Most companies start internet marketing by searching for an internet marketing services provider. They may get lucky and find a good one. But most companies are going to end up hiring a firm that only possesses half of what is required to make a client successful.
If you'd like to be one of the lucky ones, you should learn how to detect a good internet marketing services firm from a not-so-good one. Make sure the strategy that your web design and internet marketing firm presents to you covers the following 4 pieces of a successful internet marketing strategy:
Data
Internet marketing starts with data. I was speaking with a small business owner the other day and I told her that I would take a look at the data from our analysis of her site. She asked me, "How do you have any data without looking at my webstats?". That's a logical question.
But, I'm not taking about traffic logs. I'm talking about data that is culled from the web about your website, your competitors' websites, search engines, blogs and social media sites.
Your website isn't an island on the web. A lot of factors determine whether you're likely to get much traffic from search engines, other blogs and social media sites. A good firm will be able to estimate how much traffic you can get without looking at what you get now. They should also be able to tell you how much work it'll take to get that traffic.
This is the main reason why the HubSpot team created our free Grader tools including Website Grader and Twitter Grader. Although website grader will tell you what mistakes you're making, there are a bunch of tools included in HubSpot's internet marketing software that give much more actionable information to aid with keyword research, on-page seo, off-page seo and social media marketing.
But there is other data you should look at, too. If you plan to do a lot of pay per click advertising, you should start your research with Compete or SpyFu. If you're looking for more advanced social media data, check out Techrigy, Radian6 and Nielsen Online.
If you're interviewing firms to design your website or plan your internet marketing strategy, they should be presenting data to you that helps you start calculating the traffic, leads and sales you'll get from internet marketing.
Software
What software will power your website and internet marketing? You must ask this question of any internet marketing services firm you're interviewing. Very few firms have this figured out. There are still way too many web designers creating websites by hand coding them from scratch. And there are way too many websites that aren't built on an internet marketing platform. Most design firms will start pitching you by showing you mockups of pretty websites. Push back! Tell them that you know that the software is ultimately what's going to enable an ROI.
What software do you need? We're obviously a bit partial here. At some point, I will write a blog post called, "The Idiots Guide to Recreating HubSpot's Internet Marketing Software". But, suffice to say that the software that powers your website should include all of what HubSpot's software includes. Don't just stop with a content management system. Make sure you can launch landing pages and edit the right spots on your pages to do SEO. Make sure you have a marketing analytics package that knows where your leads are coming from. Based on my experience, it's very beneficial if your SEO analytics tools gather data from your analytics package and your customer relationship management integrates with your landing pages.
Depending on your circumstance, there are some other tools you should consider. If you run a very high volume site, you should consider a high end analytics package like Omniture. You should definitely start email marketing. For small businesses, you should consider simple email marketing tools like Constant Contact, Aweber or Exact Target. If you're a larger business with lots and lots of leads to nurture, you should consider tools like Eloqua, Marketo or InfusionSoft. But, you should use logic to govern your software selection. Askyourself, "Will the software give you all the tools you need to controlthe traffic you want to attract, the leads you need to generate, and the sales you want to make?"
Skills
In a post a few months back, I argued that "time" is the most important ingredient in your internet marketing strategy. I still believe this. There is nothing about internet marketing that requires an advanced degree. If you have the right data and right software in place, all you really need is an interest in writing and the analytical skills required to read a graph. These skills are usually possessed by your average 11th grader.
However, if you're going to outsource your internet marketing to a firm, you should find a firm that has a stable of writers at their disposal; a quant or two on staff to plot your strategy; and a grunt or two to help with your repetitive social media and link building activities. Also consider hiring a liberal arts major out of college or a journalist. Just make sure they can read graphs.
No matter who you hire, give them the data and software they need. Then, measure them based on their ability to generate leads for you. If you're the expert at your business, your product, your customers' challenges... don't expect them to work in a vacuum. Whether you staff internally or outsource, you'll need to guide their activities, motivate and inspire them and teach them about your business. Just like hiring any new employee, don't expect them to produce leads in a vacuum. Internet marketing isn't magic. There are no such things as magic internet marketing skills. Or SEO pixie dust.
Network
Since a well executed internet marketing strategy requires your time whether you outsource, do it yourself or hire someone, "lack of time" isn't the best reason to outsource. However, a really good reason to outsource certain inbound marketing tasks is because the web is a network and your network is probably not on the web. A good internet marketing services firm has been creating content, building links, leveraging social media sites, blogging, etc for themselves and their clients for years.
For example, I have 700 readers on my blog, 500+ connections on LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, know lots of webmasters and have built 1,000s of links. If you could hire me to help you with your internet marketing, it'd be like hiring my sales coach to work a room with you in Central MA. If you were to walk into a networking event in Worcester, MA with Rick Roberge, you'd meet a lot of people very quickly. If you walked in alone, you might not get to talk to anyone worth talking to. The same thing applies on the web. Working with a firm with a similar network online as I have, can help you make progress much quicker. Without their help, and the help from their established networks on the web, you'd be the new guy in the room for awhile. Working with a firm can help you build your online network much quicker. Your firm's network will come in handy when launching your blog and building your readership, establishing credibility on social media sites, and sourcing content and building links for SEO.
This may be obvious now, but you'll be much more successful if you can connect online with your real world clients, suppliers and networking partners. If you can get your whole network blogging or using LinkedIn effectively, you'll stand a much better chance of success yourself.
As you can imagine, PR firms that have "taken to the web" are usually the best at building online networks. They have the right skills. Web developers are usually not so good at this stuff.
Data + Software + Skills + Network = Internet Marketing Success
Are you successful online? Do you have all 4 bases covered? Or did you skip one? What data do you use? What software are you using? What skills did you build internally? What tasks are you outsourcing and why? Are you building your network online? Moving your network online? Did you hire someone to help you with building your network online?
Share your experiences in the comments.
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This post was co-authored by HubSpot's Peter Caputa and David Criswell. David is a sales professional, former business owner and social media addict currently employed as a corporate sales trainer. When not on Twitter, Linked In, Facebook or reading the Hubspot Blog he is busy training for the 2009 Ironman Lake Placid.
The idea is not new that small companies are more nimble and can move quicker than big companies in just about every operational area: bringing new products or services to market, recruiting and hiring, and of course, marketing.
But, Fortune 500 companies have more money!
Who cares?
Besides bigger budgets, Fortune 500 companies don't have any capabilities that small businesses don't have. On the web, companies of all sizes have access to the same low-cost marketing tools.
For a small fixed cost of a few hundred dollars per month and a few hours per week, a small business can do everything they need to do in order to acquire new customers:
It is reasonable to say that the relative cost of acquiring a customer leveraging these activities compared to "old" marketing (print advertising, direct mail, tv advertising, cold calling, etc) is low. While Fortune 500 Marketers continue to spend ridiculous amounts of money on both online advertising and traditional marketing methods (eg $1.5+ billion of television advertising that will happen this year), it's not hard to see that online customer acquisition through inbound marketing methods is a lot less costly to leverage.
But, big business is getting into Social Media!
So what?
It's reasonable to apply the principle of the long tail to the idea of big business getting into social media marketing. There may be a few big companies that dominate the spending on "new" marketing, but this will only bring more consumers - theirs and yours - into the social media circle. However, it's the 25 million small businesses that can then more effectively use this "new" marketing to capture enough customers to have a healthy growing business.
Another reason not to be too concerned about big businesses entering into social media marketing is how they do it. Seth Godin described it best - "Big-thinking companies lose customers all the time because big-thinking companies isolate the decision makers from the outside world." When big business attempts to use social media marketing, will they really listen?
Mark Kvamme made an interesting comment on the marketing challenges big businesses face in an interview with Larry Weber in the Market Edge podcast. Part of the message from their discussion - big companies don't realize that they no longer control the message. The "new" marketing person needs to be a steward of the conversation. First they need to be invited to the party instead of interrupting it. Once invited, they can start a conversation, but they must understand that after the conversation is started, marketing doesn't control the message.
But big business has so many more customer relationships to leverage.
Who has real relationships, though?
Many small business owners believe intuitively that they are able to have a deeper relationship with their customer. Social media is in perfect alignment with this competitive advantage that small businesses have over bigger ones. The type of "information-sharing conversation" between salesperson and prospect that social media and inbound marketing initiates encourages future customers to buy-in to the solution by educating themselves at their own pace. Self-selected prospects are much easier to engage than prospects who are interrupted.
Small businesses can leverage the higher quality relationship that this inbound permission lead brings. Big businesses are still using interruption-based lead generation methods. They then typically use a convince and persuade sales strategy rather than a consultative strategy that is more likely to develop from permission-based inbound leads.
Small businesses live and die by their ability to solve customers' true challenges. As bigger businesses build big marketing and sales organizations, they lose track of customer focus and their ability to connect to a customer's true challenges. Small businesses have the skills and mindset to adapt to a world where buyers have much more ability to find the right solution on their own through search engines, blogs and social media.
Don't take anything for granted!
We certainly can't expect Fortune 500 companies or big business to do nothing. Evidence of this can already be seen and according to eMarketer, $1.9 Billion will be spent on social media advertising in 2009 (compared to about $20 billion in overall web advertising this year).
Maybe the game of marketing has changed to a point where, as David Meerman Scott suggested at the Inbound Marketing Summit, we need a new way to measure marketing ROI. His position - the ways we measure success today aren't necessarily the right ways to measure success of new marketing. For example, measure how many people were exposed to your ideas, downloaded something for free, shared that material, how many people are talking about your company - positively and negatively.
As a small business, you can decide at any time how to measure the effectiveness or success of your "new" marketing efforts. You intuitively know that building a strong reputation and a following online has much more lasting effects than a short term sale.
You also know that measuring inbound marketing and social media based on its ROI, is an obvious and necessary thing to do. Most big businesses, believe it or not, don't know how they're going to measure their social media success, yet plan to spend significantly more money on it next year:
- 87% are not measuring their ROI on social media marketing efforts.
- Yet, 67% report they will be increasing their social media advertising budget
At HubSpot, we'd wager that at some point, big businesses will figure out that it's not about throwing money, might and muscle at the web. And that it's about getting back to the very basics of business: helping your customers succeed and your industry progress.
Until then, small businesses have a big advantage. Don't wait to take advantage of it!
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The numbers this fall aren't good.
After a high above 14,000 last year, the Dow is now thrashing around well below 9,000. The U.S. government is spending over $700 billion to buy unprecedented stakes in the nation's largest banks. Many industries, including technology, are hemorrhaging jobs.
This post isn't about all that. It's about the silver lining -- the fact that, just as we saw eight years ago when the first Internet bubble burst, financial pressure is now forcing companies to make changes. And just like last time, these changes are laying the foundation for a new, more efficient period of Internet growth.
In 2001, when the last downturn began, businesses began shifting some of their marketing dollars to search engine advertising. It was more measurable and targeted than display advertising, so it was appealing to marketers with tight budgets.
As we enter a second Internet downturn, businesses are again seeking efficiency. They're shifting money out of expensive paid search advertising, and into optimization, content and social media that help them get found in organic search results.
These changes are laying the foundation for a new era of marketing on the web - the Inbound Marketing era.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.
In traditional marketing (outbound marketing) companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam and trade shows.
Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It's still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.
Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing on its head.
Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.
Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.
The most successful Inbound Marketing campaigns have three key components:
(1) Content - Content is the substance of any Inbound Marketing campaign. It is the information or tool that attracts potential customers to your site or your business.
(2) Search Engine Optimization - SEO makes it easier for potential customers to find your content. It is the practice of building your site and inbound links to your site to maximize your ranking in search engines, where most of your customers begin their buying process.
(3) Social Media - Social media amplifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.
Why Inbound Marketing Makes Sense in a Recession
As the economy slows down, companies are turning to Inbound Marketing because it is a more efficient way of allocating marketing resources than traditional, outbound marketing. As our CEO, Brian Halligan, puts it, when you're inbound marketing, the thickness of your brain matters a lot more than the thickness of your wallet.
There are three specific ways Inbound Marketing improves on the efficiency of traditional marketing:
(1) It Costs Less - Outbound marketing means spending money - either by buying ads, buying email lists or renting huge booths at trade shows. Inbound Marketing means creating content and talking about it. A blog costs nothing to start. A Twitter account is free, too. Both can draw thousands of customers to your site.
(2) Better Targeting - Techniques like cold-calling, mass mail and email campaigns are notoriously poorly targeted. You're reaching out to individuals because of one or two attributes in a database. When you do Inbound Marketing, you only approach people who self-qualify themselves. They demonstrate an interest in your content, so they are likely to be interested in your product.
(3) It's an Investment, Not an Ongoing Expense - When you buy pay-per-click advertising on search engines, its value is gone as soon as you pay for it. In order to maintain a position at the top of Google's paid results, you have to keep paying. However, if you invest that money in quality content that ranks in Google's organic results, you'll be there until somebody displaces you.
The Roots of the Inbound Web
Only in the past year and a half have the technology, the tools and the public's use of both evolved to the point where Inbound Marketing is practical.
In the early days of the Internet, there was no mainstream marketing. There were lots of experiments but few business buyers and consumers.
In the mid-1990s, as the first Internet bubble grew, companies began to follow their customers online. Tools for independent publishing were weak, so companies' online presence mirrored their offline presence. They sprayed advertising across mass media sites and prayed a few potential customers would see it.
When the dot-com bubble popped in 2001, marketers began to reassess the effectiveness of the spray-and-pray approach. They saw that consumers and business buyers were starting their purchase process less on mass media sites, and more on search engines. They discovered that in many cases targeted search-engine advertising was far more effective than display advertising on large media sites.
As spending poured into search marketing, a new era of Internet growth began. In addition to changes in Internet marketing, this phase of growth -- Web 2.0 -- produced significant changes in the way we use the web. It shifted from a read-only platform to one where anybody could publish, connect with friends and share content.
Now, as we enter a new economic downturn, online marketers are using the tools of this new read-write web to become more efficient. They're using social media, they're publishing content and they're optimizing it. They're becoming Inbound Marketers.
The Inbound-Marketing Secret? Empowerment!
Eight years ago, when the dot-com bubble collapsed, the idea of a single man using great content, social media and search engine optimization to build a New Jersey liquor store into a $50-million-a-year business in the course of two years would have been absurd.
Yet that's exactly what Gary Vaynerchuk has done since he launched Wine Library TV in 2006.
This is the power of Inbound Marketing.
With the tools that have become mainstream over the last two to three years, the scale of any business can be unlimited. If you have a great product and the skills to communicate with your customers, you can compete with the biggest advertising budgets.
That is exciting, and for small businesses it's empowering.
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In 2001 and 2002 I was one of the homepage editors at NYTimes.com. I led a team of editors and producers that published the day's newspaper online every evening.
Today I'm on the marketing team at HubSpot, where one of my responsibilities is this blog.
Since joining HubSpot, I've had to relearn many of the most basic things I know about writing and editing on a website. Quality content production is central to HubSpot's business, but it's a very different type of content production from the one I learned at NYTimes.com.
A lot of the small business owners and marketing executives I've spoken with since I started at HubSpot are learning similar lessons. They know that creating content is the best way to do search engine optimization -- to attract inbound links to their site and to improve their positions in organic (free) search engine results -- but they're not sure what kind of content to create. It needs to be different from traditional marketing content (advertising), but it still serves a marketing purpose, so it can't simply be traditional content like you'd find on NYTimes.com.
To help other business bloggers thread this needle, I put together this list of the five most important ways business blogging is different traditional content production:
(1) Engagement is the top priority. Engaged users are users who read your posts then react. They comment on your articles, post them on Twitter, or write about them on their own blog. These kinds of reactions are important for business bloggers because they dramatically expand a blog's reach. If you have 10 readers who read your post but don't react, you'll reach 10 people. If you have 10 readers who post your article on Twitter where they're followed by 100 people, you'll reach 1,000 people. Engagement is desirable for traditional media, but since their revenue comes from traffic, their focus is on page views and unique visitors.
(2) You need to measure and optimize every piece of content. NYTimes.com editors know what kind of traffic each of their posts get, but using that knowledge to inform editorial decisions is taboo. For a business blog, it can't be taboo. You have to measure the success of your content, then use that data to improve it. Here at HubSpot, I study inbound links, comments, conversions and visitors for every post, and use that information to write new posts that improve on each of those metrics.
(3) There needs to be balance between content that drives sales and content that attracts readers. At traditional media organizations like NYTimes.com sales and editorial are in separate groups, so most individuals don't have conflicting priorities. That's not the case for business blogs. Business blogs are marketing tools and need to drive sales. Yet in order to do that, they need to provide quality content without a sales pitch. Every business blogger needs to find the right balance on their own.
(4) Business bloggers must be flexible about style. Traditional media holds onto lots of habits about style -- in page formatting, writing and presentation. Don't spend time worrying about that on your business blog. Write your posts in the format that gets you the most engaged readers in your target audience. If that means using bullets and lists, do that. If it means long detailed prose, do that.
(5) You have to promote your own work. In traditional media, writers submit their stories and let their publication take care of distribution and promotion. That approach won't get you very far on a business blog. You have to push your own stories. Post them on your Twitter account. Post them on Facebook. Talk about them. The most successful posts on the HubSpot blog are often the ones where the author promotes it via his or her own personal network then dives into the comments.
One last thing: I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that there is one major similarity between content production at NYTimes.com and HubSpot. Both organizations are focused on goals that are much bigger than the numbers they track. NYTimes.com isn't just about page views and visitors -- it's trying to inform society. HubSpot isn't just about inbound links and conversions -- we're trying empower small businesses.
Without these broader goals, companies lose focus, and make bad decisions.
Photo: Dom Dada
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HubSpot TV Episode #15- November 14, 2008
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