have your account number please?” I cringe every time this happens, and it happens almost every time.

Unfortunately, too much online marketing works the same way. Come to our website and download our white paper. Just give us your name, email, company, phone, etc. The only problem is that we may have recently collected all the same information from the same person — Very annoying!

• What if you had a website that knew all about your customers and visitors? 
• What if it only asked for data it didn’t already have? 
• Even better, what if it gave them appropriate content based on who they are and where they are in the buying cycle? 

Finallly, HubSpot 3 solves the problem.

At Inbound Team, we do a lot of integrations between HubSpot and other systems. We know how hard it can be to make everything work well together. 

In HubSpot 3, everything revolves around contacts. The Contacts section has been completely redesigned so that you can associate much more data with a specific contact. This really lets you know who the person is and what interests them. 

Then, you can build dynamic, “smart lists” to focus on a specific group of your customers or prospects. What if a big social media influencer visited your site? Wouldn't you want to treat them with extra care?

In the example list shown below, we’ve found our Influencers by checking their follower count and recent history. Yes, HubSpot actually looks this up for you.

Lists can be used for email marketing, but the same idea is used to create Smart Forms that only collect the data you don’t already have. 

You can even change Calls to Action (CTA) and other elements of your website based on the Contact’s information. You can show a top of the funnel CTA for new visitors and offer a totally different offer to visitors that are ready to buy.

There’s only one downside to all this marketing power — It takes some expertise to use it effectively. HubSpot has made things very usable. Still,you have to know your customers, know their buying process, create  relevant content and design all these interactions. That’s where we can help. Get a free HubSpot 3 marketing review. 

I may never know why phone systems keep asking for account numbers and can’t integrate with customer service software. At least my marketing life just got a lot easier. My customers will love it!

Please leave a comment and let me know how you are going to use HubSpot 3 to delight your customers.

Useful analytics are your best friend when it comes to measuring and improving your inbound marketing.

• Who are visiting your site?
• Where they are coming from?
• Where are they going
• What they are viewing on your site.

Confused with how Google Analytics works? Leave a comment and share to us the questions you have and we’ll help you the best way we can.

Writing is self-expression in its simplest form. Still, you may find it hard.

For people to read your article, your content should be creative and relevant. According to Stephanie Mcgrath, anyone who can read can definitely write.

In her article, she tackles strategies and shares tips for web writing. She cited that you just have to remember the mantras of writing, like thinking about who you are writing for. 

Writing gives you the benefit of conveying your message to your readers, and, it's surely the best way to introduce your products and services. Just keep in mind that what you are writing should always be interesting and relevant to your readers.

Are you stuck with your writing? Here is another great article to help you get your thoughts together. Read Clarke Bishop’s Business Blogging: What to do about "Writer's Block.

What stops you from writing more? Leave a comment. Yes, I know that means you have to write a sentence or two!

Getting traffic is a good way to increase revenue but for your business to grow, you must understand the behavioral patterns of your site visitors. 

A great tool for this is Google Analytics. Everything you need to know about your site visitors is shown. You can truely understand your site visitors.

In Melinda’s article, she cited how you can set up Google Analytics on your site and listed her favorite statistical ways to do it.

Google Analytics is definitely a must-have tool for you if you want improvement for your business at its finest.

Read more on “Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Website”…

Are you using Google Analytics for your site? Leave a comment and share to us how Google Analytics improve your site.

After college, you need to find the perfect place for you to grow and become a better person. Lucky for me, I’ve found just that.

It's a competitive world. Finding your niche is very difficult. Having proper education is never enough to land you a job. It takes a great deal of determination and patience to find the right one for you.

Though I have finished College, it wasn't easy to find a job. 

I’ve always had the passion for writing, evident in the fact that I joined campus publications since I was seven. I would’ve taken Journalism, but my parents wanted me to study nursing.

However, after I graduated, I realized that writing is what I want to do for a living.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity I’ve been long waiting for. I got my first full-time writing job, being a part of Inbound Team. I thought this job will be easy for me, but, I was wrong!

I read somewhere a quote that says: “Find a job that you love and you’ll never work one day in your life.” I finally found the job I’ve always wanted. But, I was feeling uncertain if I’d be able to do it right.

Business Blogging is nothing like I’m used writing. I’ve been writing feature articles for campus publications, but now, I have to write blogs to help people make their business more successful. How can I ever achieve that?

It wasn’t easy at first. I was struggling. But then, I was lucky to get all the help I need from my mentor. With his patience and perseverance, plus my dedication and hard work, I finally learned how the whole process works.

I’ve realized that it’s easy to write about anything, but what’s hard is to write about something! At least something you have to learn about first. Here are a few tips which helped me finally become the Business Blogger I aimed to be:

Discover and Know your Marketing Personas.

Before you start writing, you need to know who you are writing for. You need to discover who your readers are. Once you achieve that, the next step is to empathize. Put yourself in their shoes. Who are they? What are they feeling? What questions do they have? Once you’ve got that figured out, you know you’re on the right track.

Create Great Content.

Always write something worth reading. Create content which is interesting and informative. Your content should answer all the questions your readers have and more importantly, it should keep them reading. Moreover, when you create your content, make sure it will trigger a response from them. What do they need to know? What have they learned? What do you want them to do? Once all these questions are answered, you know you’ve done a good job.

It’s not impossible to find your spot, even in the most unexpected of all places. After all, you can be whoever you want to be.

Who would’ve thought? I became a Business Blogger. All it took is my computer, great ideas, and bit of practice.

How did you start blogging? Leave a comment and tell your story. 

Image Credit:stuck4ideas

Marketers want to really know buyers so they can help the buyer understand their products and services.

Analytics Software helps you reach out and understand your audience to improve and increase your site traffic.

Google Analytics is free and is said to be the easiest way to help and is more helpful to business neophytes according to Karlee Weinmann.

It tells you all you need to know about your site visitors. You will learn your site visitors innate behaviors when it comes to your products and services. You will gain better understanding of what does and what doesn't work for your prospective customers.

Google Analytics is definitely the tool you need to improve your business site. Read the full article on "7 Ways Google Analytics Will Improve..."

Share with us your experience with Google Analytics and let us know how it worked for you.

There are a lot of ways to get more leads through your webite. One of the best is to drive more traffic. However, there are many tools and strategies available. You may feel uncertain about what really works.

Elance Alex shares his idea on how to drive more traffic. He cited Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as the most effective.

Read the full article on “5 Ways to Drive…”

The point of SEM is to promote your website through paid advertisement. It may be costly but definitely worth it. It can bring a positive result in your website traffic.

There are many ways for you to increase site traffic. Some are free, and some may cost you money. But then, always keep in mind that sometimes, spending money is a small price to pay to have a more effective and profitable website.

Do you use Pay-per-click advertising? Did it work for you? Please leave a comment and tell us your experiences.

Creating a website is a great step to promote your business. It just isn't enough!

You can’t just sit around and wait for people to stumble upon your site. A very effective way to gain customers is by driving traffic to your site.

Clicknewz.com talks about using Social Network Sites to promote your products and services. Doing this will make it easier for people interested in your business to find you.

We've had great success using LinkedIn to drive traffic. Find out more:

An important thing to remember is to constantly improve your site. Develop strategies or tools which you can use to make your site more interesting. Once people are interested, it gives you more traffic, thus, more customers.

Read more on "Driving Traffic To A New Website"...

If you just got started with Inbound Marketing, leave a comment and let us know how you are planning to get more visitors.                                                  

LinkedIn is an amazing resource for B2B lead generation -- If you know how and don't mind doing some work!

Most small business people are on LinkedIn, but many have never gotten any leads. One reason is that people think of LinkedIn like other social networks. They try to amass connections, but nothing happens. It's not about how many connections you have. 

There's a better way, and I'm going to share our LinkedIn Lead Generation Formula!

Step-by-Step Guide to Lead Generation with LinkedIn

1. Know Your Ideal Prospects

For effective sales or marketing, you need to know who would be a great prospect. This is especially true on LinkedIn. For our clients, we usually create one or two Personas that describe their ideal prospect.

Let's say you have a product that is especially valuable to hotels, but you only serve Dallas, Texas and the surrounding area. 

Try this: Log into LinkedIn and click the advanced search button. 

Put in the keywords: hotel, hospitality

Put in a Dallas zip code: 75201, and a radius: 75 miles

Click Search. I got over 2,800 results.

Now all of these may not be perfect prospects, but they are all in your target industry and your target geography. And, each of them almost certainly knows several of your perfect prospects.

2. Create Valuable Content

Your prospects have problems and business challenges, and you have valuable knowledge. 

If you were an expert in staffing for hotels, and you knew how to find reliable employees, don't you think most hotel managers would want to hear from you?

So let your prospects know your tricks! Are you worried that you won't be able to sell your services anymore once you tell prospects what you know? Well, don't. It's almost always easier and cheaper to hire an expert. But first, you have to let your prospects know you are an expert!

Content can mean many things. Videos, Blogs, PDFs, eBooks, Info-Graphcs, Photos, MP3s -- Anything that communicates. You know your prospects, so you know what they would appreciate.

3. Announce Your Content with LinkedIn

Knowing your prospects and creating valuable content -- That's what you do for any Inbound Marketing campaign.

It's a common problem that small businesses have. They put up a website or blog, but nobody comes to see their great content. You can have the best content in the world, but it doesn't matter is nobody sees it.

You also need a content announcement strategy that connects your prospects to your content. This is where LinkedIn shines. Here are some examples of ways to get the word out:

• Send a direct message to all your contacts
• Announce your content to groups you've joined
• Use a status update to announce your content
• Create your own group and provide value
• Do a Poll and let everyone know the results

Even though all of these are possible with LinkedIn, many companies don't take advantage. Why? Because it takes time -- Time that small companies don't have. Plus, it does take some specialized knowledge so, 

Typical Lead Generation Results

This is all nice, but does it work? I'll share the actual metrics with you from a LinkedIn campaign we did internally in the fall of 2011. 

In one day, we got 15 leads. It kept growing, but we neglected to capture the graphs or I'd show you the rest. How many of you wouldn't love to get 15 quality leads a week -- Every week? These are typical results -- Not a special case.

For a large business, that's not enough, but for most smaller businesses, you'll quickly overwhelm your sales team.

Even better, these were very qualified leads. You can visit the Quickly Boost B2B Sales landing page. It's a good landing page, but a 50% conversion rate? The only way you get that high a conversion rate is to have great content and send very qualified traffic!

Here's another thing that happens. Your LinkedIn visitors will vote for your content. Good results confirm that you are solving their problems and delivering valuable content. Who do you think they'll call when they need your products or services?

The example below got 51 LinkedIn "shares" and 6 Re-tweets. The Twitter results came for free as we have our LinkedIn and Twitter accounts connected together. We weren't even focused on Twitter!

Inbound Marketing Takeaways

Use LinkedIn correctly and you can connect your prospects with your content -- Everybody wins.

• Know your prospects -- Be targeted.
• Create valuable content that solves your prospect's problems.
• Announce your content on LinkedIn. Let your world know.
• Track your results.