• Beyond Prospects: The True Potential of Inbound Marketing

  By Paul Roetzer | Posted Oct 5, 2009 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

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  Inbound marketing is all about getting found by prospects and generating leads. Right?
  
  According to HubSpot, champions of the inbound marketing movement (see online software, book and summit), “Inbound marketing software helps your company get found by the qualified prospects that are looking for the products or services that you sell in search engines, blogs and the blogosphere, and social media.”
  
  And it does. As a HubSpot customer and Partner Agency, we have witnessed first-hand the lead-generating value of inbound marketing. But inbound marketing can do so much more for your business.
  
  For example, consider its brand loyalty and retention attributes with existing customers. Or, how about its ability to help recruit and retain employees, connect with mainstream and social media, influence competitors and engage with peers?

  The Power of Content and Community

  The social-Web savvy, analytics geeks (including me) that have become advocates of inbound marketing know that the true power is driven by two things: content and community.
  
  Regularly publishing fresh, relevant, link-worthy content (i.e. blogs, podcasts, videos, optimized press releases, Webinars, case studies, white papers, eBooks and by-lined articles) gives organizations and professionals the ability to boost search engine rankings, generate inbound links and drive Website traffic, which obviously can generate leads. While bringing value to online communities helps to establish and grow relationships.

  
  However, content and community also strengthen your brand and enhance your thought-leadership positioning, which can have a much greater impact on your organization’s long-term growth, stability and success.

  

  
  So, when building your inbound marketing strategy, be sure to think beyond prospects, and design a gameplan to reach and influence all audiences relevant to your business.
  
  

  • Customers
  • Employees
  • Job candidates
  • Bloggers
  • Mainstream media
  • Partners
  • Vendors
  • Competitors
  • Peers

  
  Every inbound marketing plan should start with lead generation, but the most powerful campaigns will use content and community to build loyalty.

  Paul Roetzer is founder and president of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. He can be found on Twitter @PaulRoetzer

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  Image courtesy of Intersection Consulting.

• 5 Internet Marketing Tips for Your Book Launch

  By Tracy DiMarino | Posted Sep 11, 2009 | 6 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

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  With about $13.70 billion dollars worth of books sold online in North America per year, it makes sense that more and more authors are turning to the Internet for their book marketing and promotion. Online, they can now connect with their consumers and generate interest in a way they couldn’t do before.
  
  In addition, the social nature of the Web makes it easy for consumers to discover and recommend books, since people are actively rating, reviewing and sharing books online.
  
  Recently, many books have experienced great sucess online. A few examples are:

  • BusinessWeek bestseller, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott
  • BusinessWeek and Amazon bestseller Tribes by Seth Godin, and
  • New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Juilen Smith. 

  Below you will find some of the online strategies these authors and others used to get people excited about and reading their books. 

  

  Launch a Website / Subpage for the Book

  Create a designated spot online for the book, whether it is a dedicated Website like Rohit Bhargava uses for his book Personality Not Included or a subpage on a personal site like David Meerman Scott uses for his books. People will appreciate having a specific location online where they can go for more information or to purchase a copy. Make sure to include the following information, if possible: book summary, author biography, purchasing information and testimonials.
  
  Also, it’s a good idea to have a detailed media room so that media representatives, bloggers and prospective customers can easily find everything they want to know. For an example, see author of Thank God It’s Monday, Roxanne Emmerich’s media room.

  Provide Free Book-Related Content

  By offering free book-related content, many authors have been able to pique interest in their books before publishing. If you’re looking for similar success, consider offering free content, such as an eBook, Webinar or iPhone app as a means to generate excitement. Below are some examples.

  • David Meerman Scott preceded his book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, with a free eBook on the same topic and an informative blog.
  • Connie Dieken (client), author of Talk Less, Say More, which will be released this month, is offering a free iPhone app, containing the book’s main messages.
  • Gary Vaynerchuk offered a free chapter of his book, Crush It, before its release.

  Engage with People on Social Networking Sites

  Use social networks to your advantage. One success story comes from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, who recently launched their book, Trust Agents. Chris and Julien leveraged their large online networks by engaging people in conversations about their book’s topics and encouraging people to share the book with others. Here’s the result:
  
  (As stated by Chris on his blog)
  
  “YOUR effort paid off. YOU made Trust Agents a New York Times Bestseller. You pushed. You tweeted. You blogged. You showed people twitpics. You took part in the Trust Agents community. It was all you.”
  
  To emulate their success, here are some suggestions on how to actively communicate with potential customers on sites, such as Twitter and Facebook.

  • Setup a Facebook Fan page for the book and update content regularly. Here’s the one for Trust Agents.
  • Use Twitter #hashtags when discussing the book and its topics.
  • Ask questions to stimulate discussions.
  • Incorporate multimedia elements such as videos and presentations. For an example presentation, see author of The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko, Dan Pink’s creative PowerPoint presentation, which has been viewed 122,089 times on SlideShare and embedded 430 times.

  Encourage People to Refer the Book to Friends   

  With the Internet, there are plenty of ways for people to recommend goods and services to each other, and authors should capitalize on this. Below are some suggestions.

  • Ask people who like the book to leave positive reviews on Amazon.
  • Hold a tell-a-friend campaign. For an example, look at this one for Survival is Not Enough by Seth Godin.
  • Encourage people to add the book to their LinkedIn Amazon Reading List.
  • Embrace online book communities, such as GoodReads, where people share what books they are currently reading and recommend books to others.
  • Have fans use the Visual Bookshelf App on Facebook to alert others of the books they are currently reading.

  Create Your Own Social Networking Site

  Some authors have also had success creating their own social networking site. If this makes sense for your book’s topic and you think enough people might be interested in joining, it’s a strategy worth considering. Below are some examples.

  • Seth Godin formed an online community around his book, Tribes where anyone that pre-ordered a copy of his book was invited to an exclusive Ning community. Here, members could interact with each other, share ideas and get exclusive content.
  • Kevin Ferrazzi had a similar strategy with his online community, which was built around his book, Who’s Got Your Back?. The community, called Greenlight, is designed to help people form relationships that will help them achieve their plans, goals and dreams, reinforcing the main topic of his book, “you can’t succeed alone.”

  What Do You Think?

  What are some online strategies you’d recommend for launching a book? Share with me your resources and suggestions.

  Tracy DiMarino is an associate consultant at PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. Follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDiMarino.
  

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  Photo Credit: margolove
  

• Selling to the Future (Part 1 of 5): Connecting with Younger Audiences Online

  By Christina | Posted Jun 30, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

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  (Part 1 of a 5-part blog series on Selling to the Future)

  As time marches on inside Web 2.0, the future looks bright for marketing to younger audiences. Everyday, more opportunities are presented to reach multiple generations online, and the more segmented social networks become, the better chances you have to connect with consumers in niche markets, and convert them into sales leads. 

  Establishing a clear Internet marketing strategy is essential to remain competitive: it’s all about communicating the right things, to the right audiences, in the right places.  All with the speed and accuracy that younger generations demand. 

  To market to your future consumers, treat them as a friend, share knowledge, give advice, seek opinions, and most importantly, speak their language. 

  Stay tuned for a series of posts on Selling to the Future:

  Part 2 - Learn your XYZs

  Part 3 - Facebook is life for college students and beyond (coming soon)

  Part 4 - Blogging in business (coming soon)

  Part 5 - Don't call us, we'll text u (coming soon)

• Is It Time for an Internet Marketing Strategy?

  By Paul | Posted May 15, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Internet Marketing

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  If any of the following questions have come up at your organization, then it's time to define your Internet marketing strategy.

  • Does Internet marketing offer us a greater potential ROI than traditional marketing?
  • Should we be driving more Website traffic, generating more online leads?
  • What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? And how does it work?
  • How do we choose an SEO firm?
  • Why don't we appear higher on Google?
  • Can we get a greater ROI with a Google AdWords campaign?
  • Should we be on YouTube?
  • Does our company need a Facebook page?
  • How can we utilize corporate blogging as an internal and/or external communications tool?
  • What are our employees doing and saying on social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn? Is it any of our business?
  • Do Twitter, Second Life and Flickr matter to our business?
  • Would podcasts be an effective tool to communicate with customers?
  • Why is everyone talking about wikis?

   

  What Should be Considered in Your Internet Marketing Strategy?

  
  You need to clearly define and execute on-page and off-page optimization campaigns to succeed. An effective, optimized Website is just the beginning . . .

  • Analytics
  • Corporate blogging
  • Directory pages (e.g. DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, ZoomInfo)
  • eBooks
  • Forums (monitoring and participation)
  • Google News Alerts
  • Landing pages
  • Optimized press releases
  • Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns (e.g. Google AdWords)
  • Photo sharing (e.g. Flickr)
  • Podcasting
  • Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Social bookmarking (e.g. StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us)
  • Social media tracking
  • Social networking (e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook)
  • Videos (e.g. YouTube, Google Video)
  • Virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life)
  • Webinars
  • Wikis
• 3 Easy Steps to Get Started in Web 2.0

  By Paul | Posted Mar 31, 2008 | 0 Comment(s) | Filed in: Social Media

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  In the headline of a March 27 NYtimes.com article, technology columnist David Pogue poses the question: "Are You Taking Advantage of Web 2.0?" As public relations and marketing consultants, this question has become the starting point for many of our discussions with clients and prospects.

  Regardless of the industry, Web 2.0 - the new online world of mass collaboration and consumer-generated content that is replacing static, Web 1.0 sites - is redefining public relations, marketing, communications and branding.

  Never before have organizations had such unfiltered access to the opinions and perceptions of their audiences (i.e. employees, customers, prospects, competitors, media, etc.). Plus, through the use of blogs, podcasts, videos, forums, social networks and other Web 2.0 tools, companies have the ability to connect with their audiences in a more authentic, human voice. 

  According to Pogue, ". . . We all know, intellectually, that no matter what image a corporation tries to project, it's made up of ordinary people with personalities, insecurities and lives. But because the marketing and P.R. teams work so hard to scrub, control and package a company's image, the public ordinarily sees none of that human side."

  "When a company embraces the possibilities of Web 2.0, though, it makes contact with its public in a more casual, less sanitized way that, as a result, is accepted with much less cynicism. Web 2.0 offers a direct, more trusted line of communications than anything that came before it."

  It's OK if your organization has yet to explore the possibilities of Web 2.0, but with every day that passes, innovative competitors are tapping into the power of social media and widening the gap. So act now, and discover how your organization can take advantage of Web 2.0.

  Getting Started in Web 2.0 

  Here are three easy steps to dip your toes into the Web 2.0 waters:

  1. Conduct social media searches of blogs, forums and social networks relevant to your company. Google and Technorati are both excellent resources.
  
  
  2. Monitor news, trends, blogs and forums through RSS feeds & Google News Alerts. You'll want to set up an RSS Feed Reader such as Netvibes, Bloglines or even iGoogle.
  
  
  3. Become a part of the community.
     
     • Read and comment on blogs and forums.
     • Launch a blog.
     • Join a variety of social networks.
     • Use social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us & StumbleUpon.

  
  

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