Working from a prospect list your boss hands you or, worse, a purchased list of leads will get you lots of hang-ups, a few tepid maybes and very few real prospects that turn into even fewer closed deals. And why should they talk to you? They have no idea who you are, they have no idea why they might need to talk to you and, frankly, they’re busy and you interrupted what they were doing when you called.

Attract them rather than chase them Windows 10 Home Key kaufen

With a carefully thought-out plan to share information on blogs, special offerings like ebooks, whitepapers and checklists – information that is useful and attractive to your best customers and prospects that look like them – inbound marketing is a great way to attract the kind of prospect who is already interested in what you offer.

Inbound marketing is a process, starting with research, through content creation and moving through the stages of attracting and nurturing leads, and finally to converting leads to customers.

inbound marketing path

Research will give you information – or additional information – about your target market. Even if you are simply looking to expand within a silo you’re already working, research can reveal specific words and phrases, questions and concepts that are the daily language of your target and which you can use to capture their attention.

Research will also help you craft your web and blog text to improve your organic SEO. It should be a constant throughout the process and at every step.

SEO (search engine optimization) comes from your content, which is the knowledge you share via blog posts, videos, case studies, tip sheets, and other special offerings we mentioned above. Your web copy will contain some of the words and phrases you discovered in your research. Elements of your website, such as new content, tags, metadata, links and other details, also improve your organic SEO.

Blogging attracts people who are searching for your expertise. If your content is robust and, most importantly, provides useful information that speaks to their concerns, people will subscribe to your blog. Answer the questions and concerns using the language your research discovered. Do not sell. Do not talk about what you do. Talk about what you know.

Once they sign up – boom! – they’ve just identified themselves as a prospect.

Social Media invites prospects to your website. Social media is a conversation and, like any good conversation, it isn’t all about you. Engage with other thought leaders, clients and prospects to share information. An invitation to follow, like or connect encourages an interested person to become a qualified prospect.

Social media is also the broadcast channel to let people know about all the good stuff you have on your website and in your blogs and how to find it. Talking about others’ ideas is only good social media manners.

Landing pages are the locked gates to your in-depth info, and a key to your inbound success. The info you are giving away has a small price: the recipient’s name and email address. Different kinds of content will appeal to prospects and customers at different points of their purchasing journey.

When they are simply researching their options, a guide, a comparison chart or something similar would be useful to them. A case study is likely to be read when they are in the deciding stage of their journey.

Email, when it is permission based, is the tool for staying in touch with useful information and links to more in-depth info, special offers, links to blogs, invitations, news and more. When the message is properly targeted, it will have a 62 percent better chance of being clicked on than a non-targeted email. It’s the research you started with that will help you target your message.

Don’t bother with purchasing an email list. At best, a large percentage of the list will be out of date or your carefully crafted message will end up in their spam folder. At worst, you’ll be shut down for sending spam and your email account will be suspended or cancelled.

Don’t you hate getting junk emails from someone you don’t know for a product you don’t want or need? Of course you do. So, why send it?

Getting to know you

What’s the point of all this activity if none of it results in a direct sale? You’re cultivating a relationship and sharing knowledge. You’re demonstrating your expertise. You’re building a relationship. You’re building trust.

You’re making it easy for your sales team to close the deal. According to a survey conducted by Hubspot, in six months, inbound marketing resulted in almost twice as many web visitors and 2.69 times more leads. The conversion rate for lead to sales was a whopping 73 percent higher compared to all respondents, and 69 percent of survey respondents saw increased sales revenues. Isn’t that a worthwhile goal?

Let’s Talk About: Facebook’s new “Reactions” functionality.

Facebook recently released new “Reactions” to use when interacting with posts. Beyond just “liking” a post, you can now select “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry.”

Mark Zuckerberg described the new feature like this:
“Today is our worldwide launch of Reactions — the new Like button with more ways to express yourself. Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don’t Like their posts. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this with our team. One of my goals was to make it as simple as pressing and holding the Like button. The result is Reactions, which allow you to express love, laughter, surprise, sadness or anger.

Love is the most popular reaction so far, which feels about right to me!”

When it comes to measuring engagement, the Facebook Newsroom announced that each of these new reactions will be counted as a Like. (Although it appears that Facebook plans on letting brands view engagements broken out by reactions on the Insights tab in the future.)

Our POV:

This is one of the biggest game-changers that Facebook has introduced to its UX since it started in 2004. We say “big” because it greatly influences how users engage with the platform. Even though it’s a relatively minor function, it still has greater implications.

For users, it means we can mark the stories that matter most to us, and our Newsfeed could potentially react to that data. By telling Facebook not just what you like to see (or don’t like to see) – but how you’re FEELING about it – they can start serving you with content that takes your shared mood into account, or perhaps content that just feels more personalized.

For brands, the changes could impact their content and their ad targeting. Although Facebook’s current plan is to count everything as a Like, brands would benefit from more granular insights into the type of emotions associated with specific content. Users can tell us if our content is relevant to them, or not. Obviously if users “love” a post, it’s content that they want to see more of, which is something the content strategist can chalk up as a home run. But now, if your users only Like a post, we have to wonder: was it really worth posting at all?

We also begin to wonder how this will influence the Facebook sphere overall. Will people begin to judge their friends’ reactions to their posts? Will this start to turn people away from the platform? Or, will we start to see the number of engagements increase now that users can assign a specific emotion when a generic Like wouldn’t have worked in the past? Only time will tell, but we suspect that it won’t have huge negative implications. Hopefully, the new reactions will lead to deeper insights into the true sentiment behind a Like, which should mean improved content for all.

Reactions from Creators:

Kat, Copywriter & Strategist: I can’t wait to start seeing reactions to our client content! I’m excited about the prospect of getting more insight into how users are feeling about social content we create, particularly when it comes to copy. I’m wondering if we can “test” content (or make recommendations) based on reactions.

Christen, Strategist: I’m hoping reactions will help us better understand what a brand’s users are feeling or thinking. Some may be concerned about having too many choices, but in this case, I think it’s a welcome change. Users have been practically begging Facebook for more than a Like, and they finally delivered!

Sarah, Art Director: From a UX perspective, I know this was a huge undertaking. I’m excited by the simplicity of their solution and look forward to seeing how their initial decisions evolve over time. It looks like the ‘yay’ emoji didn’t make the cut, so I will be rallying for it’s future inclusion.