Inbound Marketing & Business Relationships Part 9

Posted on May 24, 2016 by ianotr

Inbound Marketing & Business Relationships

Business relationships are becoming more personalized

The era of customers being treated only as statistics is ending. A more personalized approach to marketing is becoming more common, especially when it comes to business relationships that involve a lot of transactions. Loyalty and trust have become the benchmarks to winning online business through inbound marketing, which connects niche markets with unique content about the products.

Personalized Business Culture

One of the feelings you can easily get exploring the web is that it’s much easier to communicate with a CEO or managers of small companies than getting any kind of response from big business management. The internet can be used to strengthen associations in a matter of clicks on a contact page. Marketing software allows a company to create profiles for each of their customers. Businesses that use marketing software can establish closer relationships with customers and categorize them according to their purchasing behavior.

At one time everyone was pitched by pushy sales people. But the internet has made almost every industry more competitive, so a lot of the pushy attitude has faded. Pushy sales techniques have become bothersome because they can waste the time of a person not interested in the product. The hard sell approach began to become very unpopular during the financial crash of 2008, which found half the country deep in credit card debt. The financial crash caused many people to pay closer attention to their expenses and to the businesses they spend money on.

Community Vision

The key to understanding how inbound marketing is changing the business world is that many business decisions now relate to shared vision. Crowdfunding is a form of shared vision that offers alternative ways to fund projects. Small businesses, through creativity and partnerships, can succeed by serving the needs of online communities with similar visions.

When you think of all the different communities that exist in the world, it’s unlikely that there is a definitive website for every community. How many times have you tried searching online for something that you knew existed but the search delivered zero search results? The point is that it is fairly easy to start a website devoted to an existing large community without facing much competition.

Trying to get to know a thousand different people online is no longer a big issue, since friends from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn can end up being in the thousands for any given person. It’s now fairly simple to connect with real people online as business is naturally becoming more social media-friendly and personalized. More than ever before, there is a need to document as much information about customer behavior as possible, especially if they care about the company’s vision.

How Business Becomes Personalized

One way that business becomes personalized is through a constant reminder such as a newsletter. A well written blog has a personalized feel and becomes even more personalized with reader comments. For many businesses, their social media profile delivers their personal message to the world. For free, a business can build content on a Facebook page and then have their web domain point to the Facebook page. Social media interaction is how many business relationships permeate over time.

Perhaps the most important reason why business is becoming more personalized is that consumers have quickly adopted trust as the main criterion for establishing loyalty with a business. Trust can be built on elaborate inbound marketing through deep devotion to the product. It can also be built on open discussions about customer feedback. Take the lead in earning the trust of online followers by sharing a wealth of meaningful information about your industry.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web, a web development company creating market ready websites since 2000, with locations in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web – Delivers What You Need With Style.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Web requirements

Contact OTR Web.

The Importance of a Good Logo

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Bob Niles

The Importance of a Good Logo

“Well.” Pressed the senior executive of the design company, “What am I looking at?”
The young artist could taste the boss’s Jack Daniels lunch in his mouth. Spit-lets dotted his glasses and face as he tried not to flinch. The man everyone referred to as ‘the big guy’ was so close, parts of his face were out of focus.
“I asked you a simple question young man,…..”

He didn’t even know his name.

“I’m looking at floor, shoes, pasty legs, shorts, sitting on a bench on maybe the edge of a basketball court. How does this, which is suppose to be a logo design for one of the richest sports empires in the world THE NBA how does this say NBA?”

“Well sir,….” dryly crackled the young hopeful, “what would you call a bunch of white guys sitting on a bench?”

We see a giant stylized yellow ‘M’ and we know it’s McDonalds. We see a swoosh mark and know its Nike. An old guy with white little beard on a red background we know Kentucky Fried Chicken. We recognize Pepsi, Apple Computers, Windows, Facebook and many more logos just by design. No words needed.
By just glancing at their logo design you know about that company’s fine quality standards. You easily reflect on their advertising campaigns. You know their slogans or catchy tunes used in their commercials. There is no confusion as to who they are.

And that’s what a good logo can do for you. It’s your companies flag or crest that you carry onto the battlefields of daily competition. It’s design and recognition say who you are. Your brand. No floor, shoes, legs or shorts to confuse what your business conveys.

Let OTR Web develop your brand.

Bob Niles

Read more articles from Bob’s personal life experiences on his Blogspot site. Superiordribble.blogspot.com

Content Marketing & SEO Part 5

Posted on April 8, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing & SEO

One size fits all marketing is ineffective

Traditional marketing relied on a theory that one message can connect with a mass audience. The internet helped branding become more multidimensional. Websites can be full of different versions of brands. The one size fits all model was designed to reach a vast market through a numbers game and limited media, but it did not always reach its target market. Today SEO has become a realistic way to develop a significant loyal online community.

Brand Diversity

One of the keys to business survival in the 21st century has been brand diversity. The internet has made it easy for a brand to become a package that serves a market with many different niches. By offering many different products instead of one product a brand potentially reaches a much wider market. Each version of a brand can have its own web page using keywords associated with the brand. One of the many reasons for creating many different brand versions is to offer the brand in different languages.

Brand diversity may imply that a conglomerate is the force behind the business, but small businesses can also be diverse. Using creativity, a local business may find reasons to market different product versions to different market segments. The more a brand can offer customization, the more personalized it is and the more it fits the model sought by modern consumers.

Research Beyond Demographics

In the 1990’s demographics played a huge part in the mass marketing of one size fits all products. By selling products to specific target demographics there was a consensus among marketers that everything came down to age groups. Then psychographics became part of marketing that expanded the thinking to include interests and lifestyles as important market factors besides age group. Tech gadgets have been marketed as lifestyle items, in which several different versions fit different lifestyles.

Ever since Google introduced Analytics, the marketing world has gravitated toward this tool and similar traffic tracking programs as a measurement of marketing power. Analytics take the marketer into a world of online behavior, which can reflect how well a website is presented. Now that markets can be studied on a micro level, thanks to SEO and web stats, it’s possible for a marketer of a brand to meet the needs of various markets.

Updated Products

Unlike last century’s products, this century’s products require much more frequent updating, especially when it has anything to do with digital products. One marketing message can no longer summarize a product in a way that meets the needs of modern consumers. Software, books, video games, music and blogs can all be updated seamlessly in the cloud. Even T-shirts can now be designed in the cloud.

Part of SEO involves updating web pages, as search engines favor fresh content. Authoritative blogs that are updated frequently carry heavy weight with search engines. The internet has helped expand the boundaries of branding, giving owners more flexibility in reaching niche markets. All you mostly have to do as a content marketer is write a useful article for each different market you are trying to reach.

Reaching Niches with Content Marketing

The secret to effective content marketing has always been to create unique and compelling content. The beauty of content marketing is it allows you to get indexed in search engines as much as possible when writing about the various niches associated with your brand. While last century’s marketers were mainly concerned with demographics, this century’s marketers have much more data and must think about customers more as individuals than statistics. Take the lead in content marketing by writing about various niches within your market.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing Part 4

Posted on March 4, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing vs Interruptive Marketing

Interruptive marketing annoys more than it helps

Interruptive marketing still exists online for those who can afford it. Since most people do not go online to click ads, online advertising should only be done when it makes sense and you have an idea how many people you will be reaching. It’s possible to create a successful campaign with interruptive advertising, usually after learning from failed campaigns.

Why Ads are Annoying

A big reason why interruptive ads continue to be annoying is that people have become more conscious of how time can get wasted, especially people who spend a lot of time watching television. Interruptive advertising on websites is forcing many users to move on to the next website faster, especially when it comes to trying to watch videos. Getting hit with an ad has become a two minute slowdown. Many times it’s easier to exit a website than wait for an ad to finish.

Since ads represent clutter, they are usually bothersome. Only once in awhile do ads communicate the way they were designed. Interruptive ads are starting to become hard to justify except in narrowly targeted situations. The problem with constantly interrupting people who don’t want to be interrupted is that it gets old. The person can also form a negative image of the brand if it is over-marketed.

Image Problems

We are moving into an era in which brands are considered phony if they don’t live up to their claims. It’s now easy to look up customer feedback for almost any brand, now that sites like Amazon keep track of consumer comments. Consumers are now conscious of giving such feedback sites weight compared with advertising. The rising popularity of content marketing is causing businesses to understand the negative impact of interruptive advertising.

Now that audiences have learned to see through advertiser claims, it’s becoming a challenge for businesses to win the trust of customers. Since content marketing is more about communicating with the target market, it makes sense to try to gain as much respect as possible by telling the truth than to exaggerate the facts just to trick people into sales. When people realize they’ve been fooled by advertising, it can damage association with the brand.

Less Like Radio

The irony about radio advertising is that it does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. Instead of delivering a message to a mass audience, it’s delivering a message to people who have switched stations during commercials.In order to meet the standards of content marketing, it’s important to think of the opposite of how radio commercials have been made. Many commercials have used phony voices to try to give the spot more energy. Today’s marketing is closer to being conversational without theatrical characters.

Traditional radio commercials usually told you a limited amount of information to fit the format of a 30 or 60 second spot, whereas content marketing does not limit its message to the constraints of a third party. Radio commercials always get clustered with other commercials in “stopsets,” which is exactly when many people tune out of the radio. Clearly, most people do not listen to radio commercials no matter what the message is.

Another problem with radio commercials is due to the time constraint, many times the announcer will speed up his or her voice and speak too fast to be understood. If you watch business videos designed to raise brand awareness through content marketing, you will likely come across more relaxed than hyper presentations. Interruptive ads have become more annoying over time now that people have learned to use the internet as a quick gateway to many free activities.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000, with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web – Delivers What You Need With Style.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Content Marketing vs Mass Marketing Part 3

Posted on February 18, 2015 by ianotr

Content Marketing vs Mass Marketing

People Have Learned To Tune Out Mass Marketing

Content marketing of the 21st century is quickly turning into something much different than the marketing of the previous century. In the 20th century not much attention was paid to how many people you offended through marketing. All that mattered was sales conversions. In the new century, consumers are looked at more as individuals rather than statistics, so this shift has created a set of new marketing standards.

Consumer Behavior

It’s difficult to predict consumer behavior, regardless of the type of marketing. One thing clear about the internet revolution is that consumers are no longer quiet about bad purchases. Social media, forums and blog activity have steered a growing number of self-educated consumers toward using the internet for research before making a purchase. Customer reviews on sites like Amazon have become part of research.

Throughout the growth of the internet, users have been bombarded with thousands of ads that had zero effect. People have now seen so much advertising since the 1990s on a daily basis that it has a nullifying effect on most advertising. People learn to not worry about the stack of coupons kept in a drawer or in their email. Since people witness so much marketing in any given day, it’s easy to conclude that most of this marketing doesn’t work for any given individual, as most advertising represents clutter.

Years of Advertising

People have figured out that advertising does not always present the best messages about products. Many times products are over-hyped by ads. Consumers are no longer easily fooled by emotional appeal used by advertisers. The internet has taught many consumers how to articulate what they like or dislike about a product. Ultimately, as people sharpen their brand awareness skills, advertising is becoming more informational than persuasive, at least with content marketing.

One of the important lessons that stands out about advertising is that consumers have become aware of sales pressure, which can lead to high credit card bills. The internet has erased the barrier of location, which gives consumers more choices. Sales pressure is not embraced in content marketing, which favors guiding users through a sales funnel with interesting facts that eventually lead to a product.

Authenticity in Demand

Now that it’s easy for anyone to start their own web business, there is a growing need to separate helpful websites from sites that waste time. Mass marketers can be found everywhere online, which has contributed to an overall consumer skepticism about advertising. Like all advertising arenas, the number of people who respond to ads even on popular social networks is a small percentage.

The reason authenticity is becoming part of the new marketing paradigm is that original content rather than duplicate content is favored by search engines. The more your website follows Google’s guidelines, the less you have to worry about it. The main objective of content marketing is to provide plenty of valuable content that is of interest to an online community.

Why Content Marketing Works

Content marketing is a completely different world than interruptive marketing. Instead of interrupting someone’s day, your articles and blogs are found in search engines by people who care. Instead of annoying users with advertisements, you provide them with stories that promote products. These stories are presented in a unique way, which helps search rankings.

A main strength to content marketing is that it helps establish the relationship between the business and the customer. Interactivity through social networks or email helps achieve goals for both parties. While traditional marketing relied on wordplay and image, today’s content marketing is more about developing trust through sharing accurate and helpful information.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Inbound Marketing & Big Media Advertising Part 2

Posted on February 11, 2015 by ianotr

Inbound Marketing & Big Media Advertising

Big media advertising is expensive and high risk

One of the traps that many start-ups have fallen into has been to set aside a budget for traditional media advertising. This budget can be drained quickly because it involves a fun element, which is creating commercials. But once the spots are run, pressure builds to see a return on investment. Television and radio spots are seen and heard by thousands of people, but most viewers and listeners still consider commercials to be an interruption.

Inbound Marketing vs. Traditional Media

Traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers still reach a huge audience. It’s still a way to deliver a message to the masses and hope that the numbers game will produce a return on investment. The cost of a radio spot depends on how big the station’s market is, but in major markets a sixty second spot can cost hundreds of dollars per minute. Even though television advertising is much more expensive than radio advertising, they both equate to seeing thousands of dollars spent quickly.Inbound marketing usually does not reach as many people as television or radio audiences, but connects more with the target market. While traditional media marketing relies on reaching as many people as possible to produce a single digit percentage of respondents, inbound marketing aims at building a more loyal following, instead of a general following. Reaching followers through blogs and social media has a more personalized feel than traditional media.

Commercial Risks

In the late 1990s one of the reasons there was a “dotcom bust” was that many new internet companies thought they could create markets for their brands through buying radio and television time. Many of these companies attracted funding that helped pay for the advertising, but they eventually collapsed due to having poor business models that did not have clear revenue streams.

The lesson of the dotcom implosion helped steer internet companies toward more concrete business models. The collapse of hundreds of companies served as a reminder that markets cannot be created so quickly just by spending a lot of money on exposure. Part of marketing that remains true is that you cannot build a brand overnight regardless of the medium.

Print Advantages

In recent decades the number of newspapers and magazines have dwindled, but advertising rates have remained high. Ask yourself if advertising in a newspaper helps your cause in any way, knowing that most of your market gets its news online. Big ads – the expensive kind – work best in print, but the best deal when it comes to print is printing your own flyer and mass distributing it through various channels.

You can combine print with inbound marketing by offering printed materials to people who request them through your website. A big part of inbound marketing is offering free items that give people a chance to engage with your brand. You can use print to promote your website locally at stores that reflect your industry. Working with a printer is also helpful in getting your logo on various marketing items.

Avoiding Expensive Advertising

There’s a tendency for some business owners to blame sales declines on lack of advertising. But a business is much more than the product it advertises, which is why advertising does not always work. Mass advertising works when many factors have come together. Loyalty, brand awareness and reputation are just as important as the message being advertised.

It’s better to conserve resources and develop a business slowly than to try to jump start a business with expensive media advertising. By building a market with inbound marketing, a company can focus on developing a long term organic following.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Certified Partner with HubSpot and Google.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Reactive Content for Social Sharing

Posted on August 11, 2014 by ianotr

Reactive Content for Social Sharing

Content that creates any kind of significant and fast spreading online buzz is considered viral and sometimes called “contagious content.” What are the qualities of videos, images, blogs and articles that go viral? It definitely has more to do with standing out than blending in. Evidence suggests that people who sort through YouTube deciding on what to watch pay attention to views, as popularity attracts more viewers. That’s why the more “likes” you can initially generate, the more chance others will watch it.

Seeing Through Viral Hype

The biggest myth about viral content is that there’s a certain formula that can work for anyone. Obviously not all content creators have equal significance. No matter how many experts you listen to about the keys to crafting viral content, the top viral videos and blogs will usually either come from an already popular website or somehow receive exposure from a popular media outlet.

The video to the novice song “Friday” by Rebecca Black was the most viewed video on YouTube in 2011 and sparked a national discussion on how such an amateur could overshadow professional recording artists. What was amazing was that over 80 percent of viewers who rated the video voted “dislike.” The mystery can be explained by the fact that the viral activity began after the video was mentioned on a popular blog by comedian Michael J. Nelson. From there it was reviewed and ridiculed by several media outlets.

Viral videos can also be rigged. In December 2012 YouTube discovered and cancelled two billion views for music videos were faked possibly by hackers who worked for the music industry. In other words, don’t be distracted too much by what’s considered hot online because there’s always a chance it’s misleading, distorted, rigged or hyped information.

Viral Factors

Your video or blog might never be viewed by millions, but you might still have a chance to get enough attention to attract an audience that helps your business. One of the most important factors of viral content is that it gets reviewed by influencers such as popular bloggers. Developing an ongoing relationship with several successful bloggers can plant seeds to future viral action. Content that has no connection with other online influences will likely not go viral on its own.

The actual content can take on many different forms in viral scenarios. Short wacky videos and informative lengthy blogs are typical examples of contagious content. But there are no real ways to predict what can go viral, other than the content is usually filtered through popular media channels. Other terms that have been used by experts to characterize viral qualities include: relevant, controversial, personable, creative, inspiring, emotional, humane, humorous, shocking and daring. Catchy titles help as well.

Consistent Vision

Stay true to what you believe in instead of trying to figure out how to fit into popular schemes. Compromising your vision for short-lived popularity might not be worth it because viral activity does not guarantee sales conversions or building long term loyalty. As long as you craft creative content you should be in the running for viral opportunities, provided that it catches the attention of influencers with big audiences.

If you come across viral content that inspires you and fits your vision, then go ahead and experiment with it, but don’t just do something controversial or shocking to try to go viral. What works for others might not work for you. It’s fine to experiment with humor and novelty, but never lose site of solving problems. Take the lead in content marketing by crafting edgy educational content that no one else is doing.

Would you like to get exclusive & relevant information such as this blog/article delivered to your mailbox? Join our OTR Web Newsletter now.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Partner with HubSpot.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Interacting with Followers

Posted on August 6, 2014 by ianotr

Interacting With Followers Is Crucial To Your Business. Learn Why!

Content marketing is strengthened exponentially with social media in mind. You can rely on search engines to a degree to help bring you a certain amount of traffic, but if you want to accelerate loyalty and possibly sales, you will need to interact with followers through social media. The most popular social networks are Facebook, YouTube, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. You don’t need a presence on each of them, just the ones that suit your goals.

The Power of Interaction

The quote from Ian Conklin that “clients want to believe they found you .. not that you found them” applies to search engines, websites and social media as vehicles for knowledge discovery. People feel rewarded by making the right connections in their networks. Take advantage of the fact that half the world is now looking to make new friends online through social media to help with problem solving and possibly career advancement.

Interaction through the internet is a much more empowering form of communication than a person who passively absorbs television or radio programming. Social media can deliver immediate answers and responses faster than email or any other electronic medium besides the telephone. Social media is more convenient than the telephone, which can be interruptive at times, whereas people with social profiles crave attention. Another strength that social media offers is group discussion that can expand through content sharing.

Mixing Art with Messages

Putting Paint to Canvas

What’s spectacular about social media sharing is that it allows you to express yourself in artistic ways that had previously not been possible. You can now easily associate your message with a song, a movie clip or a painting to help reach a common ground with followers. Sharing original art, music, video or photography with your message can give a personal touch to your campaign. It’s easy to type a post with a link to your blog or article and upload other media at the same time, creating a multidimensional post.

Posting news articles with artistic graphics and a theme that goes along with your writing is a creative way to lead followers to your content. Facebook and Google Plus give you flexibility for combining multiple links on one post. The visual imagery helps pull in readers from their news feed, which is important, since only about 15 percent of your Facebook friends will see your posts in news feeds. Facebook learns through “likes” and comments what the most active friends are for each individual and serves them their own individual news feed of top connections. So it’s important to create as many impressive posts as possible to increase visibility.

Comments and Likes

Your social media interactivity should include reading other people’s posts as well as writing your own. You can write comments on people’s “walls” on Facebook just by clicking their names. If someone likes your comment it’s a good idea to like their comments at least once in a while. It helps remind them of your content and builds a connection that keeps your feeds active.
Adding new unknown followers on Facebook can be done for a business profile, but is discouraged for personal profiles, so you may want to have two separate profiles on Facebook.

Google Plus is more about building new relationships online and engaging in more about knowledge, while Facebook has a more fun and casual orientation. Both social networks allow you to create subgroups focused on specific discussions. Twitter is more about promoting links with simple short statements.Take the lead in content marketing by interacting with followers on a level that creates a meaningful bond that is mutually beneficial.

Would you like to get exclusive & relevant information such as this blog/article delivered to your mailbox? Join our OTR Web Newsletter now.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Partner with HubSpot.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Data Collection and Audience Measurement

Posted on July 10, 2014 by ianotr

Data Collection and Audience Measurement

One of the things that makes content marketing more scientific than traditional marketing is the fact that it provides a mountain of data. Most of this data can be obtained at low to no cost. Google Analytics is one of the best tracking platforms for your online efforts to find out how well your content attracts traffic. Various other tracking services can help you gauge your performance. Studying this data will help you determine your strengths and weaknesses at content marketing.

Google Analytics

There are many different services that offer audience measurement for websites, but Google Analytics is by far the most popular and it’s well respected due to its comprehensive detail. Analytics tell you how much traffic you’re getting, where it comes from and how visitors behave on your site. The research is designed for marketers and is divided into free and premium services. The basic free package tells you how many visits your site got in a given day, week or month, along with average session time and bounce rate, which reveals the percentage of visitors who exit the site after viewing one page.

One of the helpful indicators that Google Analytics provides is how users found your websites. Referrers such as search engines, social networks and websites are listed as sources that brought you traffic. You can use this information to share with referrers to let them know they provide you value. Another use of Analytics is finding out which geographic locations bring you the most traffic, which can help you determine if your branding messages need to be more universal or focused on certain regions. The main limitation of Google Analytics is that users can disable cookies in their browsers, which blocks data collection on how they use your site.

CrazyEgg

You can help improve your conversion rate by analyzing why people leave your site with Crazy Egg heat maps. The software shows you specific locations on web pages that visitors clicked before exiting. A scroll map shows how far visitors scrolled on pages, which helps you determine which parts of pages are most and least effective at holding people’s attention. The Confetti tool within the software helps you learn search terms that were used by people to find your site.

Alexa and Quantcast

Two audience measurement sites that can teach you a lot about web popularity are Alexa and Quantcast. Both sites rank millions of websites, using separate methodologies to measure web traffic. Unlike ComScore and Nielsen, Alexa and Quantcast publish their rankings for the public. You can even use them for free to find out how your website compares with competitors in traffic rankings. If you sign up for either service and paste their code on your web pages you can get much more detailed statistics.

Alexa, owned by Amazon, tells you how your site ranks globally as well as in the United States. If your site gets enough traffic it will tell you other interesting information, such as bounce rate, daily pageviews per visitor, daily time on site and heat maps for gender, education level, browsing location (home, school, work) and visitors by country. It will also tell you the percentage of visits that originated from search engines and the top keywords used from search engines. It will also give your site an SEO score on a 0-100 point scale.

Quantcast is useful for looking at income levels and other demographics of your users. Both sites provide much more information if you subscribe.Take the lead in content marketing by utilizing website Analytics, which will help fine tune your understanding of your audience.

Would you like to get relevant information such as this blog/article delivered to your mailbox? Join our OTR Web Newsletter now.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Partner with HubSpot.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements

Contact OTR Web.

Lead Nurturing for the Sales Funnel

Posted on April 6, 2014 by ianotr

Lead Nurturing for the Sales Funnel

The whole point to content marketing is getting leads with a good ROI, unless you’re just doing it as a hobby. Most people who go through all the trouble of massive content creation appreciate the business that it can bring. Your business will be elevated by implementing a system that captures, nurtures, scores and converts leads through your sales funnel, which ultimately directs users to your product pages.

Landing Page Optimization

A landing page, as defined by Google Analytics, is the first page that a user enters on a website. Marketers tend to extend the definition to pages where customers arrive after clicking ads. To avoid confusion, you might refer to pages where you sell products as your product pages or lead capture pages, whether the products are physical or digital. Use these pages to develop leads you can nurture for future sales. You can capture leads by offering a form, email address or link to your social media profile.

The most effective product pages will make it easy for the consumer to quickly learn the product name, what it looks like with a thumbnail or image, the price, product reviews and a purchase button. No matter how sophisticated the e-commerce software is, the buying experience needs to be simple. The consumer should have multiple methods for purchasing, such as credit, debit or PayPal. Product images need to be sharp and colorful. Reviews are essential because they provide real life experiences and give the consumer deeper insight.

A/B Testing

One of the ways to improve landing pages is through A/B testing, which is a process of experimenting with various versions of web pages to narrow down the most effective lead generation strategy. Multiple pages can be tested either at one time or in a sequence. The goal is to figure out which type of presentation gets the best click-through and conversion rates.A/B testing does not produce complex statistics. It’s more of a simple approach to decision-making that doesn’t require a lot of time, effort or expense. Variables can be the layout and the choice of wording, color and images.

Creating a QA Page

Offering a QA page is strategically advantageous because it’s what many leads gravitate toward when they have questions and want quick answers. Think of 10-20 or more questions that your customers might ask you regarding the purchasing process and how to learn more about the product. Provide links for further information if necessary. Be sure to also provide a link for followers to ask further questions, which captures leads.

Lead Scoring and Nurturing

As leads come to you through forms, email and social media, you can save time with the conversion process by developing a lead scoring system. You can use marketing automation software such as Hubspot, Pardot, PlanPlus, LeadMaster and a variety of other programs or you can do it manually. Simply create a 0-10 or 0-100 scoring system with the highest numbers being the most likely leads to convert. Then score your leads based on the information the potential customer gives you.

Concentrate your efforts on high scoring leads so that you don’t annoy the people who are not interested in making purchases. Low scores may someday shift to high scores if you nurture them in a friendly way. You can maximizing lead nurturing by keeping all contacts on your radar and interacting with them through social media and finding out more about their lifestyles and interests. Offer them free information whenever you can.

Would you like to get relevant information such as this blog/article delivered to your mailbox? Join our OTR Web Newsletter now.

Take the lead in content marketing by converting leads to sales based on a sensible system that evaluates followers of your content.

Ian Conklin is the President of OTR Web Solutions a web development company building marketing websites since 2000 with offices in Canada, USA, Europe and South America.

OTR Web is a Partner with HubSpot.

For all your Inbound Marketing and Website requirements Contact OTR Web.