Inbound Marketing For Dummies E-Book

Scott Anderson Miller

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 475

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Don't chase business--bring new customers to you! Outdated sales tactics have you chasing leads and fishing for new business. In today's competitive world, nobody has time for that! Inbound Marketing For Dummies is a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about inbound marketing techniques that attract the attention of your target audience. Whether you have a small or large business, this approachable text offers insight into creating, executing, promoting, and measuring inbound marketing tactics through easy-to-follow instructions on setting up and implementing a new strategic approach. With the information in this book, you can increase brand awareness, enhance brand loyalty, engage with target audience members, and attract new buyers all by leveraging your website, social media, blog, and other resources that are, most likely, already at your fingertips. A breath of fresh air brought on by the Digital Age, inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven marketing approach that calls upon digital-based resources, such as your website, social media platforms, blogging, search engine optimization, etc., to establish your company as an authority in its industry--and to help customers find you, instead of require your sales team to chase after each and every customer. * Build a reliable inbound marketing team * Develop deeper relationships with your customers * Convert inbound traffic into revenue * Combine inbound and outbound marketing strategies to optimize your business' resources Inbound Marketing For Dummies is an essential guide for anyone looking to leverage tried and true inbound marketing strategies within their business.

Leseprobe

Inbound Marketing For Dummies®

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947762

ISBN 978-1-119-12050-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-12052-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-12051-3 (ebk)

Inbound Marketing For Dummies

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/inboundmarketing to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Cover

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Inbound Marketing

Chapter 1: What Is Inbound Marketing, Anyway?

Knowing the Basics of Inbound Marketing

Understanding Inbound as a Philosophy and as a Marketing System

Learning Why Inbound Marketing Is Important to Your Organization

Exploring the Benefits of Inbound Marketing

Defining the Differences between Traditional and Inbound Marketing

Understanding the Four Objectives of a High-Performance Conversion System

Introducing the Three-Step Inbound Process

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 2: Introducing the Inbound Philosophy into Your Organization

Creating Satisfaction within Your Organization

Overcoming Internal Resistance to Inbound Marketing

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 3: Diagnosing Your Current Inbound Marketing Performance

Performing an Inbound Marketing Assessment

Understanding Why You Should Perform an Inbound Assessment

Knowing What to Assess

Determining Who Should Perform Your Inbound Assessment

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 4: Prescribing Strategic Inbound Marketing Solutions

Strategizing Business Solutions

Knowing the Components of Your Strategic Inbound Plan

Building Your Strategic Inbound Plan

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 5: Applying Inbound Solutions: Executing Your Plan

Implementing Your Strategic Inbound Plan

Developing Your Inbound Timeline

Creating a Shared Strategic Blueprint (SSB)

Delegating Ownership of the Work

Establishing Your Inbound Metrics and Milestones

Measuring Your Success

Things You Can Do Now

Part II: The Art and Science of Consumer Connections

Chapter 6: Mapping Your Customers’ Purchase Paths

In the Beginning: Lewis’s Purchase Funnel

Welcome to Today: The Buyer’s Journey

Evolving into the Future: The Lifestyle Loop

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 7: Discovering Customer Needs with Keywords

Finding a Need and Fulfilling It

Understanding Keyword Research for the Inbound Marketer

Using Keyword Tools

Categorizing Keywords

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 8: Connecting People with Your Products

Creating Meaningful Connections

Remembering the original 4 P’s of Marketing

Introducing the New 4 P’s of Inbound Marketing

Closing Communication Gaps

Knowing Your Attraction Factors

Things You Can Do Now

Part III: Building a Customer Conversion Machine

Chapter 9: Building Your Conversion Machine

Understanding the Importance of a Conversion Machine

What’s a Conversion Machine?

Building a Super-Powered Website Engine

Fueling Consumer Connections with Content

Creating a Frictionless Buying Experience

Achieving Unusually High Performance (Success)!

Testing Your Attraction and Conversion Points

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 10: Organizing Your Website for Attraction and Conversion

Making Your Website Attractive

Defining a Content Management System (CMS)

Choosing Your CMS

Involving Your Developer with Your Marketing Efforts

Gaining Access to Your Website

Building Your Website on Conversion Architecture

Identifying Wireframes That Work

Creating Your Website Content

Applying Website Metrics

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 11: Creating a Call-to-Action Map

Building a Call-to-Action Map

Creating Wireframe Templates as Part of Your CTA Map

Using Your CTA Map as Part of Your Site Map

Things You Can Do Now

Part IV: Fueling Visitor Needs with Content Marketing

Chapter 12: Creating Valuable Content: The 4 E’s of Content Marketing

Why Content Is King, Queen, Jack, and Your Ace in the Hole

Making Purposeful Content Connections

Introducing the 4 E’s of Content Marketing

Knowing Your Content Forms

Fueling Offsite Engagement with Premium Content

Improving Your Content

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 13: Creating Inbound Campaigns with Content

Connecting the Dots to Provide Conversion Flow

Creating Connective Campaigns

Building Your First Campaign

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 14: Blogging for Attraction

Going Beyond the Traditional Blog

Creating Your Blog

Things You Can Do Now

Part V: Attracting Visitors to Your Website

Chapter 15: Growing Your Organic Traffic

Improving Your Organic Traffic

Optimizing for Organic Rankings

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 16: Attracting Visitors with Paid Search

Rescuing the Reputation of PPC

Building Your Paid Search Campaigns

Knowing Your Paid Search Channels

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 17: Attracting Visitors with Social Media Sharing

Learning the Benefits of Social Media

Matching Your Message with the Medium

Building a Following on Social Media

Segmenting Followers Based on Customer Conversion Path

Sharing Your Content on Social Media

Automating Content Distribution

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 18: Using Email to Attract and Reattract

Knowing Where to Start

Writing Emails That Attract and Convert

Emailing Individuals Instead of the Masses

Creating an Email Workflow

Things You Can Do Now

Part VI: Understanding the Power of Conversion

Chapter 19: Knowing Your Conversion Types

Knowing Your Conversion Types

Understanding the Customer Conversion Chain

Collecting Customer Data

Implementing Lead Scoring

Organizing Your Data for Future Conversions

Knowing What To Do with Contact and Customer Data

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 20: Increasing Website Conversions

Applying the Customer Conversion Chain

Analyzing the Links in Your Customer Conversion Chain

Everything Inbound Is Connected

Understanding the Value of Your Conversions

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 21: Building Effective Landing Pages

Defining a Landing Page

Improving Your Conversion Success Rate with Landing Pages

Things You Can Do Now

Part VII: Measuring Success with Analytics

Chapter 22: Measuring Your Inbound Marketing Results

Knowing Your Most Important Metric

Understanding Google Analytics

Choosing Your Reports

Custom Reports

Things You Can Do Now

Chapter 23: Understanding User Testing

Gaining Insight from User Testing

Knowing What to Test

Knowing Your Minimum Sample Size

Performing A/B Testing

Setting Up User Testing

Things You Can Do Now

Part VIII: The Part of Tens

Chapter 24: Ten Steps to Implementing Inbound Marketing

Determining Whether Your Organization Is Open to Change

Discussing Internal and External Goals with Other Departments or Colleagues

Formulating Your Company’s Customer Conversion Chain

Determining Budget of Time, Energy, and Money to Achieve Goals

Performing an Inbound Marketing Assessment

Writing Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

Assigning In-House and Outsourced Inbound Marketing Responsibilities

Retooling or Rebuilding Your Website

Writing Your First Shared Strategic Blueprint

Beginning Content Creation

Chapter 25: Ten Important Inbound Marketing Metrics

Lifetime Value Of Your Customer (LTV)

First Action Value (Purchase)

Cost-Per-Acquisition

Return-On-Investment (ROI) Cost-Per-Lead/Cost-Per-Acquisition

Presentation-to-Purchase Close Ratio

MQLs-to-SQLs Ratio

Contact-Conversions-to-MQL Ratio

Unique-Visitors-to-Lead Ratio

Cost-Per-Lead

Buyer Purchase Path Sales Cycle Timeline

Glossary

About the Author

Cheat Sheet

Connect with Dummies

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Introduction

Traditional marketing methods don’t work anymore. With over three billion people accessing the Internet, over half of them via mobile devices, you are living in the connected “global village” predicted by Marshall McLuhan in 1968. Power is shifting from company brands to individual consumers armed with influence and currency. Consumers research, shop, and purchase when and where they want, on their own schedules. Does this mean you should give up marketing for good?

Meet inbound marketing, a holistic system that creates meaningful connections between organizations and people. The ultimate inbound-marketing goal is marketing to a customer as an individual, creating a connection that culminates in a desired end — an action in the form of a sale, donation, or subscription.

This book teaches the principles of connecting with consumers on their terms, not on the marketer’s terms. My aim is to clarify inbound marketing best practices so marketers succeed in connecting products with people. This book is a guide for you as an inbound marketing strategist and practitioner.

Inbound marketing is attractive because it creates timely, relevant, and contextual connections. When executed properly, inbound marketing results in an end purchase, donation, or engagement that appears natural to the user because the consumer proceeds at his or her own pace and stays in control throughout the process. All you have to do is communicate an authentic message that resonates and attracts consumers. Better connections result in better conversions. This customer attraction and conversion process is the essence of inbound marketing.

About This Book

Inbound marketing is a hot topic. It’s more than a trendy fad or a buzzword. Inbound marketing’s foundation is attraction over interruption messaging. Inbound marketing integrates messaging that is contextual, relevant, and timely for the intended recipient, and integrates into your target consumer’s purchasing behavior. Interruptive messaging (such as a TV ad), on the other hand, unnaturally disrupts your consumer’s behavior. Integrating your marketing based on your target customers’ needs is a fundamental paradigm shift from “push” marketing to “pull” marketing.

In this new paradigm, traditional marketers are quickly becoming dinosaurs. Their old methods of marketing don’t apply in the new digital age. They need a primer to adapt and evolve. By connecting with consumers early in the purchase process and by serving up content that is relevant and timely, marketers can achieve a higher level of success. Anyone new to this paradigm needs a guidebook to correctly implement inbound marketing in his or her organization. That’s where this book comes in. Inbound Marketing For Dummies teaches marketers and business owners how to succeed in this new, dynamic environment.

Foolish Assumptions

The book clarifies the principles and processes of inbound marketing to aspiring and seasoned marketing professionals alike. It teaches how to attract, convert, and keep customers for life. As such, it’s a good resource for any of the following:

Marketing directors

Marketing coordinators

Marketing consultants

Ad agency owners

PR firms

Small-business owners

In-house marketing personnel

Bloggers/content producers

Users of marketing automation software or sales customer-relationship management software

This book assumes you have a basic working knowledge of marketing from which you are looking to expand and grow. It also assumes your company has Google Analytics connected to your website.

Icons Used in This Book

In this book, material of interest is sometimes indicated by icons in the margins. This section briefly describes each icon in this book.

Sometimes the volume of inbound marketing information can be overwhelming. You’ll see this icon to help you easily scan important inbound marketing information.

Whenever there’s a simpler or better way to make complex information simple, you’ll see this icon.

There’s a lot that can go wrong with inbound marketing. Believe me, I’ve made my share of mistakes. Paying attention to this icon helps you avoid common inbound marketing pitfalls.

Used sparingly, this icon designates information beyond the basics of inbound marketing. When you see this icon, don’t freak out! Just knowing the basics of inbound marketing elevates your knowledge base above the typical marketer.

Beyond This Book

A lot of extra content that you won’t find in this book is available at www.dummies.com. Go online to find the following:

Online articles covering additional topics at

www.dummies.com/extras/inboundmarketing

Here you’ll find out how to create three-dimensional content that connects with consumers, learn ten steps to creating an inbound marketing campaign, and ten criteria for choosing marketing automation software, among other details to aid you in your inbound-marketing journey.

The Cheat Sheet for this book is at

www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/inboundmarketing

Here you’ll find additional helpful inbound marketing resources online and on my inbound marketing tech e-cheat sheet.

Updates to this book, if we have any, are also available at

www.dummies.com/extras/inboundmarketing

Where to Go from Here

This book makes the new marketing paradigm clear to you. Although it’s important to remember inbound marketing is a process, and even small pieces contribute to the whole, feel free to scan the table of contents or the index to find topics helpful to your particular marketing situation. Additionally, I’ve provided a glossary of useful inbound-marketing terminology at the back of the book.

Part I

Getting Started with Inbound Marketing

Visit www.dummies.com for great For Dummies content online.

In this part …

Learning the difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing.

Understanding the positive impact inbound marketing will have on your organization.

Learning the four objectives of inbound marketing.

Introducing the three-step inbound process to your organization.

Discovering components of an organized, systematic inbound marketing plan.

Chapter 1

What Is Inbound Marketing, Anyway?

In This Chapter

Viewing inbound marketing as a philosophy and a system