www.smamarketing.net
THE INBOUND
MARKETING
CAMPAIGN
LAUNCH GUIDE
Insider secrets for planning, building, and launching your
first Inbound Campaign.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
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About the Author
Ryan Shelley is the Founder and CGO of Shelley Media Arts, LLC. Since 2009, he has been
helping businesses leverage the power of the internet to build their brand and grow visibility.
He is passionate about educating marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs in the areas
of Inbound Marketing, SEO, Analytics and Growth.
Connect with him on
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RyanShelley
Twitter: @ryan_shelley
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryancshelley/
Subscribe to our company blog for more inbound marketing tips:
https://www.smamarketing.net/blog
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Introduction
So you’ve done it. You’ve developed a great product, launched
your website and now you’re sitting back waiting for the leads to
flow in. It’s that easy, right? Unfortunately, no.
While the internet has leveled the playing field and gives
entrepreneurs access to the same people as billion dollar
businesses, getting people’s attention is harder than ever. With so
many options to choose from, the buyer now holds all the power.
Or do they?
Smart companies have learned how to leverage their expertise by
providing added value with their services. By not only selling great
products and solutions, but also educating their customer base,
they have turned their knowledge into their most powerful asset.
Today, your website is arguably the most important marketing asset your business owns. But just
having a website isn’t enough. Each day millions of people search the internet looking for answers
and solutions to problems and challenges they are facing. Without a clear and focused plan of
action, your website may never get the opportunity to share your story with the people looking for
your solutions to their problems.
In this expert field manual, we will cover how you can use the internet to share your story, connect
with new leads and provide tons of value by leveraging your knowledge.
You will learn how to define and segment your audience, what design elements your website
needs and the keys to making sure your site can be found in the search results. This guide will also
detail how to build in lead nurturing elements so you can turn your new leads into customers.
Are you are ready to put your knowledge to work and create a digital experience that will attract
people to your brand? Let’s go!
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CONTENTS
Identify your Audience.
04
Define Your Goals
12
Creating a Compelling Offer
16
CTAs, Landing Pages & Forms
19
Content Marketing
23
Optimization
26
Social Media
33
Nurturing
37
Learn & Improve
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The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
01
Identifying
Your Audience
Do you really know your audience? Understanding who you are trying to
reach is key in creating value-added marketing solutions for your business.
Each business and industry is unique and so are the people searching for the
products and services from those businesses. Defining your buyer persona
will help you target your audience with the right message at the right time.
So you may be thinking, “Alright I get it, I need to know who my audience
is, but what the heck is a buyer persona?”
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Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are semi-fictional, generalized
representations of your ideal customers. Creating buyer personas helps you understand your
customers (and prospective customers) better. In order to create content, messaging, products and
services to meet the specific needs of your audience, you first have to understand who they are. So
often we focus on delivering our products and services without stepping back to ask ourselves, “Is
this the best solution for my customer?” Creating personas will not only help you create better
messaging, but also help you create solutions that your customers and prospects will enjoy. As Seth
Godin so eloquently says, “Build something that people will look for, something that people will talk
about, something we would miss if it were gone.”
Creating personas is so much bigger than just your marketing strategy. Truly understanding your
buyers will shape every part of your business. It will help you create a sales process tailored to meet
the specific needs of your prospects. It will also help you create products and services that meet the
specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of your current clients and potential customers.
When creating your buyer personas, research is key. The internet is a great place to find marketing
research information, but there is no substitute for the insights you can collect from your actual
customer base. To get started, ask a few of your clients if they would do an interview or create a
simple survey for them to fill out on your website. You may have a very broad customer base, but
start small. Focus on your main persona and add more later as needed.
How Buyer Personas
help to Build an
Effective Marketing
Strategy
The success of any marketing campaign or
strategy begins with the message. Developing
personas will help make sure that you create
content that appeals to your target audience.
Creating personalized marketing helps to build
a better connection with your audience. When
you get right down to it, people want to do
business with people who get them. They
don’t just want products and services, they
want products and services that meet their
needs on a number of levels. Marketing that
adds value is one way to cut through all of the
noise and build trust with your audience.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Building personas also helps you to map out your content to make sure that you have a clear path to
conversion. By understanding the specific needs of your audience you can create messaging that
encourages your prospects to continue in the buyer’s journey. Taking the time to create negative
personas can save you a ton of headaches. Not every lead or prospect is a good fit for your business.
By understanding who your prospects are before you get too far into the process can save you a lot
of your precious time. It also helps to refine your marketing to target your good personas. This lowers
the cost-per-lead and cost-per-customer as well as increases sales productivity.
Creating
Your Buyer Personas
Ok, so at this point you get it. Buyer personas are important, but how do you actually create one?
While there are many ways to do this, we always find it easier to start with a road map. You can create
buyer personas using a mixture of research, surveys, and interviews of your target audience. This
should include your current customers, prospects, and even those who are not in your contacts
database, but align with your target audience.
Here are some practical ways to gather information you need to develop personas:
• Look at your contacts database or CRM to find trends about how certain leads or customers find
and use your content.
• Use form fields to capture important persona information on your website.
• Interview customers and prospects, either in person or over the phone, to discover what they like
about your product or service.
Like I stated before, research is key to developing quality buyer personas. Thankfully our friends
at Hubspot have helped us out by creating a list of 20 questions to ask in a persona interview. These
questions are organized into specific categories to make sure that you create well-rounded personas
for your business. It’s important to note that you don’t need to answer all of these questions. Some
may not be appropriate for your target audience, so add to the list or remove questions as needed.
Think of them more as guidelines than a set of rules.
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Role
What is their job role/title?
How is their job measured?
What does a typical day look like?
What knowledge and tools do you use in their job?
Who do they report to? Who reports to them?
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Company
In which industry or industries does their company work?
What is the size of their company (revenue, employees)?
Goals
What are they responsible for?
What does it mean to be successful in their role?
Challenges
What are their biggest challenges?
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Watering Holes
How do they learn about new information for their job?
What publications or blogs do they read?
What associations and social networks do they participate in?
Personal Background
Describe their personal demographics (if appropriate, ask their age, whether or not they're
married, if they have children).
Describe their educational background. What level of education did they complete, which
schools did they attend, and what did they study?
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Describe their career path. How did they end up where they are today?
Shopping Preferences
How do they prefer to interact with vendors (e.g. email, phone, in person)?
Do they use the internet to research vendors or products? If yes, how do they search for
information?
Describe a recent purchase. Why did they consider a purchase, what was the evaluation
process, and how did they decide to purchase that product or service?
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Turning the
Research Into Your Persona
So you’ve done your research and collected a ton of really awesome data. But what do you do with it
now? How can you break all of this data down to create a well-rounded buyer persona for your
business. This next step is critical in understanding your audience. Data is great and all, but unless we
can digest it and make sense out of it, it really has no purpose.
Many businesses and industries have many personas, but just start with one. Focus on the main
persona for your business and take your time. No need to rush the process. This will become the
basis for your messaging and content, so doing a thorough job is essential.
Start with filling in the basic demographic information. While you may not have every piece of this
information, you should have enough data to make educated assumptions. When you are finished,
you will have a great looking presentation that you can share with your team.
Go over all of your findings together and rework some of the areas, as needed. Buyer personas are
never finished. Because your persona represents a real person, it needs to be able to change and
adapt just like we do every day.
Lastly, make sure you name your persona (like Local Linda, Small Business Bob or Creative Carl), and
always include a real-life image of your persona. This helps you and your team to truly envision your
persona and connects your research to real life. If you need an image, HubSpot has some great free
ones you can download on their site or you could always get a stock photo from another site. While
this process can seem a little silly, it helps your persona come to life. So have fun, let your inner
creative loose and go create an awesome buyer persona. Your business will thank you!
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
02
Defining
Your Goals
If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up someplace else.”― Yogi Berra
Whether you have short-term or long-term goals, planning is essential
if you want to manage the process. In this section we want to help you
clearly describe your goals, set a deadline for meeting them, and
understand the desired end result. This will all be accomplished by
focusing on SMART, a methodology that helps you make, well, "smart"
goals! Let’s do a quick review of what SMART stands for.
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Specific
When creating a goal, you want it to be as short and specific as possible. Having
"a good marketing year" isn't a reflection of what your company actually
accomplished. Imagine that your boss is about to leave for vacation, and you have
less than 90 seconds until he/she runs out the door, and all they want is to
quickly hear what next year's goal is -- what are you going to tell him or her that
concisely explains your plans?
Measurable
Oftentimes, companies say they want to "increase their social media following."
While that is a goal, it's not a trackable goal. If you start the new year with 100
followers, and end with 101, technically you met your set goal. But if you switch
that goal to read, "We want to increase social media following by 25%," suddenly
you can measure your progress every month to see if you're on track to
ultimately jumping from 100 to 125 followers. Now you really know you hit your
goal -- hopefully it's more ambitious than this example!
Attainable
While having history-breaking goals is beneficial, it's more important to keep
these goals realistic. If in your company history you've generated an average of 10
leads every month, jumping to 2,000 leads per month would be a drastic change.
Many businesses do this to push employees and to "go as far as they possibly
can." But in reality, all this does is discourage your team, as he/she sees they can
never actually be successful. SMART goals are goals you can actually achieve.
Relevant
Why have a goal if the goal doesn't matter? Say you're a teddy bear business that,
at maximum, can only sell 1,000 teddy bears per month. In this situation, your goal
likely shouldn't be to "increase production of teddy bears from 1,000 per month to
5,000 per month." While it's great you have more product, if your existing
distributors won't buy more, why bother? Your goal should be something along
the lines of, "increase distribution channels by X%."
Time-Bound
While having all the aforementioned helps develop a solid goal, you need to
ensure you have a timeline for meeting that goal. Going back to the teddy bear
example, if you do decide your goal is to increase distribution channels, you need
to know when you will accomplish this in order to know when to start working on
a secondary goal of increasing teddy bear production. You don't want a situation
where you end up with more toy stores taking your teddy bears, but no teddy
bears to give.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Smart Goal Planner
What is your overall marketing goal?
Which situation best summarizes your marketing needs?
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Based on your answer above, set a specific number for an upcoming goal.
When would you like to reach this goal?
How many hours per week can you dedicate to inbound marketing?
What is the biggest marketing challenge preventing you from reaching this goal?
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
03
Creating a
Compelling Offer
When it comes to generating leads, you need to have something to offer.
The goal of lead generation is to build your email list. People aren’t going to
just hand over their contact information for nothing, you need to give them a
compelling reason.
For example, this eBook you are reading right now is 100% free, well kind of.
In exchange for me sharing what I know with you, you willingly gave me
your email address. Why? Because I was willing to give you something of
equal or greater value - my knowledge.
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We all have something we can give away. While many people are afraid to give away their “trade
secrets,” they are really only hurting themselves. Our prospects and customers want to know what
goes into the products and services we create. The more we educate and share with them, the more
they become connected with us and our process.
I am not saying we have to tell all, but we should share with them our tips and knowledge that set us
apart from the competition. Also, we aren’t giving away our knowledge for free. They are giving us
their contact information which we can use to continue the relationship and increase our revenue.
Questions to
Help Your Get Started
What is something that sets your product or service apart?
What are common problems that your product or services solves?
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
What are some frequently asked questions about your product or service?
What type of medium does your persona find the most useful? (circle one)
eBook
Slide Deck
White Paper
Checklist
Cheat Sheet
What content do we already have that we can expand upon?
These questions and answers will help you begin to formulate a compelling offer that will add
tremendous value to your prospects and current customers.
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04
CTAs, Landing Pages
& Forms: The Power of 3
Call-To-Action
Too often, we assume people will naturally go to the pages we want them
to go to. We have to stop assuming and make the conversion process
simple and straightforward. In order to have our visitors go deeper into our
site and convert, we must give them clear direction. This is where a
call-to-action (CTA) comes in. A call-to-action is a simple, yet direct way to
lead your visitors in the right direction.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
A Few Tips When
Creating A Call-To-Action
1
Use a strong command verb to start your CTA: Let your audience know exactly what you
want them to do.
2
Use words that provoke emotion or enthusiasm: A small, yet effective element here is
adding an exclamation point to the end of your CTA.
3
Give your audience a reason why they should take the desired action: In other words, what’s
in it for them?
4
Take Advantage of FOMO: One of the best uses of FOMO in your CTA is to mention a sale or
promotion that your company is holding, and which won't last forever.
5
Don’t be afraid to get a little creative: The only way you’ll absolutely know for sure if
something will work for your account is if you test it out.
6
Use numbers when possible: If a user sees your pricing information in your ad, and decides
to click through to your site, then you know they are still interested in the product or service
you are offering.
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Landing Pages
A landing pages is created for the sole
purpose of converting your visitors. This is
typically the page a visitors sees after
clicking on a CTA. Your landing pages need
to have an offer that creates value for the
visitor (remember the previous section). This
establishes your business as a trusted
source for information and gives you more
leverage as you nurture your lead through
the buyer’s journey.
A Few Tips for Your Landing Pages
1
Remove navigation: You want to keep the visitors on the landing page and encourage them
to fill out the form. This is essential for you to continue to nurture that lead.
2
A landing page should have a single purpose and thus a single focused message.
3
Congruence: every element of your page should be aligned conceptually with the topic and
goal of the page.
4
Show your product/service being used in context.
5
Use video. It’s been shown to improve conversion by up to 80%.
6
Edit to remove unnecessary content. Be succinct.
7
Use real testimonials for authenticity.
8
Show social proof via indicators of your social status
9
Simplify your copy using bullets.
10
If you are selling a book, or giving away an eBook via lead gen, provide a preview to
increase trust and show that you are proud of your product.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
User Friendly Forms
Your form is how you are going to collect
information from your visitor. When creating a
form, it's important that we use best practices
to improve our conversion rate. One of the
biggest mistakes I see are companies who
ask for too much information too early. By
optimizing your forms, you can increase
conversions and begin the relationship with
your new contact on the right foot!
A Few Tips
When Creating Forms
1
Make sure your ask matches your offer. Don't ask for too much information from your visitor
2
Less is More (Remove Form Fields)
3
Single-Column beats Multi-Column Forms
4
Fields should be ordered from easiest to hardest to fill out
5
Make typing easy: auto format, support copy/paste, make suggestions (not always!), etc.
6
Indicate whether each field is required or optional, unless they’re all required
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The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Content Marketing
Leverage Your Voice
Building a business is hard work. There are hundreds of decisions to make
every day. As the owner, you are the expert and final decision maker, but
there is only so much time in each day. Prioritizing tasks is necessary, but
when it comes to marketing are you focusing on the right things?
While content marketing may not be one of your top priorities, it should be.
By sharing your voice with the world you establish yourself as a thought
leader and provide added value to both new and returning site visitors. The
most common form of content marketing is blogging. Below we will share a
little more on why and how to prioritize blogging.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Why Prioritize Blogging?
Logistically there are several ways a blog helps your customers find you through an internet search.
• The more pages your website has, the more ways to find you in search.
• Consistent blog posts are one way to show your website is current and active.
• Blogging sets your website apart within your industry.
• Statistically, your website traffic will increase over 50% with the addition of a blog.
• Blog posts provide fresh content to share on social media.
• Blogging is another opportunity to show your clients and potential clients how much you care.
What Types of
Blog Posts are Best?
So we know how great a blog will be for your website, but it’s important to point out not all blog
posts are equal. High-quality, relevant content is the key to attracting customers to return to your
website as well as remember your name when they need the service or product you provide.
Blog posts should always be industry-relevant and have original content. More than that they should
inform or educate your reader. For example, if you are a home builder your blog post subjects could
include different styles of homes, things to ask your contractor before beginning the building process
and how to decide if the time is right to build a house. These three subjects are very different, but all
revolve around the industry of home building.
The best blog posts answer buyer questions, help them make decisions, and give helpful advice
while telling potential customers about your company, yourself, or your industry. They are interesting
and helpful. They are well-written, grammatically correct, and free of spelling errors and optimized
for SEO. An optimized post will automatically rank higher in search results. It’s important to
implement best practices to give your website the best chance to rank high.
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How do I Prioritize Blogging?
If you don’t prioritize your blogging, it’s easy to forget about it or push it back to a more “convenient
time.” Here are a few tips to help you prioritizing your blogging.
Decide how many blog
posts can you commit to
monthly
Many people get excited
when they start blogging
but quickly lose steam.
Instead of
over-committing, I
recommend that you start
with a realistic goal. The
key to great content
marketing is consistency.
So whatever frequency
you choose, make sure you
can keep it up for at least 6
months.
Plan your content ideas in
advance
Share the load (if you
can)
Waiting until the last
minute before writing your
blog never ends with your
best work. It also can
produce “writer’s block.”
Once you’ve decided how
many you want to write a
month, plan out your
topics ahead of time. I
recommend that you plan
out 3 months of content.
This allows you time to
write. Of course, if a timely
event happens that is
connected to your
business, you can allows
add a “special report.”
If you have people working
with you, get them
involved in your blog. Not
only does this reduce your
load, it also gives them
ownership in the
company’s marketing. If
you are a solopreneur, you
may have to do it on your
own. You can also hire an
agency or a writing firm,
but if you are getting
started, I recommend you
write some articles
yourself so that you
understand what goes into
it.
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Optimizing Your Site
for Users and Search
Having a page that is optimized for both the user and the search engines is
crucial to a successful search strategy. SEO is more than just ranking; it’s
about connecting and converting as well. An optimized page will help
ensure that you not only rank for the terms you want but also convert the
traffic that lands on your page.
The “rules” of SEO have changed a lot over the years, but there are still a
few core components that every business owner needs to have in mind
when optimizing the pages on their site. Google is always working to make
sure that the best answer is being delivered to the searcher in the fewest
clicks possible. So on-page optimization comes down to both meeting the
requirements of Google's crawlers and matching the expectations of the
end user.
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Value-Added and Purposeful
This is huge and it’s also the most abstract component. That’s why I wanted to tackle it first. Every page
of your site needs to have a purpose. In 2015, Google released the full version of its Search Quality
Rater's Guidelines and Handbook. This was huge for the world of search. For the first time, we got to
see exactly how Google was instructing Search Quality Raters to rate website pages. While their rating
of pages doesn’t necessarily have a direct impact on rankings, this guide, in my opinion, does give us
insight into what Google considers to be “good quality.”
Why is this important to on-page SEO? As you’ve probably read a million times, “content is king.” This
statement is often followed up by an explanation that you must create “quality content.” Ok, but who
defines quality? In short, Google and the users who land on your page. The Search Quality Guidelines
outline what Google considers quality.
Here are the characteristics of a high-quality page
High-quality pages serve their purpose and are satisfying to the user. In order to get a high rating, a
page needs to have at least one of the following:
• A satisfying amount of high-quality main content.
• The page and website are expert, authoritative, and trustworthy for the topic of the page.
• The website has a good reputation for the topic of the page.
In order to receive a high rating, a page must also have most of the following:
• A satisfying amount of website information such as “About Us,” “Contact,” and “Customer Service”
information.
• Supplementary content which contributes to a satisfying user experience on the page and website.
• Functional page design which allows users to easily focus on main content and use supplementary
content as desired.
• A website which is well cared for and maintained.
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The Page Title
The page title is the first piece of information the search engines are looking at to determine what the
page is actually about. Your page title should clearly tell what your page is about. Google and the
other search engines will compare your title tag to the rest of content on that page to see if it matches.
While most people now use a CMS like Wordpress to enter their content and meta information, below
is an example of what a Title Tag looks like in HTML.
<title> This is where you put your epic title </title>
No matter what platform you use to run your site, you should adhere to best practices. Here are a few
Title Tag best practices.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Use only one title tag per page.
Place top-performing keywords in descending order.
Put site branding last.
Use no more than 70 characters, including spaces.
Avoid using stop words.
No Duplicates.
Don’t Keyword Stuff.
Meta Description
The next piece of meta data you need to use and
optimize is your description. While this is no longer
used by search engines in the ranking algorithm, it is
still a critical piece to effective SEO. Your meta
description tells your readers what the page is about.
A well-written page description can set your listing
apart from the competition and increase the overall
click-through-rate.
Now, Google will, at times, change your description.
However, this doesn't mean you shouldn’t add them.
You should still create a custom meta description for
every page on your site. Below is an example of an
HTML meta description tag.
<meta name="description" content=“This is where
you put your super awesome and optimized
description “>
The meta description can now be up to 320
characters. Here are some meta description best
practices:
• Should be in an active voice.
• Have a call-to-action.
• Needs to be unique.
• Keyword and content-focused.
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WordPress SEO plugins
Most of the sites we work on use WordPress as their CMS. WordPress has a number of great SEO
plugins to help you get the most out of your on-page SEO. Here are a few SEO plugins we like:
Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin: Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) is the most
complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything
from a snippet editor and real-time page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your page's
content, image titles, meta descriptions and more, to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options
in between.
WP Meta SEO: WP Meta SEO gives you control over all your meta content and images including bulk
SEO content and image optimization, SEO on page, 404 & redirects.
For years we used Yoast, but more and more I find myself using WP Meta SEO. It has a lot of features
that can really help your SEO efforts without having to add any more plugins to your WordPress install.
Features such as image optimization, 404 error redirects, internal broken link checker and more are
included. If you haven’t used this plugin yet, I highly recommend you check it out.
Content Optimization
The internet and everything connected to it is driven by content. This is why inbound marketers and
SEOs have stressed the importance of content over the years. Creating good content takes time,
practice and a lot of persistence. This is why so few actually do it. Just posting more than the other
guy isn’t going to give you better results. Quality is a much more powerful metric than quantity. So
let’s get into a few ways to optimize your content to deliver better on-page SEO.
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The Text
What you write about and how you write about it has a huge impact on your website's rankings. As
mentioned earlier, Google is looking to deliver the best answer in the shortest amount of clicks for the
searcher. This means your content needs to be user driven and deliver the answers to the questions
they are looking for.
So how can you determine what people are looking for? This is where keyword research and topical
research come into play. Using the Google AdWords Keyword Research tool you can uncover some
pretty good insight into what people are looking for.
When writing a blog or content for a page, rule number one is to focus on one keyword/topic per
page. Don’t try to cram as many keywords into a post as possible, you’ll just end up confusing your
reader. By focusing on one keyword, you can create a piece of content that specifically addresses a
pain point or solution. This results in better content for both your end-user as well as the search
engines.
Use your core keyword in the page or post title and then again within the first 100 words of the content.
After that, it's a smart idea to use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords throughout your content.
LSI Keywords are semantically related to your main keyword and help the search engines determine a
page's relevancy.
Multimedia
The next step in content optimization is adding in media elements that engage your viewers.
Powerful images, videos, slide decks and other forms of media will dramatically decrease your page's
bounce rate and increase the time spent on your site. Both bounce rate and time on site are crucial
ranking factors.
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Image Optimization
While using multi-media is great, if it’s not optimized,
it’s hard for the search engines to understand what it
is. Google and the other search engines can’t
comprehend what the image is unless we tell them.
Optimizing your images not only helps the crawlers
understand your page, it can also result in having your
images rank. Using your targeted keyword as the alt
text and title is a great place to start. If you are using a
featured image, use the title and the alt-text to tell
what the post is about.
In HTML, you would add the title and alt-text like this:
<img src=“http://yourimage.jpg” title=“keyword
optimized title” alt=“keyword optimized alt”>
For WordPress users, you can update this information
in the media section of your dashboard. But a quicker
way to do this is by using the aforementioned
WP-Meta SEO. This plugin has a section for image
optimization. Add the title and the alt-text into the
appropriate fields and the plugin will not only update
the media, it will update the image where it’s posted
on your site. This saves a ton of time.
Another important piece to image optimization is
image size. So often, people load images to their site
that are huge, but then scale them down inside a post.
Larger images will slow the load time of your page
and can result in bounced traffic. Again, WP-Meta SEO
will help you optimize any images that are the wrong
size.
URLs
When analyzing the length of URLs, Ahrefs found
that shorter URLs tend to rank better. So, the more
concise and to the point your URLs are, the better
chance you have of them ranking. It also makes it
much easier for the user to find and share your
content. When creating URLs, use your keyword in
the URL string, but make it as natural as possible.
Use around 5 words and be sure that your URL
clearly showcases what your page is about.
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32
Internal Links
and External Links
Links are and will remain the most important factor
when it comes to ranking your site. Having
high-quality links pointing to your site strengthens
your domain and ability to rank in search. Internal
links help users find related or relevant content
within your site.
Responsive Design
Mobile has taken over as the primary form of searching. According to SimilarWeb’s State of Mobile
Web US 2015 report, roughly 56 percent of consumer traffic to the leading US websites is now from
mobile devices. While many sites have adapted to mobile, many haven’t or have a terrible mobile
experience. As Google shifts to a mobile-first divided index, having a site that looks and works great
on mobile is more important than ever.
Responsive Design is a smarter way to mobilize your site. Responsive sites adapt to the device the
user is using. This means no need for a separate mobile site with minimal features. With responsive
design, you can give your mobile users a powerful experience. In order to create a smarter, faster and
more user-friendly mobile web experience, Google, along with a number of publishers and
technology companies, have come together to make mobile work better for the world. Together they
have been creating and pushing accelerated mobile pages. The 3 key areas accelerated mobile
pages will focus on are content, distribution, and ads. Content: The AMP Project is all about helping
“publishers to focus on producing great content, while relying on the shared components for high
performance and great user experience.”(Google AMP Project)
Distribution: Fast distribution is key for publishers across the web. With the AMP Project Google has
“designed a new approach to caching that allows the publisher to continue to host their content while
allowing for efficient distribution through Google's high performance global cache.”
Advertising: When it comes to funding free content and services online, ad revenue is extremely
important. Having too many ads can be distracting to the end user, so finding a way make advertising
more inviting and user focused, the AMP Project will “support a comprehensive range of ad formats,
ad networks and technologies.”
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The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Social Media
Social media is an amazing tool that connects people across towns, cities,
states and countries. Marketing using social media can be very powerful
and we need to respect it and the people we are marketing to. To quote a
great philosopher, Uncle Ben Parker, “With great power, comes great
responsibility.” Below are 3 ways to engage your followers, without being
annoying.
Effective social media marketing begins and ends with your audience. What
you have to say and sell isn’t for everyone. Being able to narrow your focus,
determine your audience and share your story in a clear and effective way is
a must for success on social, or any other marketing channel for that matter.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Know
Your Audience
Effective social media marketing begins and
ends with your audience. What you have to
say and sell isn’t for everyone. Being able to
narrow your focus, determine your audience
and share your story in a clear and effective
way is a must for success on social, or any
other marketing channel for that matter.
Start by looking at your current base. Who are
your customers? What do they do for a living?
How does your solution solve their problem?
Asking questions and writing down the
answers will force you to start creating a
mental picture of your buyer persona. Then
take it a step further. Write out a “day in the
life” of your persona. When do they get up?
What social media do they use? What do they
do before, during or after work? The more
detailed you get, the better you’ll be able to
frame your story.
Know Your Channel
Every social media channel is different - very different. So approaching them from one frame of
mind is dangerous. If you post to Facebook like it's Twitter, you’re going to annoy people. If you
use LinkedIn like it’s Facebook, you’re going to look unprofessional. Below are some guidelines
for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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35
f
Facebook
Peak engagement during the week is Thursday and Friday.
The optimal time to post is early afternoon in the time zone of your audience.
Facebook displays posts based on a complex algorithm. The more engagement you get
the more likely your post will show to your followers.
The number of posts depends on your persona.
Twitter
B2B peak engagement is Monday through Friday.
B2C peak engagement is Wednesday through Saturday.
Tweets posted between 12pm and 6pm have the highest CTR.
Posts made at 5pm have the highest retweets.
in
LinkedIn
Peak engagement for LinkedIn is Tuesday through Thursday.
Posts made during business hours have the highest engagement rates.
To get the most clicks, post Tuesday between 10am and 11am.
Worst days to post are Mondays and Fridays
(Statistics from: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-post-best-times
& http://www.melissaleiter.com/blog/lifespan-of-social-media-posts)
Make sure that you are mixing up your content as well. Don’t sell, be social. Share your content and
other people's content as well. Be you and let your personality come out. A rule we follow for social
posting is 10-4-1. For every 15 posts we make, 10 are other people’s content, 4 posts are promoting
our own content and 1 is a direct offer. We don’t follow this strictly, but use it as a guideline to make
sure we are adding value.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
What to NOT Post
There are some things you just shouldn’t post, especially on your business accounts. Social has blurred
the line between our personal and work lives. I treat my personal Twitter and Facebook accounts with
the same respect as my “business accounts.” I am an extension of my brand and what I do on social is
out there for people to see no matter how “private” my settings are. Here are a few things you should
never post.
Everything You’re Feeling:
While being authentic is important, there are some things better left unsaid. We need to find a balance
between being open and being too open. Overly emotional posts, a lot of the time, come off
as whining and that will annoy your followers. Be you, just keep some things between close friends.
The Same Content Over and Over:
We aren’t saying don’t promote your content, just do it with taste. A great way to get unfollowed is to
post the same blog article 5 times in a row. This is where the 10-4-1 rule really helps out. It makes sure
your posts are diverse and add value.
Vague Statements
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Being vague creates confusion. Confusion destroys trust.
Once you break trust, you have to work extremely hard just to get back to where you were, and even
doing that is questionable. When you post, be direct. Don't leave room for incorrect interpretations.
Social media is a great way to get your message out to the right people at the right time. Use it to add
value, not tick people off. Know your audience, know the channels and how to use them and make
sure that what you are posting is what your community wants to engage with.
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08
Nurturing
Not too fast, not too slow
Understanding the buyer’s journey is essential to the nurturing process.
Knowing where our leads are at in the process will help us to determine
how we engage with them and what actions we can take to further them
along.
At this stage in the process, the prospect is just beginning to realize they
have a problem. They are doing preliminary research to better understand
their problem. A majority of your leads will be in this stage, so it’s important
to help them and not sell to them. Here is a list of acceptable offers to gear
towards awareness stage leads.
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38
Nurturing
Not too fast, not too slow
2
1
Awareness
Stage
Free Whitepaper,
Free Guides &
Tip-Sheets, Free
eBooks, Free
Checklists, Free
Videos, Free Kits
(combo of above)
Consideration
Stage
Free Webinar, Case
Studies, Free
Samples, Product
Spec Sheets,
Catalogs
Awareness Stage
At this stage in the process, the prospect is just
beginning to realize they have a problem. They are doing
preliminary research to better understand their problem.
A majority of your leads will be in this stage, so it’s
important to help them and not sell to them. Here is a list
of acceptable offers to gear towards awareness stage
leads.
Whitepapers
eBooks
Guides
Check lists
Videos
Kits (A mixture of the above)
It’s important that the content in these offers also match
the stage of the buyer’s journey. Don’t overload here, just
offer help in the prospect’s research.
3
Decision Stage
Free Trails, Demos. Free
Consultations, Estimates or
Quotes Coupons
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The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Consideration Stage
This is when the prospect clearly understands the problem and has given a name to it. They are now
committed to learn and understand all of the available approaches to resolving their problem. Here is a
list of acceptable offers to gear towards consideration stage leads.
Whitepapers
eBooks
Guides
Checklists
Videos
Kits (A mixture of the above)
Webinars
Case Studies
Free Samples
Notice some of the same offers from above can be used in the awareness stage as well. It’s all about
the content that the offer delivers that determines at what stage it should be used.
Decision Stage
The prospect has decided on a solution, method or approach and is now compiling a list of available
vendors or products that will meet their need. This is where you can ramp up your selling game a little
bit more. Here is a list of acceptable offers to gear towards decision stage leads.
Trials
Demos
Consultations
Estimates
Quotes
Your website needs to have at least one offer for each of these 3 stages. Companies see a 55%
increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. (Hubspot)
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Nurturing With Email
The next step in nurturing happens after you have received information from a contact. Use the offers
you created in a well-organized drip email campaign to stay in touch and gently move them through
the buyer’s journey. Automation can be extremely useful in this step. We use Hubspot to track and run
all of our marketing campaigns so that all of our efforts are under one roof. You can accomplish this
using MailChimp or any other email service.
Now, I know what you may be thinking, what does email have to do with my website? Think of your
email campaign as an extension of your website’s landing page. Email is a great way to encourage
users to return to your site and re-engage with you. No matter what platform you use, abide by these
best practices to maximize results. The next page will describe in detail how to nurture your website
leads with compelling emails.
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41
1
2
3
4
5
Add Value - The first priority is to make sure you have something valuable to teach your
leads. You are an expert within your industry, continue teaching your leads something
new and they will be more than happy to receive your emails and continue engaging
with your business
Stay Focused - Each nurturing email should be focused around one topic and include a
call-to-action. Put yourself in your lead’s shoes when creating your emails; they are
bombarded by messages all day long and are looking for an excuse to delete your
email. Speak directly to the problem your lead is trying to solve with your lead nurturing
emails.
Keep It Short - This is not the time to worry about fonts, or adding images or custom
HTML. The lead should be able to glance at your email and within five seconds know
the value it provides to them
Natural Progression - Carefully planning the flow of your emails will help you create
well-rounded campaigns that pull your leads through the sales funnel. The first email
after the initial conversion might be very educational, while subsequent emails should
continue to educate while giving the lead an opportunity to convert a second time. This
is a perfect opportunity to promote a free trial or the download of a demo. Work with
your sales team to determine what qualifies as a "sales-ready lead" and craft your lead
nurturing campaigns accordingly.
Measurement - Like every other aspect of Inbound Marketing, email testing is a key to
fine tuning your campaigns. Click Through Rate (the percentage of people who clicked a
link in your email) and Unsubscribe Rate, are two of the key metrics to track on a regular
basis. A strong campaign will generally have an unsubscribe rate of less than 5%. If your
unsubscribe rate climbs above 5%, it's time to re-evaluate your campaign. Try testing
new content or a stronger subject line, or adjusting the timing of your emails.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
09
Learn & Improve
Putting Analytics Into
Motion
In order for your website to work for you, you need to track your efforts.
Knowing what metrics to look for and what they mean is essential to
making the right next move with your website. HubSpot is a great
all-in-one tool that connects everything to your website’s marketing
efforts. Other tools that are extremely helpful are Google Analytics and
Hotjar.
While there are a number of metrics that are great to track, we are only
going to cover the essentials and what they mean for your site.
.
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The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Learn & Improve
Putting Analytics Into Motion
Visits: This is the number of visits to your site. This does not break down between new or returning, nor
does it give information on where the visit came from. This number needs to be tracked each month to
ensure that you are continuing to drive traffic to your site.
Direct Traffic: This is the amount of traffic that is being generated from someone directly typing in
your website address.
Organic Visits: This is the amount of traffic that is being generated from a search engine.
Social Visits: This is the amount of traffic that is being generated from a social site.
Referral Visits: This is the amount of traffic that is being generated from a referral site like Yellow
Pages or other business directories.
PRO TIP: There has been an increasing amount of
referral spam showing up in Google Analytics. If
there are random spikes in your traffic this should
be a warning to you. Referral spam needs to be
filtered out so you can get a real picture of your
traffic.
Conversion Rate: The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action. This is
important because it tells us whether or not our pages are actually working towards nurturing our
leads.
The Inbound Marketing Campaign Launch Guide
Keyword Rankings: Tracking your organic keyword ranking is essential to knowing where you stand.
While there are a number of factors that go in to ranking, and it’s easy to place too much emphasis on
this metric, it is still important. Pay attention to your movements and trends. Make sure that you are
ranking for terms that actually impact your business.
Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after
viewing only one page. This tells you if your site is encouraging people to engage or not.
By tracking these metrics, you will get a better understanding of how your visitors are using your
website and what actions you need to take to improve their experience. You will also see what your
users are most interested in. From this information, your marketing team can focus more on the
products and services your buyer persona most identifies with and your sales team will have a better
understanding of your buyer’s needs.
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45
Conclusion
Don’t hope your website will generate marketing
leads and sales; take action and create them. Your
website has the potential to be a 24-hour-a-day
marketing and sales machine that can transform
your business.
We use these very same practices in our marketing
agency each and every day. It is our goal to
educate, motivate, and encourage business owners
to strive for bigger goals.
Now it’s your turn. You will only reap the benefits by
putting this book into action. So take some time to
put these best practices to work for your business.
You’ll be glad you did!
If you have any questions about any section in this
book, please don’t hesitate to email me directly at
ryan@smamarketing.net or visit
https://www.smamarketing.net/ for more
information.
www.smamarketing.net
Thank You!
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Visit us @ www.smamarketing.net