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The Difference between Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing

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Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing are the same things, right?  It’s a question that I often receive from business owners, marketers, and sales executives.  Content marketing is associated with being an approach while Inbound marketing is identified as a way of doing business. 

Content is an important part of inbound marketing but that doesn’t mean that content always equals content marketing.  There are tactics that exist outside of the scope of content marketing that are specific to inbound marketing such as SEO, social posting, etc..  Limiting your approach will limit the potential impact your marketing efforts will have on revenue growth.  Your approach will also have an impact on the skills, talents, and tools needed to execute. 

What is Content Marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience to drive profitable customer action.  

70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. (HubSpot, 2020)

content marketing framework

Source: Content Marketing Institute

This approach takes into account creating and distributing content. It focuses on telling the story, the most effective channel to deliver the story, and engaging in conversations. Often people think of it as brand awareness and good content is the foundation of any marketing campaign.

Types of Content Marketing

 

Content marketing is presented in several types of or formats such as:

  • Blogs
  • Video Content 
  • Ebooks
  • Guides
  • Case Studies 
  • Resources
  • Newsletters
  • Podcasts

What is Inbound Marketing?

HubSpot defines inbound marketing as a business methodology that attracts customers by
creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. While outbound marketing interrupts your audience with content they don’t always want, inbound marketing forms connections they are looking for and solves problems they already have.

This approach takes into account the buyer journey and the overall user experience. It’s not so much about the products or services, rather, it is about solving the challenges potential customers are facing at every stage.

Inbound Marketing Buyers Journey

Source: HubSpot

Types of Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing often consists of the following:

  • Blogging
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Social Media Management (Posting) 
  • Video Marketing 
  • Ad Development & Landing Pages
  • Content Creation
  • Email Marketing



Does the Approach Really Matter?

It’s about creating pieces of content that delivers results for your target audience. Determine your approach and start with a content marketing strategy or inbound marketing strategy. All of your content should conclude with a “call to action”. A call to action is an invitation for the users to take the desired action. For example, “Subscribe to our blog to get the latest in your inbox weekly!”

How to measure the success of the content and inbound marketing?

Before you start with the content or inbound, evaluate your ability to measure the results.  For example, if your content or landing page says “Call Now!”, I recommend that you:

  • Have a method to measure the number of telephone calls received as a result (call tracking).
  •  Determine the goals and objectives for each piece of content associated with your approach.  
  • Create a list of key metrics that you’ll track and record periodically.  

In our experience, keep it simple with engagement metrics and expand from there.  Don’t be afraid to test new ideas and delivery methods.

Try Our Content Planner!

5 Steps You Can Take Today to Bring More Traffic to Your Website

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Website traffic is an important business indicator and a driver for growth. You get to see how your marketing is working while gathering insight about your target audience. More traffic to your website builds your credibility on the web. It’s important to drive quality traffic that will impact lead generation and sales.

Create a Blog Editorial Calendar & Write Your First Blog Post

A blog is a regularly updated web page that is typically run by an individual or small group and is written in an informal or conversational style. Create a blog schedule or an editorial calendar that zeros in on your target audience questions, concerns, and challenges.

I recommend that the blog editorial calendar include who is responsible for writing, idea topics, and due dates.  Start out small with 1 blog per month then make adjustments based on your goals.   Consider how you will distribute the content to increase the likelihood that it will get into the hands of potential customers.  

 

69% of businesses attribute their lead generation success to blogging. (Source: HubSpotⓇ)

 

 

 

Download Calendar

Develop a SEO Plan to Increase Traffic from Google & Bing

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.  SEO techniques include content creation, linking, site navigation, local business listings, site speed and more.  Develop a SEO plan that is specific to your business situation.  

Start by getting an SEO or website audit.  The website audit will provide information on website issues that are hurting your position in the search engine results. You can get a free evaluation of your website:

 


The local business profiles on Facebook®, Google My Business®, Yelp®, and Bing Places® also attract more local customers.  These business profiles should include reviews, maps, services, a link to your website, and a description of your business.  This information is used to populate local listings and provide directions to your local business.

Try the Yext business listing scan to review your business listings. 

According to consumers, businesses that respond to reviews are 1.7X more trustworthy than businesses who don’t (76% vs. 46%) Source: Google

Start Social Media Posting on Relevant Platforms

Social media enables users to create and share content, career interests, ideas and to  participate in social networking conversations.  What social media networks are your existing customers using?  Share information that is useful to your customers.  Use polls to get their feedback on your products and services.  

Use social media as a distribution channel for your blog editorial calendar.  I recommend adding a post to your Google My Business profile so that it stands out from others.  Use social media management tools such as Hootsuite®, Buffer®, and SproutSocial® to schedule your posts. 

LinkedIn’s number of users in the U.S. reached 160 million, making it the country with the most users in the world. (Statista, 2020)

Social Media Post Calendar

Launch a Paid Search or Social Media Campaign

Paid Search or pay-per-click (PPC), search engine advertising, and sponsored listings are often used to define ad types such as Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), Google Product Listing Ads, Google Shopping Ads®, and Bing Ads. Paid social media display advertisements or sponsored marketing messages on popular social media platforms and target a specific sub-audience.

Define the goals of the paid search or social media campaign before starting your campaign.  Consider the type of ad campaign that would be most likely to succeed.  For example, if you are selling ecommerce products, I recommend a shopping campaign.  Create the campaign for your target audience that  minimizes cost and improves results. 

If you are already running a campaign, get a free paid search audit to improve your return on investment. 

In 2019 the U.S. was the largest global market based on mobile advertising spending. (Statitsa, 2019)

Create Content for Your Target Audience

Content is high quality, useful information that communicates a story presented in a contextually or visually relevant manner with the goal of soliciting emotion and engagement.  The content can be used as part of social media posts and added to your website for SEO. 

Create content that is useful to your potential customers and target audience.  For example, I recommend video demonstrations, product guides, flyers, and brochures.  These content pieces must be accessible via a mobile device. 

70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing. (HubSpot, 2020)

Combine Tactics to Increase Your Web Traffic Today

The increase in website traffic provides businesses with more opportunities to sell products or services. A one-size-fits-all model will not achieve your target results. All of these ideas are connected and will have a greater likelihood of achieving success when used in combination with each other

Understand where your business is going and measure if and how you are increasing traffic. Look to understand what is working and the impact that it is having on your sales. If you need any help, give us a call or check out our other blog posts on these topics.

Get an Inbound Marketing Assessment!



Need a new website? WordPress could be the answer

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What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular and free open source content management system (CMS) in the world. It allows WordPress developers to create websites, blogs, or apps. WordPress offers over 45,000 add-ons known as plugins. These plugins add features such as online stores, mailing lists, analytics and a lot more.

What is a WordPress Theme?

A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphic design of a website. The theme can change the way a website is displayed without changing the code. The theme files are sometimes called template files. There are thousands of WordPress themes available for purchase. You can also hire a WordPress developer to create or edit a theme to customize it for your business.

new website consider WordPress

What is a WordPress Framework?

WordPress frameworks are used as a parent theme template with all of the functionality. WordPress developers can create a child theme to add custom styling and leave the functionality to the parent theme framework or template. The framework is used to reduce web development time and usually has additional features. Canvas, Gantry, and Genesis are common WordPress Frameworks.

What are the features & benefits of a WordPress website?

WordPress is great for businesses with simple structured websites. It has basic installation, set-up, and maintenance requirements to save businesses time and money. WordPress is a useful CMS with a simple web interface for companies that want to provide their visitors with frequently changing content in attractive layouts. WordPress has a large community of users and developers that offer a huge selection of themes, plugins, and widgets with much flexibility.

Can You Create a Mobile Responsive WordPress Website?

Yes, WordPress website can be mobile responsive! Often, outdated WordPress software and themes are the cause of poor mobile sites. Choosing the right WordPress Framework can give you a mobile responsive website and better load time to help the user navigate with ease.

We recommend focusing on mobile first and working your way up to desktop computers. Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for faster load speed, better user experience, and to lower the website bounce rate. Remember, Google will predominantly use the mobile version of the content in the search engine results and ranking.

How to Improve Slow Loading Speeds for WordPress Websites?

According to a report by Microsoft Bing search team, a 2-second longer delay in page responsiveness reduces user satisfaction by 3.8%. It increases lost revenue per user by 4.3% and decreases clicks to the website by 4.3%.

I would recommend good hosting with Private or Dedicated hosting services to reduce the number of site on the server and daily backups. Implement the Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve slow loading speeds whenever offered by the hosting service. Use an established WordPress theme and framework because they are updated to improve load speed as well as security. You can have a developer optimize the website for speed by optimizing images, the database, and code.

How to Avoid Stale Content & Build a Brand?

WordPress can help you create, publish, update, and archive old content or information. You can use SEO plugins like Yoast or SmartCrawl to improve the content for search engines. Adding widgets can help to populate a page with social media posts or sales promotions. The blog functionality is simple for you to both use, and to update to avoid stale content.

Use WordPress to offer different types of content to potential customers. Reuse content in other formats such as videos, infographics, podcast and PDF downloads. You can build brand awareness and manage an online reputation, too. The reviews plugins can help manage business reviews.

How to Maintain a WordPress Website?

The average lifespan of a website is 2-5 years. The maintenance of a WordPress website is essential to maintain features, functionality, and security. Outdated WordPress website software, themes, and plugins leave sites vulnerable to hackers.

A WordPress website should receive scheduled monthly maintenance to update the software, theme, and plugins. Whenever possible, remove all deactivated plugins from the site. Audit the website for broken links on the website with a broken link checker. Do not hurt your search engine ranking, create a bad user experience, or give the idea that your business does not exist. With proper maintenance, WordPress can provide the answer for your business website needs.

Still have questions? Contact our sales team for a free consultation or submit your questions in the comments section.

4 Steps To Find Your Brand Voice

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Congratulations! You’ve just launched a new service and are eager to create a strong online presence. Or perhaps you’ve just been given the green light for your business’s first website redesign since Al Gore invented the internet. Either way, you’re ready to start the process of crafting a winning digital brand strategy. However, before you start shouting your message to anyone and everyone, there are some important things you need to consider.

The Importance of Brand Voice

First, you need to establish your brand’s voice, or how you plan to consistently express your brand through words. While images, videos, and podcasts have grown in importance, text-based communication remains critical to online marketing. Relatable language lends credibility to your message and can contain the keywords that your customers are searching for.

While you can certainly improvise and have some success, by not having a defined brand voice you risk confusing your audience with different messages. And since 83 percent of customer loyalty is driven by trust, mixing your messages makes turning first-time customers into returning customers that much harder.

Instead, consider how you’re going to communicate your value before you start a conversation with the audience. The process can be broken down into four easy steps:

1. Define Your Major Brand Traits

Think of a few words or phrases that describe your business, your product, or your culture. Are you professional or fun? A thought leader or a product innovator? Whatever words or phrases you choose, these brand traits will form the foundation of your company’s marketing efforts and the cornerstone of your brand voice.

The characteristics should reflect the value you aim to provide. Do your B2B customers want to hear that you’re adventurous? Maybe not. But if you sell gaming products, that trait might resonate with a large segment of your target audience.

2. Convey Why You’re Different

Odds are, the traits you’ve chosen to reflect your company aren’t exactly unique. We get it: here at DaBrian, we’re also quirky and authentic. Remember, you’re trying to reach the same buyers as competitors in your industry. This means there’s a good chance that you’re all defining yourselves in similar ways. However, if you can move past the “what” and the “how” to convey the “why” to your listeners, you can quickly set yourself apart from the crowd.

The WHY is about what a company believes in, not about what you make or how you make a profit. So extend each of your key defining traits so that they begin to tell a story. If one of your traits is “irreverent”, have a plan to explain why you’re irreverent. People want to hear your David vs. Goliath origin story, not the latest software features you offer. Influential companies link their purpose with their brand voice to convey why they are different.

3. Give Your Voice a Break and Listen Up

This is a key step that many companies skip in their rush to spread their messages. Don’t forget that the audience you’re trying to reach probably has its own way of communicating. Take a break from developing your own brand voice and tune in to what your peers, competitors, leads, and customers are saying.

Every industry has jargon that you need to be careful to include – or avoid – in your own messaging. Brands that fail to embrace the language of their target audiences come off as outsiders who don’t care about the people they want to work with. Companies that listen develop stronger brand voices, and come across as consultants instead of the latest in a long line of product pushers.

4. Put Brand Voice into Action

Once you’ve agreed on a few unique traits for your brand voice and confirmed that they align with your audience and industry, it’s time to put your plan into action. Extend your voice characteristics to include a few practical “do’s” and “don’ts” for your marketing team. If your brand voice includes “passion”, you might give the direction to include strong action verbs and to take a stand, even on controversial issues. You might also tell your marketers to avoid passive voice and lukewarm endorsements.

Lastly, make sure your team is on-board. Your brand voice needs to be clearly articulated to everyone in your organization as part of your overall brand guidelines. Go through examples of content that hit the mark. And show content that misses the mark, and make suggestions to fix it. Doing so will provide clarity for your content team and ensure that your brand voice is consistent across your marketing channels.

Conclusion

Developing your brand voice is crucial to conveying your brand’s personality and authenticity to potential customers. With just a few unique traits that resonate with your target audience, you’ll be on your way to digital content that builds brand awareness and customer loyalty.

For more information about brand elements to consider when designing digital content, contact us or leave us a comment below!

Increase Your Business’ Brand Awareness With SEO

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You have a great business that does fantastic work and offers quality products or services. So, why don’t more people know about you? Why isn’t your phone ringing off the hook and your email full? You have a website, that’s enough, right (it’s not)?

In order to increase your business’ brand awareness online, you need to be investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). According to a study by MarketingDive, 82% of participating marketers see SEO becoming more effective and 42% of this group stated its effectiveness is increasing significantly. This means that other businesses will be devoting more efforts towards SEO, which only stiffens the competition.

Build your business’ brand awareness and outperform your competitors online by utilizing the SEO tactics listed below.

1. Get In Front Of Your Audience With the Right Content

Unless you’re a large national brand, like Walmart® (if so, why are you reading this?), most people aren’t searching directly for your brand. Rather, they are typing in product/service related keywords.

To ensure your business pops up front and center amongst your competitors, you need to optimize your content to include the keywords and verbiage that your target audience and industry uses.

In addition to including the most relevant, trending, and traffic driving keywords, you also need to be cognizant of the forms of content you’re producing. Is your audience more susceptible to read blogs, articles, and white papers? Or, are they a younger, more visual audience who prefer videos and infographics?

By creating the appropriate content in the form most suited for your audience, users will be more likely to find and share your content. Thus, increasing the digital exposure your business receives.

2. Dominate the Local Market With Local SEO

For over a decade, Google and other major search engines have been placing a heavy emphasis on the importance of locality. Like your business, search engines also have a product and service, and their goal is to provide the most relevant and useful information to their users. While there are hundreds of factors that influence their results, the location has a massive impact, especially in regards to business-related searches.

To enhance your business’ local performance, there are a few tactics you’ll need to pursue:

Optimizing Your Site Locally

  • Have your name, address, & phone number (NAP) consistent throughout the site.
  • Embed Google Maps on your contact page.
  • Develop localized content.
  • Link to local partnerships, memberships, and affiliations.

Being Listed, Active, and Optimized on Popular Local Platforms

Many of these platforms (like Google, Facebook, and Yelp) have a review functionality. Meaning, customers can leave reviews about your business directly on their platform for the public to see. By owning these accounts, you are able to clearly see what people are saying. This allows you to get in front of any potential negative situations that may occur.

By being on top of things, you have the opportunity to improve your business based upon feedback, and resolve the situation. Showing that you’re listening to your consumers and taking action will actually help improve your brand’s online public perception.

According to a study by Moz, online reviews have been shown to impact 67.7% of purchasing decisions. Being uninformed of your online reputation can potentially spell disaster for your business.

3. Build Links Through Local Influencers

Link building, or link earning, is the process of obtaining backlinks from other websites that lead back to your website. While many owners may not see the value or understand fully the impact link building has, it is a hugely important component of a local seo strategy.

To improve your business’ brand awareness in your local market, you should target the following sites in terms of link acquisition:

  • Local Business Directories
  • Local Chambers
  • Local Businesses
  • Local News Stations
  • Local Bloggers/Social Influencers

Being listed on these sites will send local signals to search engines and place your website in front of your local audience.

Build Your Brand Organically

Increasing your brand awareness through SEO can take some time, but it’s well worth it. By following all of the steps and tactics mentioned above, you’ll set the foundation for your business to flourish digitally within your target market.

Ready to improve your brand awareness online through SEO? Schedule a FREE consultation today!

By: David McDowell

Why Your Brand Should Be Using LinkedIn

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In an era of ever-increasing online interaction, social media is one of the most easily-accessible and useful tools in your business arsenal. While Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have rightly earned their status as social media heavyweights, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of LinkedIn’s punch when it comes to promoting your business and boosting your sales. From lifting the lid on internal talent, to curating content: here are some key reasons why your business needs to embrace LinkedIn.

The Right Audience

Over 500 million professionals are on LinkedIn, and as it’s a social channel created for business interaction; its users are already there with their business hats on. On other social media channels, users might have primarily logged on for amusement, friendship etc.; on LinkedIn they are already in the right networking mindset, so it’s the perfect place to execute your business marketing strategy.

Not only are these people switched on and engaged, they are also probably more likely to be key decision-makers and engaged industry professionals. The perfect people your business should be talking to…

However; that doesn’t mean that you should go overboard and hard-sell, or forget the human side of business. Following top entrepreneurs will give you a good yardstick to follow, as they often balance business updates with engaging inspirational posts and stories.

Showcase Your Brand

LinkedIn lets you create a company page for free, which includes space for your company logo as well as a description about the brand. From here you can publish and share content — the first step for getting noticed.

It’s an easy, simple, and pain-free way of getting your message out into the world — and can also become a central spoke for employee engagement and content curation efforts. Use LinkedIn updates to welcome new team members, share company milestones, and cover any relevant industry events.

As well as being an excellent platform to highlight your brand ethos and vision, 64% of social referrals to company websites come from LinkedIn, so it’s also successful at directing potential clients/associates to your homepage.

Clever Content Marketing

Great content marketing material should educate, inform, or entertain your users. LinkedIn is ideal for promoting informative blog content or useful, practical advice about running a business. You will also find that inspirational people stories or anecdotes do well on LinkedIn, as does any relevant event coverage.

When planning out your LinkedIn strategy, make sure you mix up post formats and messages so as not to not have a brand that’s on social ‘autopilot’. You need to get to grips with brand storytelling, not broadcasting.

Just remember that images and links are key to well-performing posts on LinkedIn – 98% of posts with images receive more comments and posts with links in have a 200% higher engagement rate.

You should also encourage team members to publish native content on LinkedIn. The platform gets a lot of engagement, and it’s a fantastic place for events roundups, and short, reflective posts.

Connect with other experts

80% of all B2B leads come from LinkedIn. If you run a B2B company, LinkedIn provides the perfect opportunity to reach out to potential clients and form strong business bonds. It’s a great way to give back to your community of clients and associates — you can share their content, endorse them, and generally keep in touch.

Even if you have a consumer-facing company, you can still utilize LinkedIn’s large wealth of contacts by forging alliances for things like partnership marketing. It’s also ideal for scouting out new suppliers and distributors if you run an e-commerce business.

The rules of social networking are shifting, but the basics still ring true: listen, be authentic, and connect with meaning.

Another level of interaction

LinkedIn prioritizes relationship building. Whenever you send an invite to someone to ‘connect’ with you, instead of a blanket request being whizzed straight out, you can fully personalize the invite to explain why you’re getting in touch, where you found their details etc. You can also use the ‘cold’ mail option on LinkedIn: this is a scalable sales channel.

There is also the groups section where you can opt to meet with people who have similar interests. By joining groups that are populated by your target audience, you can then use this as a forum to promote your content. (But again: have respect for community).

A useful research tool

LinkedIn not only helps you promote your company and engage with clients and consumers, it’s also the perfect place to suss out the competition, talent spot, and generally keep your fingers on the industry pulse. If some of your rivals have a bigger presence, you can observe what they do and which circles they operate in.

LinkedIn is a place where many interesting conversations take place, but you run the risk of missing out on them, if you don’t engage. It’s a good idea to earmark some ‘engagement’ time in your social calendar, to help you unearth conversations that are worth listening too. Don’t forget that a roundup post of content found on LinkedIn is a quick way to leverage the channel elsewhere.

Whether it’s for building your brand reputation, making important business connections or distributing your content marketing, LinkedIn can truly transform your company. Leverage the power of LinkedIn for your marketing strategy and you’ll see increased engagement, SEO clout, and sales. If what we’ve said isn’t enough to convince you, just check out how these successful CEOs use it to their advantage.

Victoria Greene is a content consultant. On her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, she shares tips on how companies can improve the way they represent their brand. She is passionate about using her experience to help brands improve their reach across a variety of different social or content channels.