8 Ways to Succeed at Marketing After Inbound ‘17
For those of you who are reading this and were unable to attend Inbound this year, don’t worry we’ve got your back. You’re about to get all the tips and tricks our SmartAcre® team picked up in 4 days in a less than 10 minutes! You’re welcome. In this blog, we’ll cover hot trends, tactics, and tips to upgrade your marketing game.
If you’re reading this even though you attended Inbound this year, that’s awesome. You must be hungry for more. Well with that said, let’s get started:
1. Tell a Story
One major theme we heard all throughout Inbound was Storytelling. Every brand has a story and it’s our job to tell it in a way that is transparent and engaging. The goal is for the audience to interact with our brand.
Just like every story, there needs to be a beginning, middle, and end. Case studies work really well for storytelling because you tell the story about how the client had a problem, what you did to solve the problem and how they lived happily ever after with the solution.
When you’re telling your story use different channels such as blogs, videos, and email. Blogs are a great way to tell a complete story while using video as a teaser on social media is eye-catching. Just be sure to include a link to a full video or blog where they can read more.
2. Video
Speaking of videos, according to Tubular Insights, 80% of global internet consumption will be video content. Videos are a great way to get your message (or story) in front of your target audience.
Don’t shy away from video because you think it’s expensive. If you have a smartphone and iMovies, you can make an impactful video to share with your audience. Videos can be used on your website but will be even more popular on social media. Have you seen our #SmartHack videos? They were all filmed in-house.
How-to videos are popular for product and can help influence someone to buy. As previously mentioned, they also work great as a teaser to something bigger like a webinar or full-length video. If you’re still looking for ideas on what types of videos to make sync with your sales team. They get asked questions all day and can help you narrow down what questions your audience needs answering.
Bonus: HubSpot recently announced an integration with Animoto, allowing you to create simple, yet effective marketing videos with customizable pre-built storyboards and templates.
3. Lookalike Audiences
If you work in B2B, you tend to go to LinkedIn to reach your target audience. However, Inbound was all about Facebook ads and how they can actually help your ABM strategy and deliver high value leads.
Hubspot also has a new feature called Facebook Ads Audience Sync, which uses HubSpot data to retarget, nurture, and convert Facebook users. This integration is now available and it will sync your HubSpot lists to Facebook audiences, such as lookalike audiences.
Using a lookalike audience enables you to reach new leads who are likely to be interested in your business or service because they are similar to your best existing customers. While you can sync your customer list, also consider creating lists for SQLs, top 25% of people visiting your website or those who with high engagement on your emails.
4. Be Resourceful
Are you using forums like Reddit and Quora? If your answer was no, think again. People use forums to ask questions, get answers and give answers. This is a goldmine for content but you have to be willing to work for it.
Reddit can be a little daunting at first, so play around and get used to the setup. Search for your topic in the search bar, then narrow your search by using filters. Filters will help if you the most relevant information to build content from. We recommend using the filters, subreddit + top + past month.
Don’t forget to read the comments in the threads as well because they can also provide great ideas for more content. Reddit is a tight community so also be respectful of each subreddit’s rules, as you can get kicked out of the group or even Reddit.
5. Always Be Testing
Take a moment a reflect on your active campaigns right now. Are you A/B testing anything? You definitely should be. A/B testing is science and helps give us conclusive results into our target markets and how we can improve our marketing.
Be careful, you can fail at A/B testing by testing too many variables at the same time. Always remember to keep it simple and make sure you’re testing something impactful like CTAs or location of form. If you’re testing a web page make sure not to skew the results by starting a promotion around the page or a PPC campaign which would increase regular traffic. Build the puzzle one piece at a time.
Test often but long. Many of us get caught up when we see results right away and want to pull the test before we reach the duration. Ignore the urge to pull the plug and ride the test all the way through. Lastly, make sure you have your results to implement them. So many people test but never follow through.
6. SEO Forever
SEO and organic search used to dominate solely by strategies like keyword targeting, link-building, and on-page search optimization. As the internet becomes intertwined in our everyday lives, and less something we use just to gather information, traditional SEO tactics aren’t going to be as effective as they once were.
Instead, we’re going to have to dive deeper into context by giving users what they need, when they need it and in the format they need it. For example, let’s look at Charmin. People aren’t searching how to use toilet paper but they might be looking for where’s the cleanest bathroom near my location. Charmin gave the people what they wanted and built an app, Sit or Squat. This app allows users to rate their public bathroom experiences so others can know where clean bathrooms are nearby. If you help someone solve their problem, you can find a customer for life.
This part shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but mobile is taking over. According to official Google statements, over 50% (maybe even up to 60%) of search queries are coming from mobile devices.While rankings are still currently based on the desktop version of your site, staying on top of your mobile site’s speed and user experience are crucial to preparing for Google’s impending mobile-first indexing.
7. Chat Bots
Technology is alive and thriving around us. Which means the way we communicate with our customers is changing. Before Inbound we were all notified that Hubspot had acquired Motion AI and we will soon see chat bot available for CRM.
The best news is you don’t have to be a developer to program your chatbot. It’s an easy drag and drop module that will allow you to build out informative answers to help your customers. We are expected to see this feature come to life in 2018.
8. Personalization
According to Statista, the open rate for emails with a personalized message was 17.6%, compared to 11.4% without personalization. That being said don’t just personalize the salutation inside the email but use them in your subject line, too. Personalization tokens in HubSpot make it easy to accomplish this.
Emails aren’t the only way to add personalization. If you already have some key accounts you’d like to target and a rich library of persona-based content, try it with ABM. Make sure you have a firm grasp on who you’re targeting, how you’ll go about handling those key accounts and exactly what success should look like before you start so you can tailor content directly towards their values and mission and accurately measure ROI. For a step-by-step guide to successfully implementing ABM, download our ABM playbook here.
Personalization can hurt your brand if you don’t get it right. Always remember to send yourself a test email and have a second set of eyes to make sure your tokens are functioning the way they should.
If you liked what you read, consider booking your ticket for Inbound 2018. While we covered some great topics today, words can’t describe the experience. With over 21,000 people in attendance, you can expect some delays before breakout sessions, lines for lunch, the bathroom and basically everywhere. Our team used that time to mingle with others by learning why they are at Inbound, whom they work for and what they’ve learned so far. It’s amazing the knowledge you can gain from your peers.