Hubspot: How Do You Market Successfully Today? Same As Always: Creatively

Original Post: http://tinyurl.com/oqcadq

Inbound Marketing Takes Time and Creativity

Many marketers starting down the path of inbound marketing expect to find it sprinkled with magic pixie dust -- that they'll be able to sign up for Twitter and buy a software service, then see the leads come flooding in.

Guess what? It doesn't work like that.

Inbound marketing requires time and creativity. In fact, creativity has ALWAYS been a vital part of marketing and ultimately is the defining difference between a successful marketing team and an unsuccessful one.

Still, there are four recent changes that you need to understand before jumping into your creative happy place.

1. Different Tool Set

The tools needed to achieve marketing success today have changed a little.  Am I saying that traditional channels are worthless?  Absolutely not! These new tools are here to stay and are a requirement to understand and do right.

• A Website -> The 24/7 access is unparalleled and has replaced things like catalogs, phone support, etc.
• Email Marketing -> Replacing what we used to get in our home mailboxes (cheaper and easier to measure)
• SEO -> It’s so important to remember that it’s not about what you call it. It’s about what your audience calls it.
• Online Video -> Slowly replacing certain uses for TV (cheaper and easier to measure)
• Social Media -> It’s still simply word of mouth—except in a one-to-many format

2. You Need to Target Niche Audiences

The shotgun approach of blasting everyone is a thing of the past.  Not only is it extremely expensive, but it’s practically impossible to measure.  Many of the tools listed above can help you find a target audience, but once again you are still required to be creative in approaching that target audience.

3. More Chances to Strike Gold

Everyone knows that the more you practice something the better you are at it.  It makes complete sense that if you throw 100 darts you are much more likely to hit the bullseye than if you throw just one.

We believe that unique content creation (blogging, video content, research, etc.) is a fundamental pillar of inbound marketing and there are so many reasons for this.

• Blogging helps SEO.  Larger website footprint, targeting of long-tail keywords, new content for Google to crawl, and hopefully people will link to interesting blog posts.
• New content means increased traffic.  Why is a visitor going to come back if they have already read your whole website?
• Visitor engagement.  Visitors can leave comments, subscribe, and share through social media.
  

The point is you aren’t going to be great at this the first time you do it, but you don’t have to be. 

In HubSpot's case content creation IS the marketing strategy.  The more value we can produce and the more channels we can fit into, the more likely we are to be found. Therefore, the more brand awareness and authority we can build with more audiences. 

Keep throwing those creative darts and some will succeed, and then again, some won’t.  Remember, because of the analytics of these tools we can learn what is successful and do more of that and less of the unsuccessful. 

You didn’t ride like Lance Armstrong the first time you got on a bike, did you?  Of course not!  You probably never will be Lance, but you can and will get much better at content creation the more you do it.

In a Global Recession Budgets Are Smaller

It is this final point which has helped many of the reasons above be adopted at such rapid rates.  The technology that we have today is light years above what we had even ten years ago.  In today’s tough economic environment a small business faced with the option of paying its monthly lease or doing traditional marketing will always chose paying the lease.

Some of the leading indicators do show that things are getting better, but we are not out of this recession yet.  If you have made it this far you definitely have proven to be smarter, more financially savvy, holding better brand awareness, and luckier than some of your competitors.  

The internet isn’t some fad that will disappear as fast as it established this foothold. Young generations have adopted the internet at extremely high rates. Finally, with the ability to do things cheaper, more targeted, and better analyzed we know the internet is here to stay.  If you are a creative marketer and able to adapt to these straightforward changes, you can and will succeed. 

Small Business Trends: 5 Ways To Spread Content, Whatever It Is

Excellent article from Small Business Trends and Lisa Barone about integrating Social Media into your marketing mix. Enjoy! - Tyler@MeHype

By Lisa Barone

Original Post: Small Business Trends

Whether it’s a blog post, a funny video on your site or your product itself, you need to come up with a plan for spreading that content. As much as want to believe that a good blog post or product “sells itself”, that’s very often not the case. Someone has to get the ball rolling, the buzz buzzing — and that typically means creating some type of content promotion strategy.

Here are the five methods I most often use to make sure that my content is getting in front of the right people.

Twitter

For the past few months, Twitter has been one of the most effective ways for many businesses to drive traffic and exposure to their content. It’s also really easy. You use the network you’ve already created on Twitter and then time tweets to come out during the periods of the day when you know your audience will be on Twitter (typically when they’re supposed to be working). By using combining a strong call to action with a little bit of snark, you can even help increase the effectiveness of your tweets. You also want to make sure that you leave enough room so that someone can retweet your message without having to edit it and to include the twitter handles of the people or companies mentioned in your post. If someone sees you’re talking about them, you increase the chances that they’ll help promote the piece for you.

Other Social Media Outlets

Depending on who your audience is there may be other social media outlets that are just as, if not more, effective for you than Twitter. For example, if you sell products or produce content geared toward women, you may want to spread it via Kirtsy. If you’re in the financial sector, Tip’d will be your social network of choice. If it’s business related or you have a new product you want feedback on, LinkedIn may be a viable alternative. And of course, some people just use their Facebook status message or notes to push content to their network that way. Find where your fish are, and throw the line in accordingly.

Guest posting

Part of your content promotion strategy should be finding ways to build buzz before you need it. If you know you’re going to be producing a killer blog post, that you’ll be starting a new blog or launching a new product, you need to be working the pavement the weeks prior to help get people excited about what you’re going to bring to the table. One of the best ways to do that is to guest blog on other authoritative blogs in your niche. Reach out to other blogs, let them know you have something awesome cooking, and offer to write a guest post for them. The post may be about whatever it is you’re launching or it could be about something different but tied to that blog’s audience. The point is to get people seeing your name and put you in your top of mind for later. Build buzz early.

Newsletter

You know that email newsletter you send out religiously? Start really using it! Include a section to help customers find you on the various social media sites and start using it to feature your content. Reprint articles in full, use it to tease and build buzz for what’s coming in the weeks ahead on your site, put links to the week’s top blog posts, etc. Most of the newsletters and emailings I receive from small business owners do little to grab my interest. Start rewriting them to help you promote your content, new offerings, etc, so that you’re left better able to meet your goals.

Form partnerships

It takes a village to raise a child and it takes an even bigger village to help content go viral. Form partnerships with others in your niche or town and make arrangements to help one another out when it makes sense. By forming your own little promotional army, you not only remove the strain of having to do everything yourself, but you also lend credibility to what you’re trying to promote. You can tell me how your product is. That’s great. I believe it more when someone else tells me. These types of strategic partnerships can be very effective when leverage correctly.

Whatever type of content strategy you decide to use, make sure you make it easy for people to share your content and distribute it for you. The more obstacles you put in their way, the less likely it will be that your content gains traction.

Original Post: Small Business Trends