Posted by Justin Cambria on Mon, Aug 30, 2010
This weekend I finished reading
Brian Halligan and
Dharmesh Shah’s book
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs as part of my first set of objectives here at PNP. As
inbound marketing practitioners, there were some valuable pearls of wisdom to glean from the book.
The book is a great primer for business owners or marketers who are not digital natives to get a sense of the landscape of inbound marketing. It neatly outlines the tools – On and Off Page SEO, Blogging & RSS, Social Media – and basic implementation methodology that you need to know to attain baseline proficiency in this arena.
Here are 3 good takeaways you can use in your marketing, to which I've added something relevant that's changed the picture since the book's publication:
Being #1 overall in Google searches really matters
From p. 58, describing Google search results for any term: ‘A recent study show that Google’s first page captures over 89% of the traffic… Even within the first page, the traffic is not spread evenly – the top ranked result (number one on the first page) captures about 42% of the traffic.’ I didn't know how much more traffic #1 gets than #2 in a search.
But now... There’s another variable in this picture now, too: Google Caffeine. Search results are now influenced by an increasingly complex set of factors, including the searchers' location, search history, and social media network. It’s still important to do as much as you can to be close to the top for your important keywords, but while you may be #1 for a searcher in Boston, you may not be for the same term by a searcher in San Francisco.
Takeaway: chasing the top slot if you are number 2 or 3 could result in a big traffic bump and it’s worth the effort to pursue the top slot. But pay attention also to your local search results in important locales.
Answer questions on LinkedIn Answers – and now, Facebook Questions
I've looked at LinkedIn as an online resume which may one day have value, and simply accept that as the default professional networking site, it is essential to maintain an updated profile. I try to keep my profile active by updating it with tweets.
But I have never answered a question on LinkedIn answers, which the book suggests as a good way to establish some thought leadership within the community and a next level step to get more value out of LinkedIn.
But now... Facebook has rolled out a version of questions recently, this is another place where it’ll be worth spending some time to get more value than just simple networking from these sites.
Takeaway: Visit LinkedIn Answers and Facebook Questions, subscribe to some topical interests, and ask and answer some questions. I plan to make this part of my daily morning check up online, and maybe you should too!
Test multiple Landing Page designs and copy
I have some landing pages to work on for our website, and having read the book, I plan to A/B test a couple of different landing pages. Best practices dictate having an eye popping graphic, a simple and easy to complete form, and no other links to divert your potential customers’ attention elsewhere.
But now... Companies are continually having to compete on more and more specific niches. If you are dedicated to a single specific product or service, consider adding a landing page to your home page. Test your conversion rate, which means that as many visitors to your landing page as possible are actually filling out your form. I learned that 15% is a base target for conversions on your landing page, and 50% is excellent. Try a couple of different designs and see if your conversion ratios improve.
Takeaway: Test new landing pages for your campaigns, and consider slapping a compelling form on your home page if you are a niche service.
What are your favorite internet or marketing ‘must read’ books?
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Posted by Samantha Coren on Wed, Aug 25, 2010
We've heard tons horror stories about small businesses spending too much time and resources for years on end with ineffective push marketing techniques. If you were a victim of being sucked dry on paid search with little sales to show for it or wasted entire days on ineffective cold calling then hopefully you've learned from your mistakes by now.
Once you've witnessed the beauty of inbound marketing by pulling people in with quality content it's hard to imagine going back to your old ways. Good on and off page SEO practices, active social media engagement, and blogging for business regularly are certainly a lot more fun (not to mention less expensive) than badgering people to buy from you.
For those of you who've been burned in the past we've put together this special video on push marketing bunnies. Afterall, laughter is the best medicine, isn't it?
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Posted by Justin Cambria on Tue, Aug 24, 2010
Many businesses today are ready to embrace the tenets of inbound marketing. They want to invest their marketing dollars online. But it's difficult for busy business owners and marketers to learn as much as those of us who work in this world about online marketing practices.
It’s true that link building, or getting good quality links to your site, accounts for 75% of your SEO score and is the foundation of off page SEO. But all links are not created equal. Here’s some of the terms of the trade and a few tips to ensure you are dealing with above-board web marketers. We want to save people from the evil SEO merchants out there! But how?
Black Hat SEO
Since the early days of blog comments, many unscrupulous SEO practitioners have written programs that crawl the web and write SPAM comments on blogs to point back to a site whose ranking they want to improve. This is common practice amongst online pornographers and illegal overseas MP3 sale sites. This practice is one form of black hat SEO, and is usually engaged in with the hope that a goal can be achieved over a short term as the spammers know that the search engines will ban them once their tactics are uncovered.
Spamdexing
I recently listened to a sales demo from a rep at a prominent web marketing firm who showed me a page indexing hundreds of thousands of links allegedly pointing to his site. I looked through some of them and they were trash links from meaningless sites – the horror! I’d come face to face with link SPAM!
SEO best practices encourage legitimate means, like posting great content, tweeting about it, and commenting on other trusted blogs to build links back to your site. Some SEO firms will Spamdex by building lots of buried or invisible pages on a client site because more indexes pages will mean more traffic. They can then demonstrate high numbers of site visits to clients, but that traffic will be meaningless and will never convert to leads.
The ‘NoFollow’ Attribute
It’s also important to be aware of the nofollow attribute. Many directory sites and prominent social networks (Yelp, Facebook, Google Local, etc) utilize this attribute because they don’t want link spammers creating fake directory listings on their sites to influence their SEO score. By using it, these sites ensure that no SEO credit is awarded to links on their site; in other words, google doesn't count a link to your site on Facebook in your SEO score.
Be wary of SEO firms who tell you that they are going to create lots and lots of links for you or submit your site to many directories. Though there can be value in being on these directories because many of them have independent traffic, they do not influence your SEO score.
What to Ask to Protect Yourself
It's competitive out there and is a sad reality that some black hat techniques can produce results over the short term, but any such techniques will be a losing strategy for a legitimate business over the long term. Ask firms you are considering doing business with to send you 3 examples of sites they have worked on and to put you in direct contact with their clients for referrals. Also, ask them:
- What practices do you use to build good off site links? I want to work with a vendor that understands honest link building through great content.
- Are you familiar with the no follow attribute and how it affects off site SEO score? I understand there are some great directories but I want to attract links that will be recognized by the search engines, too.
- What is your opinion on black hat SEO and Spamdexing? I'm in the web marketing gain for the long haul and any short term, dishonest SEO practices hold no appeal for me.
Have you had any encounters with bad SEO or web marketing firms? Please share in the comments!
Posted by Justin Cambria on Mon, Aug 09, 2010
At PullNotPush, we adhere to the HubSpot mantra, ‘if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.’ As part of our
Social Media Marketing, we track our online reach through RSS, email, and social media. We recently doubled our following on our
Pull Marketing Facebook Page in the course of a week, which was uber-cool, and which got me thinking about the quality vs. quantity concept in social media relationships, especially in the B2B sphere. There’s art & science to all of this, and measurements alone will never accurately assess the total picture of social media influence.
The Business of Measuring Influence
The science is of interest to lots of folks, as evidenced by my Twitter stream today, which featured a slew of tweets about online influence building. Noteworthy players are already invested: see HubSpot’s Twitter Grader, pop in your handle & get your rating (I'm rocking a 90 out of 100! w00t!). And there’s Klout, a San Francisco startup that raised $1.5 million in VC funding this spring, which is dedicated to mathematically measuring the actual quality of Twitter influence through algorithms that measure over 25 variables to rate a Tweeter (I scored a paltry 14. Sadface.)
Today, ConversationAge tweeted an interesting ZDNet blog post by Tom Foremski which cites research from HP’s social computing lab that puts some sophisticated math behind the notion that popularity doesn’t equal influence online. The more followers you have doesn’t necessarily make you the most influential.
Art & Science Merge: More Followers isn't More Influence
This research marries the art and science of the overall influence concept: authentic and compelling content publication, and organic attraction of your products of services through that, will trump spending time & resources fishing for likes and followers to get your count up for its own sake. No one can really measure the quality of your social media prose or the degree to which you are authentic on social media – you have to work that out by finding your voice and discovering your own way to forge meaningful relationships.
With HubSpot’s tools, we can and do measure Social Media's effectiveness in converting leads, which is neat and valuable science. But, we can’t measure the art of creating goodwill amongst your community that will get people to recommend you because they actually like you and what you have to say. And this is one of the coolest things about the social media: we’re witnessing a revolution. The technology backing the internet creates an infrastructure that places the power to influence in the hands of the public. It’s an information meritocracy, which underscores the value of inbound marketing over the old way of interruptively buying your way to people’s attention.
Case Study: The New Born Baby
We have one client, The New Born Baby - a lactation consultant - who does a phenomenal job with her Facebook page. Her followers are engaged, and she posts regular updates on topics of interest, and asks engaging questions which always spark discussion. Her authenticity, obvious expertise, and apparent interest in her field creates a genuine atmosphere on her page, which is immensely helpful to her in making potential customers that might ‘meet’ her first through this page to get comfortable with her.
As someone who came to social media with an attitude that she believes in what she does and she would share about that and try to spark discussion, Debbie has done a stellar job of building a good sized community that is even more valuable pound-for-pound than many other communities of similar size.
How do you measure or interpret the value of what you do on social media? Please comment!
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Posted by Tim Stansky on Wed, Aug 04, 2010
I joined PullnotPush after concentrated efforts to parlay more than two decades of marketing and sales experience in major market radio, television and print media into a career in the scary digital world. In my media career, it sure was a blast to help clients drive their business objectives. I collaborated on hundreds of client sales promotions including NFL alumni appearances at retail locations promoted in The Boston Globe sports section, really cool rides at HarleyFest with WRIF in Motor City, and media partnerships between styleboston.tv and Magic 106.7 in Boston.
I missed the baby boom and I was born too early to be Gen X so I buckled down to learn the space. I see the way technology is changing the way consumers spend their money and businesses conduct commerce, and how promotion is shifting toward Inbound Marketing. We’re faster, better-informed, and in some cases overwhelmed with distractions.
However, even in the digital age, the old rolodex still has value. And the human touch cannot be replaced. The dynamics of marketing and sales remain the same, but the delivery systems and metrics are different. The technology of the web can be intimidating to business owners. And sometimes there can be a generational disconnect between the language of business owners and that of web design - I’m able to speak both languages. We started Park Street Designs to bridge that gap and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.
In the lyrics of The Who, “The Kids Are Alright” and in the words of Waylon and Willie: “old age and treachery always overcome youth and skill”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXij4LsNKBE .
So here’s to small to medium sized businesses that want to make the transition to digital and turn their websites into marketing machines.
Posted by Samantha Coren on Wed, Aug 04, 2010
There's been a lot of talk in the internet marketing world regarding Ben & Jerry's ending their e-mail marketing efforts in the UK. Their decision to focus on promoting their brand through social media channels has polarized many.
Several gave virtual pats on the back to the two socially conscious ice cream peddlers for making this bold move. Others felt the decision to axe e-mail marketing was short sighted. As for me? For Ben & Jerry's giving up on e-mail makes sense given their extensive brand history and business model.
However going "social media only" with online marketing outside of your website may be a huge mistake for many reasons. Here's why:
The Fight for Attention
With Facebook and Twitter your business is fighting for the attention in giant streams of messages we all scan through in a day. Even within a company's individual profile page there are several different links and messages for someone to review and get distracted. There's no main focus - just hundreds of little "sound bites".
A well done e-mail marketing blast with a single call to action is much more effective at achieving a desired conversion goal than a tweet or a status update.
Customization, Personalization and Segmentation
While Facebook gives Pages administrators the option to target messages to certain connections there's no room narrowing down who your recipients are beyond age, sex, and location. With Twitter you can only mention someone's individual user name or send them a direct message. While it would be nice to send personalized messages to all your followers there's no quick and easy way to go about it in social media - especially if your social media connections are in the hundreds or thousands.
In a survey conducted by e-Dialogue, 64% of consumers want marketers to show that they know what types of products or services they like. Most e-mail marketing software platforms allow you the ability to personalize and target your e-mails based on user provided information such as name and purchasing history.
The more relevant the content is to the individual the more inclined they are to open and read your messages.
User Backlash Against Marketing in Social Media
Not everyone is happy about the commercial invasion of social media that's been occurring over the past few years. Facebook originally started out as a way for Ivy League college students to get to know one another - now it has grown into a major means of communication for anything and everything.
There's been resentment among Facebook's earlier user base about this transition. Older Facebook users in the 40 and over age bracket (among Facebook's fastest growing user segment) aren't as inclined to consistantly check Facebook multiple times a day either as they are with e-mail.
Many individuals have gone as far as deleting their profiles off social media presence altogether. Choosing to not do e-mail marketing will make your marketing efforts more or less invisible to this segment of internet users.
Before You Decide to Pull the Plug on E-mail Consider This...
Just because marketing your business solely through social media seems like the cool hip thing to do doesn't mean it's in your best interest. If you're not seeing results with your e-mail campaigns then you're probably not building them with an inbound marketing methodology in mind.
While social media can be a great promotional tool for your business you can't completely disregard the value of being able to tactfully target and pull your audience back to you the way you can through e-mail.
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Whitepaper - The 7 Universal Laws Of Pull Marketing
 Want to learn how to switch your marketing efforts from interruption to attraction? Learn how to become a lead generating magnet by using Pull Marketing techniques.
Download the free whitepaper to discover The 7 Universal Laws you should following on a daily basis to make the most of Pull Marketing.
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Posted by Samantha Coren on Thu, Jul 29, 2010
At PullnotPush I get to teach small business owners the ins and outs of inbound marketing. It's refreshing to talk to people who are so dedicated and immersed in every aspect of their business. One thing is for sure though - running your own business can take up quite a bit of time.
The beautiful thing about HubSpot is that it gives the small business owner a one stop shop for managing a web presence and channel for new customers. I was eager to find out how small businesses outside of the ones I currently work with were fairing in the world of inbound marketing with the big orange sprocket.
To quench my curiosity I spoke with the heads of three local businesses from different parts of the US who are involved in different industries. All three of them are current HubSpot customers. Here's what they had to say:
“Prior to HubSpot (April 28th 2010) we practiced traditional advertising that included radio, outdoor (billboards), magazines/programs (professional sports), and a non-structured email campaign. We did absolutely no SEO or Inbound Marketing prior to our launch with HubSpot.
Our landing pages have been an awesome tool to help build our email list and the blog has not only helped with SEO, but after the first 90 days we have over 220 subscribers via email and RSS. We also use the social media tool to engage the community when one of our brand keywords populates and submit all of our articles to the social media outlets that HS provides. Our social media reach has increased by 3000% since becoming a HubSpotter.
By using the Keyword Grader along with the Competitor reports we have been able to target more long tailed keywords” with lower volume that our competitors are not targeting. This has led to 187 of our 583 keywords being ranked in the Top 100 and improved our search traffic by 382% since HS launch.
Our content creation really has been focused on our blog for not only SEO, but to become a “Trust Agent” in our industry and for the city of Nashville. This has also helped with Link Building as we have increased our inbound links from 67 to 364 since June 1st.
HS makes it so easy that we spend less than 5 hours per week on our entire social media and blog campaign and about 2 hours per week with on page and off page SEO."
"360 Signs started in September of 2008. We are a commercial sign company providing design, fabrication, and installation of many type of business signs: lobby signs, directory signs, floor, wall, and window graphics, monument signs, building sign, vehicle wraps, event signs and many more. We sell only in the Austin, TX area and are fortunate to have achieved a great deal of success during our first two years.
We rely on personal networking, networking groups, and the internet to drive our new business and repeat and referral business to come from current clients. We relied on paid search for our first 18 months in business and thought we did quite well with the amount of leads we were getting. Our website has generated over 50% of our business to date.
We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of leads, over 200%, since I started using the HubSpot tools. We have added two sales reps to handle the extra leads. I have been particularly pleased that we have landed some larger accounts off the web, not just small businesses.
We are ahead of many of our competitors in terms of optimizing our website and improving our page ranking for a company our size. We differentiate ourselves on design and service since it is impossible for us to make signs that someone couldn’t get at other sign companies in Austin. The website helps position us properly and attracts customer that value service and quality."
"Test Drive Technologies was
started to help used car & truck buyers to make an informed decision on what they are purchasing. We are the eyes, ears and hands of our clients that find themselves in the automotive market. Before HubSpot we were solely relying on organic search & free classifieds.
There are so many tools on HubSpot that I use every day. I particularly like the social media engagement tool; it is easy to use and monitors the keywords that I find relevant to the automotive industry. This not only keeps me on top of what is going on but also what the consumer base thinks is happening. I also find the CMS at HubSpot very easy to use.
Our blog is what is making us stand out above our competition. We are able to post our findings for each of our inspections right on our blog much like a case study without the particulars of dealer and buyer information. Having these results on our blog will allow our potential clients to see what we do, how we do it and what we find in some vehicles.
Most of our competition is all about pay per click advertising. Our blog is what is bringing in most of our customers which also allows us to pass this savings on to our clients."
Sick of Old Fashioned Marketing? Take HubSpot for a Spin.
Find out how we can help turn your website into a marketing machine.
Sign up for a HubSpot Demo with PullnotPush.
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Posted by Jeff Machado on Tue, Jul 27, 2010
Being part of a team that is a HubSpot Certified Partner means spending a lot of time in the HubSpot forums and listening in on what’s happening in the HubSpot World. One of the main topics that always seems to come up (and for good reason!) when HubSpotters gather to talk shop is the concept of off page SEO optimization and link building.
The #1 thing you need to know about links is that they are not all created equal. One way to boost the power of your links is to change your normal links like http://www.pullnotpush.com into anchor text links like pull marketing.
Not sure how to get these links? Here are 3 places you can start
1. Articles
Sometimes getting an anchor text link is as easy as taking the expertise in your mind, converting it into a 300-500 word article, and submitting it to an article directory like http://www.EzineArticles.com.
When submitting your article, you can create a custom Author Resource Box containing anchor text links back to your website.
2. Online Press Releases
Online press releases should be a part of every inbound marketing plan. Have you released a new whitepaper? Launched a new service? These are prime opportunities for submitting a press release to directories like http://www.OnlinePrNews.com.
While you do need to pay to submit to these directories, you will have the chance to not only increase your website traffic, but also create these valuable anchor text links within the content.
3. Squidoo Lenses
If your content has genuine value, you owe it to yourself and your target market to repurpose your content in as many ways possible to get the information to people when they need it. With a few revisions, you can take the articles and the press releases you created and turn them into Squidoo lenses at http://www.Squidoo.com.
Squidoo lenses are small, focused, and easy to update minisites that have a high authority with Google. Within your Squidoo lens, you can easily create an anchor text link back to your website.
What other techniques do you use for off page optimization? Have you had success implementing a similar link building strategy? Let us know in the comments!
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Whitepaper - The 7 Universal Laws Of Pull Marketing
Want to learn how to switch your marketing efforts from interruption to attraction? Learn how to become a lead generating magnet by using Pull Marketing techniques.
Download the free whitepaper to discover The 7 Universal Laws you should following on a daily basis to make the most of Pull Marketing.
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Posted by Samantha Coren on Fri, Jul 23, 2010
Why does Google's image search matter to inbound marketing?
Google's image search is one of the most popular image search engines on the web. Even though people might not necessarily be looking for content from your site, they might stumble upon some of your site’s images and find their way to you indirectly through their keyword search terms. Having good on page SEO practices for including images is a pull marketing strategy that can help generate traffic you wouldn’t normally get from your text based content.
Not to be out done by Bing, Google recently decided to update its image search. Here's a rundown on what's new:
New search results layout
Instead of a grid containing information directly under each image such as dimensions and source URL, you now get your results in a minimalistic layout that resembles a digital lightbox. Now users will have to hover over your pictures in image search to find this information. There's also the "show sizes" option on the side bar to show the dimensions on each image result in the lower right corner.
Another thing to note about the new image search results screen is that Google has done away with having separate pages for displaying results. Now, after your initial search, you have the "Show More Results" button at the bottom. Instead of loading another separate page, the additional images will load on the same page allowing you to see everything at once without having to constantly go back and forth.
If you hate change, you can select "Switch to Basic Version" at the bottom of the page to get the good old fashioned image search results view you grew to know and love.
New filters for Colors and Image Type
Google has also given image searchers the option to filter results by image type with the options for "Face", "Photo", "Clip Art", or "Line Drawing". You can also filter your results based on the main color of the images. Or if you're looking for black and white photos, there's even an option now for that. It seems like the search spiders are doing a pretty decent job at identifying colors for searches with a large number of results. Here's what happened when I filtered for Pink images for my search query on Verona:
Reaction to Google's new image search
Speaking as someone who uses Google for finding images frequently, I find these new features to be extremely helpful for those looking for specific images. Being able to quickly compare all the images on the same page will save a lot of time instead of having to load and go back and forth between dozens of separate results pages.
How do the new Google Image Search features affect on page SEO?
It means you might have to get in the habit of creating more detailed alt tags for your images. This way, those searchers who are taking advantage of Google’s filtering features have an increased chance of finding your content. For example, if you have a press page that has versions of your logo for other content creators to use, it might be a good idea to add "Black & White" to the black and white version of your logo in addition to your keywords.
What are your thoughts on Google's new Image Search? Love it? Hate it? We'd love to hear your two cents in the comments!
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Whitepaper - 17 Ways To Get Found Online
Is all website traffic created equal? Learn how to generate website traffic from social media in a Web 2.0 world.
Download the free whitepaper for 17 tips you can implement to start increasing your website traffic in no time.
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Posted by Samantha Coren on Wed, Jul 21, 2010
At PullnotPush I have the opportunity to work one on one with the owners of businesses developing
inbound marketing strategies for lead generation. For local businesses that only perform services in person, such as an auto shop or hair salon, capturing qualified leads can be tricky. If your website visitors and leads aren't coming from the areas you service, then you aren't going to get the best ROI on your inbound marketing efforts.
So how do you ensure you're attracting both relevant and local attention with your landing pages?
Here are a few easy tips that will help you appeal to the locals and easily filter out unqualified leads:
Use an Offer that Encourages Visitors Come Into the Store
Let's say you run a small coffee shop and you're trying to figure out a way to build up an e-mail list for your monthly newsletter. One thing you might want to try is offering a coupon on a cup of coffee to your website visitors in exchange for their e-mail address.
Or suppose you run a flower shop and want to spark interest in your monthly newsletters; letting people know they'll receive in-store discounts through your newsletter will encourage more folks to sign up.
No one wants to give away their email address – incentivize your potential leads to do so through meaningful offers!
Give People the Option to Schedule an Appointment or Quote
If giving out discounts isn't your style (and shame on you - everyone loves deals!) you can create a landing page that lets people schedule an appointment or get a free quote. However, if you do this you'll have to stay on top of people opting in to fulfill these requests and qualify the leads as potential customers. In this case, it's a good idea to include a field to capture a telephone number.
Make sure to designate someone in your business to respond to new leads coming in if the offer requires contacting the lead within a certain amount of time. If you have HubSpot, it's easy to notify someone on your team via e-mail the second a new lead comes in the Form Manager settings.
Require a Zip Code on Your Sign Up Form
You don't need to be wearing a tinfoil hat to feel uncomfortable giving away your home address to a form on the internet. However most people aren't shy about just giving out their zip code. This is also essential lead qualifying information for businesses that provide on-site or delivery services to a limited area.
Do you run a local business? What are some ways you've attracted local traffic through your website that resulted in new customers?