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In early 2012, it was announced that Gmail had 350 million active users. While this is an impressive number, Gmail still has a lot of catching up to do to reach Facebook’s 800 million users. In fact, not only is Gmail behind Facebook on overall user adoption, but it also seems to be behind in terms of engagement. A 2010 Nielsen study shows email as the third online channel on which Americans spend most of their time, ranking behind social networks/blogs and games.
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The savviest of inbound marketers know that content creation is at the heart of a successful inbound marketing strategy. But if marketers are consistently pumping out tons and tons of content, what you end up with is a cluttered web that will only get more cluttered, right?
These days, content discovery is a big problem, both as a user and as a marketer. Your audience is constantly struggling to separate the wheat from the chaff, and as a marketer, you're always looking for ways to make sure your content gets in front of the eyes of that audience.
The good news is, search engines and social networks have been trying to make content discovery and delivery a little bit easier lately. For example, we've witnessed LinkedIn's launch of more robust content targeting tools; Google's pushes to reward high quality content and penalize low-quality, spammy content in search; and various other efforts by Google and social networks to provide more relevant, personalized content to its users.
Well, here's one more for ya! Yesterday, Twitter announced an update to its Discover tab, which aims to provide users with content that is even more personalized and relevant to them.
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We've touted landing pages as one of the most crucial parts of your marketing (next to content creation, of course) for some time. But there's something that comes after the landing page that doesn't get a lot of attention in the marketing blogosphere ... that moment after a lead converts, and you say "thank you."
You do say thank you, right? Usually it comes in the form of a thank-you page that appears after a lead fills out your form, a thank-you email that goes into their inbox, or both. And there are plenty of opportunities to keep your prospect engaged with your website, content, and brand even after the conversion event. This post will break out those ways so both you and your prospect can keep reaping the benefits of your relationship!
8 Ways Your Thank-You Page and Emails Can Keep Prospects Engaged1) Include Social Media Follow Modules
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Any savvy inbound marketer "gets" that once you've done all that hard work to get visitors to your website, the next big step is to convert them into leads for your business. But what's the best way to get them to convert? Landing pages, that's what!
Unfortunately, there seems to be a major disconnect between the importance of landing pages and their use by marketers. According to MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook (2nd edition), 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the business' homepage, not a special landing page. Furthermore, of the B2B companies that are using landing pages, 62% have six or fewer total landing pages.
Landing pages are the heart and soul of an inbound marketer's lead generation efforts, so why are they still so underutilized? MarketingSherpa cites that the number one reason businesses don't use landing pages is because their marketing department doesn't know how to set them up or they are too overloaded.
But let's put a stop to this, shall we, marketers? Landing pages are much too critical to the success of your lead generation efforts to sweep under the rug, and here's why.
What is a Landing Page?First, let's start with a simple definition:
A landing page is a web page that allows you to capture a visitor's information through a lead-capture form (AKA a conversion form).A good landing page will target a particular audience, such as traffic from an email campaign promoting a particular ebook, or visitors who click on a pay-per-click ad promoting your webinar. You can build landing pages that allow visitors to download your content offers (ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, etc.), or redeem other marketing offers such as free trials, demos, or coupons for your product. Creating landing pages allows you to target your audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into leads, while also capturing information about who they are and what they've converted on.
How Landing Pages WorkFor a more complete understanding of how landing pages make visitor-to-lead conversions (and reconversions) possible, let's talk through a hypothetical scenario that will help demonstrate the simple pathway of a visitor into a lead through a landing page.
Let's say you own a professional painting business, and your services include a variety of professional indoor and outdoor paint jobs. You're a savvy inbound marketer, so you maintain a business blog that features articles about painting tips and tricks. You also have several more premium marketing offers like free educational ebooks on painting and free, no-obligation painting consultations.
Now let's say a mother was looking for a professional painter to paint her new baby-to-be's nursery but was first doing some research into color schemes. She comes across your blog post entitled "10 Popular Nursery Room Color Schemes for 2012" as a result of a Google search, and she clicks through to read it. When she reaches the bottom of the article, she notices a call-to-action (CTA), which is essentially an ad, for one of your offers -- a free painting consultation to help her decide which color scheme would work best with the size and type of nursery she's working with. "That would be valuable," she thinks, clicking on the CTA and visiting the landing page where she can sign up for her free consultation.
The landing page provides some additional information and details about what she will get out of the free consultation, convincing her it's worth providing her contact information on the landing page's conversion form in order to take advantage of the offer. She submits her information, and voila! -- she's now a viable lead for your painting business with whom you can easily follow up! What's more, she wants you to follow up with her. How fantastic does that sound?
And this isn't the only pathway through which a visitor can travel to convert into a lead. In addition to search, visitors can find your site and its landing pages through a number of marketing channels including email, social media, PPC, direct traffic, or referral traffic. Furthermore, they can find your landing pages through calls-to-action you place throughout your website, or directly as a result of you sharing the link to those landing pages in these other marketing channels.
They key, as a marketer, is to create these landing pages in the first place, and make it easy for potential customers to find them in your various marketing efforts.
6 Reasons You Need Landing PagesStill not convinced that landing pages can make your marketing and lead generation efforts more effective? Here are 6 more compelling reasons:
1) Easily Generate Leads! If you could do one thing right now to drastically improve your lead generation efforts, it would be to use landing pages on your website. As we mentioned earlier, too many companies send their email, social media, and search traffic to their homepages. This is the equivalent of throwing leads away. You could capture these leads at a much higher rate simply by sending them to targeted landing pages. Landing pages provide a very easy way to generate leads for your sales team that you can then easily segment, nurture, or distribute to your sales team.
2) Give Your Offers a Place to Live: Marketing offers and landing pages go hand in hand. Just think back to our painting business example. Without being gated behind landing pages, your offers will do nothing to support your lead generation efforts. The idea is to require your website visitors to 'pay' you in contact information for something valuable like an offer, and your landing page is the collections tool.
3) Collect Demographic Information About Your Prospects: Every time a lead completes a conversion form on a landing page, your marketing and sales team is collecting valuable information about your leads. Your marketing team can then use this information to understand what types of visitors or marketing personas are converting, and your sales team already has a baseline of information about a lead before they reach out.
4) Understand Which Prospects Are More Engaged: Landing pages not only enable you to generate new leads; they also allow you to track reconversions of existing leads, which you can then use to identify which prospects are more engaged with your business. This also enables you to collect better intelligence on your leads' behaviors and activities on your website, which your sales team can use in the sales process.
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As inbound marketers, we all know the value and importance of measuring, tracking, and reporting on key metrics and goals. Let's take the data you collect around your lead generation efforts, for instance. If you know what your marketing team can generate for new leads, and you also know your average lead-to-customer conversion rate, your business can actually predict future sales! And with closed-loop marketing in place, you can even track the revenue generated from the leads that were influenced by various channels or marketing events.
That's a lot of meaty data, but how do you take that information and apply it to setting a lead generation goal that helps you meet your business objectives? Your effectiveness as a lead generator hinges on your ability to generate both the right amount, and the right type of leads. Establishing the right balance for your business is crucial, but tricky -- luckily this post will explain exactly how you can do it! Here are 4 simple steps to set effective lead generation goals for your marketing team.
Step 1: Determine if you want to measure quantity, quality, or both.The first step to setting goals for your marketing team is to figure out what you want to measure -- remember, you can't determine whether you met your goals if you aren't measuring them! Most marketers have traditionally measured themselves on the quantity of leads they produce each month or quarter. This is easy to do if you have inbound marketing software, which allows marketers to track their lead generation progress across every campaign. For example, in HubSpot's software, all you have to do is input your lead generation goal, and easily track the number of leads you generate each day, week, month, or year!
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As you flip the pages of this newsletter, and gain all the priceless insights contained herein, I’d like you to take this specific article here and cut it out
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When chatting with marketers, one of the most common questions we hear at HubSpot is regarding "first touch" versus "last touch" attribution in marketing analytics. First touch, last touch, and assist reports are all different ways to attribute conversions on your website, and each of these attribution methods will tell you something different and important about the effectiveness of your marketing and the behavior of your visitors.
The following guide will help you understand the difference between "last touch," "first touch," and "assists" attribution, as well as give you a sense of the primary use-cases for each approach. As a wise man once said, you should always give credit where credit is due!
What Are 'Attributions' in Marketing Analytics?Before we begin, first a definition ...
'Attribution' is a way of understanding which marketing channels or campaigns contributed to a conversion on your website. In HubSpot software, for example, you'll notice that our Marketing Analytics tools report on the number of leads and customers generated through various marketing efforts -- that information is what you'd call an attribution. But because a lead's or customer's lifecycle with your company is made up of a number of different interactions, there are multiple ways to report on attribution. Understanding how attribution works will help you understand which of your marketing efforts are actually generating results.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's discuss the different attribution methods that can be used in your marketing analytics.
Last Touch AttributionMost analytics packages, including Google Analytics, use last touch attribution as their main method of reporting. Last touch data shows you the most recent interactions and conversions your leads had on your website before they converted.
When It's UsefulAs its name suggests, last touch reporting is useful in determining what happened right before your leads converted. If we were presenting last touch data for a given soccer game, for example, it would attribute the winning goal to whoever kicked the ball into the net. Last touch analytics, therefore, is often a good measure of the effectiveness of different landing pages, email campaigns, or other efforts that tend to lead to a direct conversion. What it doesn't tell you, however, is anything else that led up to that conversion. So, if we were to extend that same soccer analogy, it wouldn't give credit to the defender who made that great forward pass that made the goal possible.
HubSpot's Landing Page Analytics report (pictured below), for instance, uses last touch attribution to help marketers evaluate which landing pages were most effective at generating leads and customers. Looking at first touch attribution for the two customers who converted on the Introduction to Business Blogging ebook offer, however, would show marketers an entirely different view.
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An individual's purchasing decision can be influenced by a large number of factors. Are you considering how influential social proof can be in that mix? According to Google, 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase. Furthermore, a CompUSA and iPerceptions study revealed that 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.
While product reviews are only one type of social proof, those are some pretty persuasive statistics to consider. It demonstrates that people can heavily influenced by others' experiences, making a case for why social proof is such a powerful concept for businesses to leverage.
Are you giving the social proof of your business the visibility it deserves? In this post, we'll lay out exactly what social proof is, discuss the various types, and explain the ways you can leverage it in your business' marketing efforts.
What Is Social Proof?'Social proof,' also referred to as 'informational social influence,' is the concept that people will conform to the actions of others under the assumption that those actions are reflective of the correct behavior. In other words, it's the mentality that, if other people are doing it, and I trust those people, that's validation that I should also be doing it. This third-party validation can be a very powerful motivator for your site visitors' and prospects' actions.
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Marketing collects a lot of information about the leads they generate, much of which is made available to Sales to make their jobs easier. But it doesn't do much good if nobody actually, well, uses that information. And often all that lead intelligence falls to the wayside because nobody has explained how it can be applied to the sales process.
That's where this blog post comes in! We're going to take a look at some of the intelligence Marketing gathers on leads, and explain exactly how it can be used in the sales process. We will demonstrate where this intelligence lies within HubSpot software, but there are several free and paid tools on the market you can use to collect this information as well. Or if you'd like to follow along using HubSpot software, you can set up a free trial of the software right now!7 Sales Applications of Marketing Intelligence1) Leverage prospects' social media profile information.There's a very good chance your leads are active on social media, and your marketing software should be able to easily direct you to their profiles.
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This article is an adapted excerpt from our free ebook, An Introduction to Closed-Loop Marketing. To learn more about how to use closed-loop reporting to improve your marketing, download the complete ebook here.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Almost a century after John Wanamaker spoke those words, most online marketers can still feel his pain. The irony is, today, marketers have the technology they need to “close the loop” between marketing and revenue, but few are actually taking advantage of it.
Closed-loop marketing is marketing that relies on data and insights from closed-loop reporting. “Closing the loop” just means that sales teams report to Marketing about what happened to the leads that they received, which helps Marketing understands their best and worst lead sources.
To many, setting up closed-loop reporting has remained too hard and confusing to implement. To be an effective marketer, however, you need to be able to tie every single lead, customer, and dollar back to the marketing initiative that created them. This is how marketers can prove their worth and understand how to more efficiently reach their audience.
But how exactly does closed-loop marketing work, and what tools to you need to implement it? Let's find out!
The 4 Steps of Closed-Loop MarketingClosed-loop marketing can essentially be boiled down to four steps. Before we explain each step in detail, let's take a look at how the process looks as a whole:
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Have you heard of CrossFit? It's a fitness program that publishes a workout to its website every day. For example, you might wake up any given morning, check out the CrossFit website, and be instructed to do 50 push-ups, 30 squat thrusts, 10 pull-ups, and 80 bicep curls. The premise is that -- though the exercise program isn't tailored to any one individual -- those who are committed to the simple program will enjoy great overall fitness regardless of age, health, or skill level.
We think this approach is transferable to marketing, too. Sure, if you want to be an MMA fighter -- or, say, email marketing specialist -- you would need some specialized training. But if you're managing a marketing program, there are certain activities you can do every day to make sure you maintain a healthy program that delivers results.
So we're going to lay out a marketing exercise regimen that will get a struggling marketing program back into tip-top shape. If you stay committed to performing these activities every day, you'll see drooping numbers turn into rock hard marketing metrics.
MondayRead 5 industry articles. Reading industry content not only keeps you informed, but it also often yields content creation ideas. Look for newsjacking opportunities, too, so you can benefit from Google's algorithm update that rewards publishers for being the first to create content around recent events.Share one piece of lead generation content on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Social media is an effective lead generation tool that many marketers overlook -- select a piece of educational content and post a brief message to accompany the link to the content's landing page.How many ebooks does your marketing team have in its content arsenal? With the rise of tablet and e-reader popularity, ebooks are only growing in popularity. According to a newly released report by Pew Internet, in mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an ebook in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%. While we've always considered ebooks to be one of the best lead-gen content assets at a marketer's disposal, the fact that on-the-go content is only carving out more of a place in today's increasingly mobile world makes them an even smarter choice as a marketing offer.
As a piece of long-form content, a lot of work must go into the creation of a well-crafted ebook. So today, let's focus on design. How do you design an ebook that is reader-friendly, engaging, and at the same time supports your marketing goals? Let's discuss the 11 essential elements that make up an effective marketing ebook design.
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