50 shades of inbound marketing

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50 shades of Inbound Marketing Most of us and especially women world wide have probably heard of the books 50 shades of Grey etc. The books have really been a major success and been sold in over 100 million copies. And recently the first book became a movie and went up on the cinemas – with a huge buzz before. This is not a blogpost about the books nor the film. But about inbound marketing and all its shades you as a digital marketeer need to know and use for beeing successful on Internet. But I use the theme 50 shades of… because I am fascinated about the digital buzz around the film premier and how it has been marketed in all kinds of digital and social media. And the way the moviemakers and marketeers uses inbound marketing to make sure even the film will be a success when it comes to sales. And not is the marketing big in digital media. Here in Sweden there is even a big retail chain that sells lingerie with the ”50 shades… ”theme. And probably paid a lot to use the books and film logotype and images. And that inspired me to write this blogpost of today – all those inbound marketing tools, tactics and strategies companies, brand, organisations, artists etc need to use to create similar buzz in the digital world of today. So this blogpost ”50 shades of inbound marketing” is like a short dictionary of all the tactics, channels and buzzwords that is used in an inbound marketing strategy. A lot of the marketeers, managers, entrepreneurs and companies we meet still havent heard about inbound marketing as THE digital strategy that really give you leads. So these 50 shades can therefore hopefully be useful for all of you who still uses the old school outbound marketing – but realize its not getting the results you want. Inbound marketing strategies are more deployed in the US Market than in Sweden – yet. I am the founder of the first inbound marketing agency in Sweden since a couple of years and we are a GOLD PARTNER to Hubspot, Boston MA. But here in Sweden companies are 3-‐5 years behind USA in B2B digital marketing but we as a country are early adopters so more and more B2B companies here also start realizing that the Old school marketing and selling is´nt working anymore and that its not costeffective. I have put together this list from different sources with the purpose to help new digital and social media marketeers understand the inbound marketing methodology which I am so passionate about. This is what Hubspot says: Make marketing people love. And I couldnt agree more. By publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive. Now that’s marketing people can love. There are some great companies and bloggers on internet that provides very good content in this matter who Im inspired of, have quoted or used as a source for this blogpos like: (Sources: Hubspot, Wikipedia, Marketinghouse, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Marketo, What.is.com, Mashable, Searchland, Marketo


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1. Inbound marketing by Hubspot Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls people toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time.

2. Social Selling Social selling is when sales and marketing create digital relations with potential customers with the help from social media. And create content that us business oriented, useful and shareble for the buyers personas the company want to build their brand for 3. Engagement One of the most important areas in inbound marketing is to get engagement in the company´s social media channels, blogs etc. Its about working with a know-‐like-‐trust-‐strategy. We are more often talking about the Return of Engagement (RoE) rather the Return of Investment. (RoI) and rather about CEO (Customer Experience Optimization) rather than SEO (Search Engine Optimization). 4. Conversations One of the challenges for all digital marketeers is to make sure the followers in different social media channels participate in conversations. 5. Transparens When building your company brand its important that people percieve it despite what channels they follow you in. A lot of companies post different content in different channels which can confuse those followers who follow the companies in multiple channels or use the channels for different purposes. Make sure you have a content strategy that is transparent in all channels.


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6. Social media marketing Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites Facebook, in contrast is a full-‐blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

7. Meassurement When using inbound marketing tactics such as social media, blogs, landingpages you can really measure the resultat through the engagement, clicks, likes etc your posts shows. 8. Branding By using inbound marketing and content marketing your company will build your brand more effectiviely than via traditional outbound marketing. 9. Digital relationships Its an expression one can use when speaking about and to customers. We advise our clients to make sure their potential customers can start building a digital relationship in a very early stage ge with their company, meaning they start following the company, read their blogs, downloading whitepapers etc. (C: Marketinghouse)

10. Digital strategy Digital strategy is the process of identifying, articulating and executing on digital opportunities that will increase your organization’s competitive advantage. (C: Google)

11. Buyers Personas A buyer persona is a semi-‐fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demografis, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better. Buyer personas provide tremendous structure and insight for your company. A detailed buyer persona will help you determine where to focus your time, guide product development, and allow for alignment across the organization. (C: Hubspot)

11. Content marketing Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. 12. Employer brand in social media Social media is transparent so for companies who really want to attract the best future employees to work in their company it is very important that you have a strategy in your


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social media channels for employer branding. And not only post jobs. Working with inbound recruting will probably be next big thing. 13. Leadgeneration Lead generation is the use of a computer program, a database, the Internet, or a specialized service to obtain or receive information for the purpose of expanding the scope of a business, increasing sales revenues, looking for a job or for new clients, or conducting specialized research.

15. Landing pages In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page" or a "lander", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result or an online advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement, search result or link. Landing pages are often linked to from social media, email campaigns or search engine marketing campaigns in order to enhance the effectiveness of the advertisements. The general goal of a landing page is to convert site visitors into sales or leads. (C: Hubspot)

16. SEO Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-‐paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. (C: Wikipedia) 17. Blogging A blog (also called a webblog or web log) is a website consisting of entries (also called posts) appearing in reverse chronological order with the most recent entry appearing first (similar in format to a daily journal). Blogs typically include features such as comments and links to increase user interactivity. Blogs are created using specific publishing software. (C: About.com)

18. Calls-‐to-‐action (CTA) A direct message designed as a button placed on a webpage, in a blog, in an email, on a landingpages and when clicking it links to a another page, a landingpage or a form. (C: Hubspot) 19. CRM Customer Relation Management System. Different programs to keep track of customers, prospects, leads and opportunities. 20. Twitter Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. The messages can be maximum 140 signs (C: Twitter.com)


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21. Pin To pin an image is a way of recognising something on Pinterest. Its similar to a like on Facebook or LinkedIn. (C: Pinterest.com) 22. Like Like is an a way of likning a comment or a page on social media channels and shows that what someone wrote is appreciated. Or a way to start following a page on Facebook. 23. Follow To follow on social media means that you follow a page on Linkedin, follow a discussion, follow a special persons posts or an account on Twitter etc. 24. Handle A handle is the Twitter name someone or a company, cause etc. has name the Twitter account. A handle is written with @nyname. (C: Twitter.com) 25. Leadscoring Lead scoring is a shared sales and marketing methodology for ranking leads in order to determine their sales-‐readiness. (C: Hubspot)

26. Marketing Automation Automated processes to move leads through the buying process until they are qualified sales leads and ready to be contacted by the sales people. 27. Drip marketing Another way of expressing marketing automation. Drip marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or "drips" a pre-‐written set of messages to customers or prospects over time. These messages often take the form of email marketing, although other media can also be used. Drip marketing is distinct from other database marketing in two ways: (1) the timing of the messages follow a pre-‐determined course; (2) the messages are dripped in a series applicable to a specific behavior or status of the recipient. (C: Wikipedia) 28. Online Strategy A web strategy is a long term strategic business plan indicating how to create and develop a company’s online presence adhering to the business development strategy.

29. Hubspot HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. (C: Hubspot)


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30. Meme An internet meme is an idea, style or action which spreads virally, facilitating word-‐of-‐mouth communication. The inbound marketing meme has roots in two philosophies: Creating audience-‐centric content and Developing a social business culture throughout a company. (C: Hubspot) 31. Long tail keywords Long-‐tail keywords are longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point-‐of-‐purchase

32. Posting plan A posting plan is part of the social media plan and includes all this postings and content your company plans to do over time. 33. SMART goals Smart goals means: specific, measurable, attainable and relevant and is important to use for all your inbound and outbound marketing activites to make sure what over time will get the best ROI. 34. Facebook Facebook is a social media network founded in February 2004 where people can connect with friends, family and share daily life information and follow people and companies. 35. Email marketing Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways of moving leads further along the buyers process especially if you put the email marketing into a marketing automation work flow. 36. Thank You pages Thank You pages are the confirmation pages you build i. e Hubspot or other marketing platforms as a confirmation page when someone has filled in a form and clicked a ”call-‐to-‐action button”, like ”submit” etc. (C: Hubspot) 37. Tracking code The Tracking Code initiates the recording process for every page on your site on which it is placed, although not every visitor will actually be recorded. That is determined by your recording ration, quota, visitor type, browser and other parameters.

38. Conversion rate A conversion rate represents the number of contacts who joined a in a workflow divided by the total number of contacts who started the workflow 39. Marketing Qualified Lead


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Marketing Qualified Leads, commonly known as MQLs, are those people who have raised their hands (metaphorically) speaking and identified themselves as more deeply engaged sales-‐ready contacts than your usual leads, but who have not yet become fully fledged opportunities. Ideally you should only allow certain designated forms to trigger the promotion of a leads to the MQL stage, specially those that are gate bottom of the funnel offers like demo, requests, buying guidelines and other sales-‐ready calls to action.

40. Sales Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads are those that your sales team has accepted as worthy of a direct sales follow up. Using this stage will help your sales and marketing teams stay firmly on the same page in terms of the quality and volume of leads that you are handing over to your sales team. 41. Smart lists HubSpot uses two kinds of lists: smart lists and static lists. Smart lists offer a flexible way to organize contacts in HubSpot and automate your marketing actions. You can build these automatically refreshing lists based on contacts who meet certain criteria. For example, HubSpot's marketing team uses smart lists to create lists of contacts to send emails to and lists of contacts to suppress for email marketing. (C: Hubspot)

42. Drive traffic to the web When doing postings in social media, in blogs or when writing an email its important that some of the posts in the content plan also includes links in to your own webpage. So that there is a strategy in how to drive traffic regulary to the webpage.

43. Funnel strategy An Internet marketing funnel is a marketing strategy whereby you are constantly funneling new lead into your business, in the hopes of developing a sale and relationship with the user. A marketing funnel is often seen as an upside down pyramid. C: Wikihow

44. Content Marketing System A content management system (CMS) is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifyingcontent, organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content managementprovide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. (C: Wikipedia) 45. Sidekick from Hubspot Sidekick is the new Signals. In addition to email tracking, Sidekick allows you to see who is engaging with your emails, get easy access to contact and company profiles, and schedule emails to send later all within your inbox.

45. LinkedIn


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Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. With more than 347 million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the Internet. The most important social media in an B2B inbound marketing strategy.(C: LinkedIn)

46. Social media metrics Social media measurement or ‘social media monitoring’ is an active monitoring of social media channels for information about a company or organization. usually tracking of various social media content such as blogs, wikis, news sites, micro-‐blogs such as Twitter, social networking sites, video/photo sharing websites, forums, message boards, blogs and user-‐generated content in general as a way to determine the volume and sentiment of online conversation about a brand or topic. 47. Youtube YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-‐created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. Youtube is a Google company. (C: Youtube.com) 47. Slideshare.net SlideShare has grown to become the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and other professional content. SlideShare was founded in October 2006 and acquired by LinkedIn in May 2012. It allows users to easily upload and share presentations, infographics, documents, videos, PDFs, and webinars. In Q4 of 2013, the site averaged 60 million unique visitors a month and 215 million page views. SlideShare is among the top 120 most-‐visited websites in the world. C; Slideshare.net)

48. Image strategy To use the images are key when marketing in social and digital media to get higher retention. An image encloes in posts or an digital advert increase the clicks with up to 20%. So when posting in social media don´t forget to also have an imagestrategy. You can buy images but the best is to use your own – as more real feeling and more appreciated. 49. A/B Testing A/B Testing ”aka split testing” is testing with two variants where one is considered the ‘controlled’ element (A), and the other (B) is modified in some respect. By comparing the two variants, you can see changes, and be able to prove which choice works better. (C: Hubspot´s ebook A-‐B-‐C of inbound marketing). 50. Video marketing Video marketing involves using online video for promoting your product, service, or company. While it may stand alone, video marketing is often used as part of an integrated marketing approach, combining other tactics such as email or social media.

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50 shades of inbound marketing