This document discusses inbound marketing and how it differs from traditional marketing approaches. It emphasizes creating valuable content to attract potential customers and helping them through their purchasing process rather than interrupting them. It outlines best practices for inbound marketing including developing buyer personas, understanding the buyer's journey, creating relevant content, optimizing websites for SEO, blogging, using social media, and setting up landing pages to convert visitors into leads.

1. INBOUND MARKETING
Why it matters to online businesses

2. Traditional View of Sales & Marketing
Unknown
Person or
Organization
MARKETING Lead
Lead SALES Customer
MARKETING
SALES

3. SMarketing: The new approach to
Sales & Marketing

4. “Purchasing process has undergone a
major shift thanks to Technology: people
do all their research beforehand and
make their own choices, you want to
make sure you’re helping them make that
choice and BE that choice without being
pushy or sales-y”

5. Traditional Marketing
• One way communication
• Push based
• Intrusive
• Forced Content
• Marketer provided no value

6. The Inbound Approach
• Inbound is a fundamental shift in the way that we do
business and market Products & Services to our customers
• Be a part of the conversation instead of interrupting it
• Customer-centric vs. Marketer-centric
• SEO: Focus efforts on getting the RIGHT people to your site
• Blogging: empower customers through useful & relevant
content such as blog posts, webinars & e-books
• Create content specifically designed to appeal to your ideal
customers. The content acts as a magnet to capture your
prospects’ attention so THEY will come to YOU – hence the
name INBOUND or CONTENT marketing

7. The Inbound Methodology
ANALYZEANALYZEANALYZEANALYZE

8. Fundamentals of Inbound Success
• Buyer Personas
– A Buyer Persona is a semi-fictional representation of
your ideal customer based on real data and some
educated speculation about customer demographics,
behaviour patterns, motivations & goals
– Personas help you create the right content to attract
your ideal visitors, convert them into leads and close
them into customers

9. • Buyer’s Journey
– Buyer’s journey is the active research process that a
potential customer goes through leading up to a
purchase decision
– 3 stages of buyer’s journey
• Awareness: of problem or opportunity
• Consideration: well defined problem, looking for solutions
• Decision: short-list providers & choose one
Fundamentals of Inbound Success contd..

10. Buyer’s Journey contd..

11. • Create Remarkable and Relevant Content
– Content + Context = Relevance
– Content: Blogs, Photos, Infographics, Videos,
eBooks, Presentations etc.
– Context: who you’re creating this content for
Fundamentals of Inbound Success contd..

12. Fundamentals of Inbound Success contd..
• Leverage through Distribution Channels
– Distribution makes content relevant & effective:
make it accessible to the buyer personas easily
– Examples of Distribution channels
• Web pages
• Business blogs
• Social media
• Landing pages
• CTA’s
• Emails

13. SEO: Best Practices
• Optimize websites for both searchers and
search engines
• 3 ways to make your website easy to
understand and crawl
– Design
– Content (Topics/Keywords)
– Formatting of Content

14. Design for SEO
• Great Cognitive Fluency (ease of processing)
• Simple Navigation
• Relevant color scheme
• Streamlined next steps readily available
Content for SEO
• Relevant content based on user intent from search query
• Relevant content to topic of search query
• Provide value to searcher
• Speak the language of your buyer personas
• Content Topic or Keyword (on-page SEO)
– Page Title (should be less than 70 chars)
– URL’s (should be consistent with page titles)
– Page Headers (attract searchers’ eyes)
– Content (reinforce the topic of that page)
– Meta description (shows up in search engine results)

15. Formatting for SEO
• Follow Font hierarchy (subheads with different colors, sizes
or font sizes)
• Include pictures
• Short sentences & paragraphs
• Bullets
• Bolding, Italics and hyperlinked content
Websites should not be static, they should evolve as you,
your business model, your buyer personas, your market
changes

16. Business Blogs
Why should you blog?
– Each blog post gets its own index in search engines
– More indexed pages = greater opportunity to be
found online
– Grow Keyword Footprint: blog posts can be optimized
for the keywords that you want to rank higher for
– 43% of companies have acquired a new customer via
blogs
– Demonstrate Thought Leadership in your industry
through education

17. Blogging: Best Practices
• Keep your buyer personas in mind
• One topic per blog post
• Blog consistently and frequently
• Pay attention to Blog formatting
• Add a Call-to-Action (CTA) to your blog
• What should you blog about?
– Keywords
– Recent industry & industry related news
– Common questions from customers
– Respond to blog comments or other blogs
– Hot industry topics
– Invite guest bloggers

18. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR INBOUND MARKETING

19. Social Media : Crucial to your Marketing Strategy
• All your prospects & customers are already there
• Active Users
• Facebook 1.3 Billion
• Twitter 645 Million
• LinkedIn 300 Million
• Google+ 300 Million
• Users spend 4x more time on FB than Google
• Viral nature best suited to Attract more visitors
• Convert visitors into leads through conversion pages
• Foster existing connections through 1-on-1 communication
• Perform great customer service
• Engage & Delight your customers through great content
• Turn customers into brand evangelists through Likes, Shares,
RT’s
• When mistakes happen, respond quickly & transparently
• Social is a great way to show off your Brand personality &
Corporate culture

20. Developing your Social Media Strategy
• Ask the right questions
– Do you know your Buyer Personas well?
– How good is your content? Will it resonate with buyers?
– Are you on the right platforms & networks?
– Where are your buyer personas hanging out? General
social networks or specialized blogs/forums?
– How is your timing? Do you post too much or not
enough? When do you post? Are you consistent?
– How do you POSITION your content? ( Use of sound
bytes, stats, factoids, trivia)
– Are you doing more Talking or Listening?
– Are you addressing angry prospects & customers?
• Pick the right content distribution channel

21. Social Media: Best Practices
• Optimize your profiles
– Include keywords to make it searchable
– Always include links to your website
– Customize: logo, header, visuals, URL’s
• Know your buyer personas
– Distribute content at the right place & time
– Do they spend time only on the Big 4?
– What sort of content do they read and
share?
– Why are they on social media?
• Build your reach
– Reach is a measure of potential audience
size (1st, 2nd, 3rd degree network)
– Follow/Friend/Connect: Prospects,
Customers, Thought Leaders
• Customize content to each platform
• Analyze to refine your strategy

22. Social Media Etiquette
• Ask questions rather than just
talking about yourself
• Share content from other sources
that you like (curate content)
• 80/20 rule: 80% content should be
interesting and 20% can be
promotional
• Mix up your engagement: Post
pictures, videos, e-books, blog
posts, contests, questions etc.

23. Social Media: Best Practices
• Twitter: The Conversation
– Living, breathing conversational tone
– Short, engaging, shareable content
– Viral, buzz generating quality
• Best Practices
• Keep posts to 120 chars long (even though 140 allowed)
• Tweet early & often (more than 4 times per day)
• Use #hashtags correctly to connect with audience
• Do not start a tweet with an @ mention, even replies: it
will only be seen by your mutual followers
• Use pictures

24. Social Media: Best Practices
• Facebook: The Personality
– Most popular platform in the world
– 1/6th of the world’s population
• Best Practices
• Keep posts under 250 chars
• Post early morning & afternoon
(2 – 3 PM)
• Use Images
• Ask Questions
• Make it fun & personal

25. Social Media: Best Practices
• LinkedIn : The Professional Network
• Post to company pages & groups
• Post thought-provoking content on
industry-related topics
• In general post before 8 AM and after 6
PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays
• Have your employees share content

26. Social Media: Best Practices
• Google+ : The Search Engine Driver
• Not the most popular social network but content
posted here is heavily indexed and used by –
well…GOOGLE!
• Even if you don’t see a lot of engagement on
Google+ you might see a bump in your organic
search ranking due to your activity on Google+
• Diversify content: images, videos etc.
• +1 buttons showing up next to search results can
improve click-through rates

27. Analyze to Refine Your Content & Strategy
• Social Media Metrics: what should
you measure?
– Track your Reach & Engagement
– No. of Likes, Shares, Fans, RT’s,
Follows, Pins, Favs, Clicks &
Comments
– Visits, Leads, Acquisitions from
Social Media
– Shareability: No of social shares
are votes for quality of content
– Failed campaigns teach you more
than successful ones

28. CONVERT
How to convert unknown website visitors into
known leads
Call to
Action
Landing
Page
Thank
You Page

29. What is a Landing Page?
• A website page specifically designed to
convert visitors into leads
• This is achieved via an equal exchange of
information
– Offer eBooks and templates in return for name,
organization, title and email
– Offer free analysis or trial versions of products and
services for details on goals, marketing budget etc.
– Registration to a webinar/Offers/Discounts
– Download your FREE copy today!

30. Example Landing Page

31. CLOSE:
Email Marketing & Lead Nurturing

32. CLOSE: Email Marketing
• Attract new visitors: through email forwards
- Segmented Lists + Relevant Content + Sharing =Exponential Reach
• Convert visitors into Leads
– Gain Trust through social proof: ppl trust content from ppl they know
• Nurture Leads into Customers
• Delight Customers into Promoters

33. THANK YOU!