I realize that a lot of opinions exist around this subject. In fact, a day after I recieved an email about this and decided to write a blog about it, Hubspot wrote a blog titled "Please Don't Start a Social Media Marketing Agency" that got a lot of people talking. But here's my thoughts:

No one should be relying completely on social media to get the marketing job done.

Yes, social media has a lot of value. As pointed out by the Hubspot article I mentioned, social media can help build SEO, it can help build a following with people who could help spread your message, search engines have started to look to social media to refine search results, social media is starting to be used for targeted advertising, and sales people can use social media to connect and nurture prospect relationships. But, social media only accomplishes these things to a degree, and it will not accomplish any of this unless done correctly.

My point: social media marketing can not stand alone. There is inbound marketing of which there are several components that includes social media. Relying completely on social media to market your business online will cause you to miss integral opportunites that lie with using social media in conjunction with other online tools as part of an inbound marketing strategy.

The internet opened a completely new can of worms in the marketing world, but social media is only one of those worms!

Learn more about inbound marketing!

Nothing has become more laughable or terrifying in all of marketing than to see those monstrosities of marketing invading office and apartment lobbies. Last year around this time, I drove around in an '84 Camaro with a mulleted-American (yes, this would be the second straight post where I've conjured up the ghost of Jake) collecting unwanted Yellowbooks and delivering them to the doorstep of the local distributor. They were kind enough to take them back. Others, like Ed Kohler of Minneapolis, have been much more militant in their approach. Hats off to him and others.

This morning I learned from my colleague Julie that Seattle is considering legislation to limit the distribution of Yellowbooks. Of course this is a great idea. I'd love to see our mayors consider similar moves.

Yellowbooks may seem the most offensive because they're the most visible. In some office buildings, it would take a forklift to remove the stash of unwanted booty. Yet I wonder how many companies have their own version of "Yellowbook" waste in their plans. No secret here that I've long been a critic of banner advertising, where billions of dollars flow into ad networks with no real accountability or promise of results. The dreaded "impression" is a sort of don't-worry-be-happy metric that lulls advertisers into thinking they might actually be doing something worthwhile. So I find it curious that we loathe the sight of a stack of Yellowbooks when we ourselves might be staring down the barrel of our own deep ocean financial oil leaks. Sure, it's going on down there but just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. (Man, I love mixing metaphors! Yellowbooks! Oil leaks! Google bait!)

Here are some other egregious marketing oversights:

- Blindly taking Google's recommended spend with them on keywords that simply will never return high quality traffic.

- Batch-n-blast email campaigns where a single, non-targeted or segmented message is wantonly sent to an entire database. Waste of time, money, and efforts...over and over again.

- Twitter. Yup, I said it. I worry that agencies and companies alike are spending loads of precious brainpower communicating in a Chinese-water drip torture fashion only to their friends, employees and colleagues. I worry that no one has any idea who's following them or who cares.

So, the next time you pass a mountain of Yellowbooks in your lobby and before you become offended, think carefully and loudly about where your own looming stack of unaccountable dollars are flowing. If you don't know, you probably have a problem right there. Know. Then know a little more.

I mean this quite honestly. If you're reading this and worry even a little bit about your own wasteful ways, get your marketing team together, shut the door, and ask yourselves, "Is there a stack of Yellowbooks in our marketing and advertising plans?" Then do something about it. And if you come across some interesting finds, share them here with others. As business pundits talk of a possible depression in the American economy, I would suggest that there's no better time than now to start investigating.

www.ciceron.com
612.230.3901 :: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreweklund
Professional Twitter: @HeavyThinking
Personal Twitter: @aeklund

When a prospect visits your website what do they think you're selling? Inbound Marketing?

You provide inbound marketing, but what are you selling? Are you selling an inbound marketing strategy? Are you selling a certain software to help do inbound marketing? Are you selling piece of mind for your customer?

When a prospect visits your site, they've come in search of an answer to a problem. You need to know your prospect's pain and you need to provide the remedy. What question do they need answered before they call you, are you answering it?

Chances are, most prospects aren't looking for inbound marketing. They're more likely looking for help to increase traffic to their website, or help writing blogs or doing social media because they don't have time....Answer these questions.

We recently talked about the fact that there is indeed a bottom to the sales funnel, not just a top. But taking that a step further, we feel that the whole analogy of a single sales funnel is incorrect. The single funnel pictures all leads following the same path, so we've created what we call The SMarketing Funnels!

What the Heck is SMarketing?

SMarketing is a sales method we've developed that integrates inbound marketing with direct selling to decrease cost and speed up the sales process.

SMarketing can:

• Enable sales people to sell consultatively
• Decrease sales overhead
• Improve the health of the sales pipeline
• Increase sales
• Reduce cost for each lead by 60%
• Achieve closed/won rates of 90%
• Track ROI in a closed-loop system

 What the Heck are the SMarketing Funnels?

The o'mighty Internet has people consuming differently and has allowed companies to generate a ton more leads in a more cost effective way with inbound marketing. But what exactly is a lead, and where do these leads go once they're generated? 

A lead is a likely candidate who intends to buy a product or service soon. In terms of SMarketing, a percentage of leads come from inbound marketing and a lesser percentage come from outbound marketing. But whether inbound or outbound, all leads develop at different rates, and if placed above a single funnel they would not all trickle down the 'Buy Later' funnel in a predictable, orderly fashion (as the single funnel analogy shows). Instead, some leads would fall to the right of the funnel, some leads would fall into the funnel, and some leads would fall to the left of the funnel.

The SMarketing Funnels are a network of funnels that represent the 'true' sales process. Some leads fall into the 'Buy Never' funnel and should immediately slide away. Other leads fall into the 'Buy Now' funnel and proceed to slide into the sales funnel below. The last set of leads fall into the 'Buy Later' funnel where they need to climb down a few nurturing ladders before they reach the slide to the sales funnel below.

It's a bit like a SMarketing Playground, and we've created an image to sum it all up! 

  Check it out!

Recently I wrote a blog about how inbound marketing can enable sales teams to sell more, faster.

As with certain posts, there were people commenting and we had a pretty good dialog going around this topic. Then, I came across this comment-(I underlined where they had links, keep in mind this was a blog about sales and inbound marketing):
@ Fri July 09, 2010 @ 03:11 AM tiffany jewellery (-hidden-) said...
As with any kind of insurance, the right engagement tiffany necklace insurance makes financial sense. Insurance give you some tiffany necklaces for your monetary investment and gives you peace of mind in case tiffany bracelet the engagement ring is lost or stolen. While you may not be able to replace the sentimental tiffany bracelets value connected with the ring, at least you’ll be able to get tiffany ring a replacement ring without too much of a financial burden.  
 
Most homeowner's and renter’s policies come with tiffany rings jewelry coverage as part of the over-all policy. The limit for the coverage tiffany uk is usually low, typically in the range of $1,000 to $5,000, after the policy deductible tiffany and co is met. If you have fine jewelry such an expensive diamond engagement ring that is worth more that tiffany jewellery the limit of the coverage, you need to pay an additional premium to buy additional coverage for the ring.

All of the links led back to an online store selling jewlery.

The moral of the story, if you are looking to be self-serving you are not an inbound marketeer. Furthermore, these types of practices are exactly why you should only work with people in the inbound marketing community that are certified and are committed to the cause.

Looking at comments posted like this really makes me think about the ethics and whether moves like this are ethical, aside from being disingenious.

What do you think? Is this by any means necessary and ethical?

The Setup

10 years ago, with little money but a lot of drive and great ideas, you took a risk and started a small business. Thinking ahead, you even took a deep dive and created a corresponding website.

Today, that same business exists, is your passion and continues to thrive. After many technological breakthroughs and several revamps later, your small business’s website now serves as your greatest marketing tool (it costs the least too!).You’ve learned to leverage inbound marketing; creating remarkable content, optimizing your site and taking full advantage of a business blog and social media. Online prospects find you!

Things are going great... that is until one day you receive an email offering you a large sum of money in exchange for your web domain.

Your Brain at the Moment

Q: Do you take the money and redirect your site to a different domain?

A: You could, but that would mean losing on-page SEO... not to mention all the time and effort it took to create the SEO in the first place. And losing SEO would mean getting leads at a much slower rate than before, and thus closing new business at a much slower rate.

Q: They offered a lot of money, but is it enough? 

A: You would lose all of your current inbound links, and thus lose a lot of rank with search engines, too.

Q: Who does this person think he is? Is domain bidding fair?

A: Inbound marketing originally leveled the playing field between large and small businesses. If you had a website, you no longer needed a lot of money to generate leads. But domain bidding seems to have tipped things in favor of big business again.

Q: How much would they need to offer to make up for the loss of leads and sales I would see?

As the Internet grows, web domains are an investment of growing importance. Domain bidding may not be fair, but it is happening. Wait too long and the domain best suited for your business will most likely be gone... along with the online opportunities it may have held.

Secure your website today! We build sites that align with your identity, generate traffic, and bring people back for more. (click below for a free Web Design consultation)

One of the things most small business executives in the twin cities (Minneapolis,St. Paul) love most about working with my team is that we are absolute positive dweebs and are always looking to leverage technology to give sales teams a competitive edge.

As you may or may not know, getting one bajillion people to your website is not useful unless you are able to convert those prospects into leads. Landing pages are one of the most useful tactics to use to convert visitors into leads.

In this instance, we've come across an awesome lead generation tool called the five second test. Simply, you've got five seconds for a landing page to draw a website visitor in. 

We like to use fivesecondtest.com to test landing pages and convert more leads to visitors.

Hopefully, you'll find this tool to be helpful in converting prospects from the internet into leads. Filling the top of the funnel is important and landing pages can have a major impact on this.

Fivesecondtest.com

Breaking news, there is more than just a top to the sales funnel... there's a bottom too!

The Missing Link
The Internet truly has lead to a new way in which people consume, and thus has lead to a new era in how we market to the online consumer. However, I feel a huge component has been lost in translation. We've forgotten about the end of the funnel... the SALE! We can generate all the leads we want with inbound marketing; adding and adding and adding to the top of the funnel, but what good are any of these leads if we don't get them through to the bottom of the funnel. In the end, it still comes down to having to close the deal and make the sale.

When it comes down to running a business, the bottom line to keeping a business on it's feet is the sale right? The sale is what brings in the "cha ching," and without it your business is dead.

The Take-Away
Marketing and sales work hand in hand and must align. You can't talk about inbound marketing without talking about sales. It can be said that Inbound marketing has made acquiring more leads easier, quicker, more automated, and cheaper, but however you want to say it, it's still just the means. You can't forget about the end goal; You still have to close deals, and thus you can't forget about the bottom of the funnel.

What is your demand generation requirement to meet your sales goals? Ask yourself how many people you must meet to reach these goals, and then use marketing in combination (traditional, inbound, direct selling) to work backwards from here; Because remember, Inbound marketing is only the topside of the equation.

Start closing more sales today!

Correct, sales and marketing alignment is not important if you have cash to burn, you can afford to miss your sales goals and you want to make your customer acquisition costs unecessarily high.

It is estimated the misalignment of sales and marketing costs the US Fortune 100 $225 Billion annually, while small to mid-size business executives can no longer turn a blind eye to the alignment of sales and marketing. The process for lead conversion, lead nurturing and sales execution need to be seamless as any interruption in this sequence can have severe penalties. Whereas, the next competitor from anywhere in the world is only a "Google" query away. 

People buy differently than they used to. We can’t continue “shouting” at consumers and think they’re going the listen...they won’t. Today’s consumer has power. They have caller ID, they have voice mail, they can fast forward commercials, and they have many other tools that allow them to ignore the many messages being “shouted” at them.

Power has shifted to the buyer and the buying process has been democratized. Consumers decide what they want to listen to. In case you’re not paying attention, The Game Has Changed small business owners and CEOs. The expectation of the customer is that we empower them to choose us, so empower them to find you wherever they look (hint: 86% of people go to the Internet as part of their buying process [hint, hint: If you don’t think Sr. Executives are going there, think about their direct reports they send to do research for them, they go there]). Furthermore, customers expect a dialogs and not monologue.

Since marketing is no longer about campaigns and more about creating and empowering a dialogs with the customer, alignment wiht the customer is mission critical.

Unless you have money to burn, sales and marketing must be aligned and inbound marketing enables this to happen.

 We can help your sales team attract new customers.