"...out-learn the competition"
HEADLINES:
London, Dubai, Shanghai -- these are my next stops -- April 8 is a full day "Four Decisions" workshop (updated Rockefeller Habits) in Shanghai; March 23 London and April 6 Dubai finish out my ASEA tour for EO.
| "Either write something worth reading about or do something worth writing about." | |
| Ben Franklin | |
Inbound Marketing -- above is one of my favorite quotes from Brian Halligan's 2009 bestselling book Inbound Marketing (#1 right now in its space). As David Meerman Scott says "you are what you publish" -- did any of you run out and hire a journalist for your marketing department as suggested last Thursday?
Chapter 2, Table 2.1 -- enthusiastically endorsed by Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and other marketing thought leaders, go right to chapter 2 of Inbound Marketing entitled "Is Your Web Site a Marketing Hub?" In essence, you need to think of your website as a hub instead of a megaphone. To quote Halligan "what we want you to do is to change the mode of your web site from a one-way sales message to a collaborative, living, breathing hub for your marketplace." This is a critical shift in mindset and design of your website. BTW, he makes the case for not spending a lot of money making the web site look nice. Get the book and particularly focus on Table 2.1 -- and give it to your web designer to read -- we're taking one chapter at a time and applying its ideas to our website, blogs, and social media strategy.
Brian Halligan -- CEO & Founder of HubSpot and Fortune Sales & Marketing Summit keynoter, Brian coined the term "inbound marketing." To again quote Halligan "technology is making traditional (outbound) marketing such as cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, non-solicited email and trade shows less effective and more expensive. On the other hand Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers. Learn how to attract highly qualified customers to your business like a magnet instead of interrupting people with various forms of outbound marketing."
Key Concepts -- I have so many pages of the book electronically dog-eared and noted in my Kindle, but here are some key tidbits (just a sample):
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Measure the number of links back to your website from other websites and the number of organic keywords that are producing traffic to your site on Google. You can get this information from Web analytics software and online tools.
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Make your blog a subdomain of your main website ie. blog.wholefoodsmarket.com rather than use the url (like wordpress.com) that comes with your blogging tool. And put a call-to-action at the bottom of every blog post inviting comments. We're making these changes to my blog.
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To get content for your own blog and build relationships with other bloggers, go to Google's blog search engine and type in the phrase or acronym that best describes your industry. Start clicking on the ones that sound interesting and subscribe.
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All important images on your web page should include what is known as an "alt" attribute. This is a special code that allows you to describe an image with text in a way that Google can see it.
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If you want to get more value out of the money you're spending on AdWords, then you should send AdWords traffic to a specific landing page on the topic of the ad, rather than sending them to your generic home page.
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A good landing page can convert 50 percent of its visitors into qualified leads while a poor one will convert less than 1 percent.
Best Inbound Marketing Video -- Halligan's website has lots of complimentary videos and an eBook. Particularly watch the video entitled "How to Combine SEO, Blogging, and Social Media for Marketing Results" if you're not into reading books. Start at the four minute mark to save you time, skipping the intro stuff.
Marketing is Fun Again! -- in conclusion, Halligan notes "when was the last time you got excited about buying yet another contact list of people you could interrupt? Never, right? Inbound marketing is fun, and with it comes a more rewarding way to live."
Meet Halligan -- he'll keynote the Las Vegas Sales & Marketing Summit April 20 -- 22 -- and remember, those that pre-register earliest with the biggest teams get the best seats (just $250 deposit/seat).
Brian Halligan -- more background
Prior to starting HubSpot, Brian worked as a venture partner at Longworth Ventures where he worked with many small businesses helping them build scalable sales and marketing machines. Brian spent 4 years at Groove Networks where he joined pre-revenue as VP of Sales and grew the business to a $20m annual rate until being acquired by Microsoft. Prior to Groove Networks, Brian worked at Parametric Technology Corporation where he worked in a variety of sales, marketing, and channels functions for over a decade. Brian's most interesting role at PTC was in starting the Pacific Rim organization while living in Hong Kong in 1993. Five years later, Brian was SVP of the Pacific Rim for PTC where he built an $80 million business and had 200 employees. Brian holds a BSEE from the UVM and an MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management. Brian is an EIR at MIT's Entrepreneurship Center and serves on the board of directors of HOPe and MITX. In his spare time, Brian follows the Boston Red Sox, is learning to play guitar, plays squash, and takes classes at St. John's Seminary.