The Power of Inbound Marketing

The Power of Inbound MarketingHow changes in human behavior and the web landscape have led to a revolution in customer acquisition (and how marketers can take advantage!)Download at http://bit.ly/mozsaopauloRand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | July 2011

makes SOFTWARE!!We don’t offer any consulting.

Some Marketers Still Do It This Way

The Process of Selling Hasn’t Changed…

Dig Into Every Detail Available

SearchCurrently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day on GoogleData via Google’s occasional public statements and some inference (for 2006 + 2009)

Social NetworksUsers:10mm750mm200mm120mm10mmUsers:14mmMillions14mm6.5mm

Social Discovery & Content Sharing

The Problem withClassic Web Marketing

An Unhealthy Focus on the Controllable, Spend-Driven ChannelsContextual AdsNewspapersPaid SearchBanner AdsOutdoorVideo AdsTelevisionRadioMagazines

An Unhealthy Focus on the Controllable, Spend-Driven ChannelsContextual AdsNewspapersInterruption-Based MessagingPaid SearchBanner AdsOutdoorVideo AdsTelevisionRadioMagazines

Inbound Marketing is Under-InvestedUnpaid drives 85%+ of traffic(but garners only ~$5 billion of investment in 2011)Paid drives <15% of web traffic(but wins a whopping $31+ Billion of investment in 2011)Percent of Web Traffic from Various Sources to the Average WebsiteWeb Traffic is driven almost entirely by organic/inbound/earned media, yet nearly all of the investment in driving traffic to websites is through paid channels… This is an unsustainable dichotomy.

Every Marketer Sees This:But That’s Not Reality

Referring + Other = 50% of our traffic? But this chart is basically saying Twitter, Facebook, blogs, feed readers and every non-search site that sends traffic is exactly the same.

All the traffic we receive that isn’t the result of paid acquisition or advertising (in SEOmoz’s case – 95%+)comes from Inbound Marketing!

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

Inbound MarketingOutbound MarketingOrganic Search RankingsPaid Search AdsSocial Networks (Facebook, Twitter)Display AdvertisingInclusion in Universal Search ResultsContextual Ad Networks (AdSense)Blogs + News SitesBuying Email ListsLinks from Partners + FriendsSite SponsorshipsOpt-In Email NewslettersVideo AdsForums + Discussion SitesDemographic TargetingViral ContentFacebook AdsQ+A Answers w/ a LinkAffiliate MarketingUser Profiles + CommentsViral ContentFor more on Inbound Marketing, check out Brian + Dharmesh’s awesome book: http://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311

You Must Become a Hub for GreatContent in Your NicheAnswers on Q+A sites reference its resourcesReferenced by industry blogsSite that offers: Unique Research

Quality Discussion/InteractionMentioned in news publicationsForum discussions link to its pagesPeople email links to each otherLinks are TweetedLiked/Shared on FacebookCited at conferences + eventsSometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

“Good, Unique Content” is NOT ENOUGH

Tips, Strategies & Channels for Powerful Inbound Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Discover What People WantThis post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/great-content-for-seo-simpler-than-you-ever-imagined goes into detail about how to leverage this tactic to build great resources people will love.

Grow Your Social Network to Reach SearchersGeraldine’s blog is awesome, but it would never rank on page #1 for this query without the power of the social connection.Check out http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/merging-of-search-social-wappow for more on how search engines and social media are mixing together.

FacebookMore fans = more people potentially exposed to your content.But… You also need to create posts that will show up in “top news” on your fans’ walls. That’s more challenging.For some great Facebook-focused marketing tactics, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about

TwitterIt’s not just about the follower count. Your tweets have to count for something and drive actions/awareness.I highly recommend http://www.slideshare.net/danzarrella/the-science-of-re-tweets which helps show the correlation between activities on Twitter and your ability to have the message spread.

LinkedInLinkedIn’s “Groups” are a powerful way to grow your network and spread a message.Like Facebook, LinkedIn now has a wall that drives “likes” and comments (as well as traffic).Good advice on LinkedIn profiles here - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/optimize-your-linkedin-profile-for-best-results-howto (also, don’t miss the comments which discuss how the links work).

RedditReddit’s grown to be in the top 100 most visited sites on the web, and even smaller subreddits can send remarkable traffic (and result in tweets/FB shares/etc.)The travel subreddit has nearly 19K registered subscribers - http://www.reddit.com/r/travel - and thousands more browsing. Full list of subreddits, sorted by # of subs here: http://metareddit.com/

StumbleUponStumbleUpon reaches more than 15 million active monthly users, and drives massive amounts of outbound traffic.Two great activities on http://www.stumbleupon.com for beginners: #1) Discover content that people share in your niche. #2) Find great stuff to share/tweet that will earn you more followers.

Participating in the Blogosphere Using http://www.google.com/reader, you can see how many GG Reader users subscribe + average # of posts/week. Those with fewer than 50 subscribers and 1 post/week often are too tiny to be worthwhile.

Blog Readership is Up, But to Fewer BlogsData via http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx and http://www.slideshare.net/DianeRayfield/social-medias-shocking-statistics. See also Hubspot’s awesome slide deck: http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/how-to-be-the-awesomest-marketer-ever

Great Blogs Rock.Mediocre Blogs are Useless.Research for this statement via PEW Internet & Captain Obvious

Evergreen ContentEvery two years, we put out http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors but leave the URL the same, so it continues to accrue great link/social/sharing signals.

InfographicsAfter producing what is, admittedly, an awesome graphic - http://www.paralegal.net/judge-judy/ - Paralegal.net rose to page one in Google (and got bjillions of drive-by visits, too).

User ProfilesProgress BarHighly customizable profile detailsCustom PhotoLinks to other web profilesThese (http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/) emulate the success of places like LinkedIn, Quora, Stackoverflow and others. They’ve increased participation and traffic to the profiles dramatically.

User-Generated ContentWhen users contribute content (as with http://artistmarketplace.moleskine.com/en) they’re invested in the promotion and success of their work, and thus, your site!

An Incentive to ShareThese “spoonback” were key to Urbanspoon’s growth (now ahead of Citysearch in traffic!)Because Yelp + Citysearch had taken the “badges” angle for local businesses, http://urbanspoon.com incented foodie bloggers to link to the site by featuring those bloggers’ posts + content on the site.

GamificationThe genius game-like badges, points and progress at http://stackoverflow.com has helped make it one of the most successful sites in the Q+A world.

Blog Content FeedsOn average, this many people actually read a post via feedFeeds aren’t just useful for subscribers. They “ping” search engines, enable easy syndication and can be used by lots of content aggregators that send traffic, too.

Anything with Regular UpdatesEtsy makes it possible to subscribe to a feed of anyone’s shop on the site!I was actually tempted to subscribe. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ThisYearsGirl has some awesome stuff!

Don’t Forget Email Subscriptions!I use email to subscribe to http://www.avc.com/ and am 1 of 100K+ who read Fred’s posts on a daily basis. That’s a powerful inbound channel!

Live EventsI did a brief, 4-minute presentation at the Seattle 2.0 Awards - http://www.geekwire.com/2011/seomoz-ceo-rand-fishkin-googles-panda-update that promoted our hiring + growth (focused on that audience’s values rather than trying to sell to them)

WebinarsOur webinars http://www.seomoz.org/webinars attract 500-1,000 attendees and earn lots of tweets, blog posts and links. Hubspot’s get 10K+ attendees http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars/

Online PresentationsI put many of my presentation on http://slideshare.net where they earn thousands of additional views.

YouTubeDon’t be a honey badger. Care about YouTube’s potential!YouTube actually ranks as the second largest “search property” in the US, behind only Google: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/05/25/youtube-hits-3-billion-views-per-day-2-days-worth-of-video-uploaded-every-minute/

The “Long Tail” of Video SitesLong tail of video sites get 50% of all online video traffic/views!http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/08/long-tail-video-half-viewing-minutes/

Self-Hosted Video ContentAt SEOmoz, we use http://www.wistia.com who submits our video XML sitemaps to Google for us - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

Google Local / Maps / PlacesFox Sports Grill? I’m sorry Google, but that is not barbecue.To register, go to http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness. Also check out http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml for great local ranking tips.

Easiest Way to Win Google MapsThis blog post explains how: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-dead-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-google-local

Public Relations, Guest Authoring and Comment Marketing

Guest Blogging + WritingGuest blogging (or contributing content to any type of publisher) is a great way to build your brand and earn links. Tools like http://myblogguest.com/ can help make the process easier.

Direct Connections to JournalistsHARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/) is a popular service that lets you get contacted when relevant reporters/journalists need sources.

Comment MarketingThis post has a list of recommendations for blog commenting as a marketing tactic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy

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The Power of Inbound Marketing

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