Inbound Marketing Blog by protocol 80 | Inbound Marketing (30)

May 06

Your First Blog Post

By Sara

Most people know how essential blogging has become to running a business and increasing revenue; however, many small businesses have trouble implementing this marketing tactic. Blogging requires quite a bit of time and effort, and let’s face it, most small business owners work around the clock, leaving little time to worry about starting a blog. But for those people how are ready to give blogging a short, here are some helpful tips to make your life a little easier. Introduce Yourself! This step is easy to overlook but you need to introduce yourself. If you want people to read your blog, they should know who is writing the blog so include a brief autobiography and the history of your business. Try to answer the following questions: What does your business offer? When was your business established? Where are you located? What sets you apart from your competitors? Readers need to feel a strong connection to any author if they are going to continue reading whatever content is being ...

May 02

6 Steps For Handling Content Marketing Leads

By Donny Kemick

With all this talk of content marketing and landing pages, an obvious question might be, "What do I do when someone opts-in or downloads a piece of content from my site?". Great questions! It's a question that will likely be a bit different from one company to another, but here's a basic list of tasks: 1 - DO NOT CALL THEM UP AND TRY TO SELL THEM Did you hear me scream that? I hope. I don't want the engaged website visitor getting a restraining order against you. You're welcome. Aggressive sales people may think that simply visiting your website makes a person a qualified lead that the sales team should pursue. They aren't. If someone downloads a resource from your website, it simply shows that the web visitor has now engaged with your content. They may open it, and decide that it wasn't what they thought it was. They may love it. Hopefully the latter is true and they tell everyone they know that would benefit from the content to go get it (via email, social media, etc...). The main ...

3 Things Your Web Marketing Strategy Is Missing

By Josh Curcio

Not everyone can be a web marketing rock star, right? Sure they can, when the right things are in place. Chances are good that you probably have a website and may even be doing some sort of marketing such as SEO, PPC, maybe social media...but what are you missing? Are your marketing efforts just not hitting the mark? There are probably a few things you are probably missing.

April 23

13 Step Content Marketing Quick Start List

By Donny Kemick

Question. When you think about establishing a content marketing strategy, do you equate that to a large investment of time and energy? I think any time you include the word strategy with a task, most people automatically envision a huge project involving hours of documentation, research and policies. While that can certainly be the case for some strategies, your content strategy doesn't need to be that complex. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably wrong. Your content marketing strategy can be as simple as a basic list of items that anyone creating content for your organization has access to and understands. By knowing and committing to this list, you'll be light years ahead of many of your competitors. Here's a Simple Content Marketing Kickoff List: Make the decision that content marketing is a must, not a should. Identify your internal content marketing team and kick off the efforts on the right foot. Understand fully why your clients buy from you and how you help solve their ...

April 18

A Trade Show Tactic That Should Be Applied To Your Website

By Donny Kemick

If I had a nickel for every free swag item I got at trade shows, I would be writing this from a beach with an umbrella-straw drink in hand. Can you relate? You know you can!!! How did I get pulled into those trade show booths and listen to the marketing folks for those companies for 10 minutes, "earning" my free swag? Some sort of CALL TO ACTION!!!! That's right, like a small child chasing a butterfly, I saw or heard a big CTA and there I was, chasing down the perceived value. Next thing I knew, I was learning all about the butterfly's value and what it could do for me or my clients. Your website needs to steal that tactic right off the trade show floor. You need to have a strong value offer (CTA) in multiple places, so your website visitors chase that butterfly until they are sitting in your email marketing list or CRM and become leads. The key difference is that your website can provide these visitors with valuable content that will help solve their problems and challenges instead ...

April 16

Stop Playing Catch-up and Fully Commit To Blogging, Social & SEO

By Donny Kemick

April 11

Why Do Your Clients/Customers Buy From You?

By Donny Kemick

Reason 1:______________________________ Reason 2:______________________________ Reason 3:______________________________ If I had to guess I'd say you listed things like your level of service, your history of quality and reliability and your willingness to do whatever it takes to make your clients/customers fully satisfied. Those are all good reasons for someone to do business with you. Are those things that all of your new prospects know when they are looking for your product or service? In some cases a referral may provide those insights, but those aren't the prospects I'm talking about. Do the new clients you work with that have found your offering on their own know about these things? No. Most do not. Your website, advertisements and print collateral may try to convey those messages, but let's be honest. These new prospects only made a connection with you for 1 reason: THEY THOUGHT YOU COULD SOLVE ONE OF THEIR PROBLEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's right. Initially, they weren't at all ...

April 10

Are You Looking for Pennies or Benjamins With Your Inbound Marketing?

By Josh Curcio

If you're reading our blog, you probably have a decent idea of what inbound marketing is? Don't worry, if you don't we won't be mad at you. To keep it simple, inbound marketing is generating customers by ensuring that you're being found when that person is looking for your product, service, etc. With inbound marketing you'll gain the attention of these individuals through mediums such as search engines or social media and then your website will guide them through the process of eventually turning into a conversion (lead, sale, sign-up). It's different from "interruption marketing" in which you just throw your advertising out there for everyone to see and hope that someone bites.