BroadVision Marketing Blog

If you have ever sat in front of a blank computer screen with a blog deadline hanging over your head like Poe’s raven while you think to yourself “never more” will I have a coherent thought let along some good blog post ideas, guess what—You are not alone. Some people can just write from their encyclopedic knowledge base concerning their field. They know their target market, the market’s pain points and how to help. But the rest of us need to do some serious work first and there is no shame in that.

Any business person not using social media to create awareness in his company’s products or services is not taking advantage of the best, low cost advertising tools on the market today. I hope you are not one of those lost souls. Demand generation strategy focuses on target marketing programs that result in customers. Social media marketing is one of the advanced generation programs that form lead generation which leads to those customers. So do you create the same approach for each social media? That won’t work. Before you can decide how you want to use demand generation strategies on social media you need to know who you are targeting.

Here’s an easy question for you. Which do most people do more—read or watch television. That was simple to answer. So why would you only invest your time writing blogs? Why not also make a 2 to 4 minute video about that same subject and have more clicks, referrals and clients? Oh, you say it’s too hard or too expensive? Think of this. You have been watching television your whole life. You probably know more about how to make a video than you think you do. As for too expensive, you can spend as little or as much as your budget allows. The result will be the same--you will have videos on the internet. While you probably won’t have a video go viral, your customers will learn about you and think of you as someone who can help them solve their problem.

I really enjoy using Twitter as a platform for social media inbound marketing; but I know that many business owners, especially baby boomers, don't. So I began looking for a way to help you write the perfect tweet. I found a perfect one that was similar to those ghastly sentence diagrams we had in school. The writer is Garry Moran, the head of social media in North American for SAP, a German software multinational that is one of the biggest companies in the world. I was impressed. Next I found an article that was totally opposed to the blueprint idea. My person opinion is that using a blueprint like Moran suggests is a good place to start if you are a Twitter novice, but afterwards you want to being to vary what you tweet and see what works for you using analytics.

Email was something I thought would not stand the test of time as social media like Facebook, Twitter and blogs bloomed. Little did I know that I would use my smart phone as much to keep up with my email and other social media as much as I use it as a phone. Email comes in several varieties: personal which is much like rapid firing snail mail and marketing email which has taken the place of home delivered ads. Email marketing is still the only medium to move prospects through what John Jantsch, in his book “Duct Tape Marketing,” called “the know, like, and trust funnel.” As I was preparing for this article, reading about email title “Do’s and Don’ts”, I looked at my email and was struck by the number of “Don’ts” in my Inbox. So I decided to talk about a few email internet marketing tips.

Do you know everything there is to know about YouTube? How many videos have you put out on your very own YouTube channel? Are they SEO optimized, using great tags, SEO in your title, professional grade? Did you go the expensive route or the do-it-yourself route? How has this worked out for you? Yes, well when it comes to the strengths of YouTube, I was struck by three major contradictions, or myths, if you will. I found these myths in my research and read a different angle in a SEOmoz article by Phil Nottingham, The Marketing Value of YouTube.

Myth 1:

YouTube belongs to Google, so they’re going to favor your site and the front page of Google will always look for a video regarding any subject of any keywords search for.

Myth 1 variation: YouTube can be a shortcut for those who want to get high rankings for free. Google owns YouTube and often automatically gives relevant YouTube videos first page ranking. If you have added your website URL in the video description section, chances are that YouTube can boost your site’s rankings dramatically and help you generate a lot of site traffic.

As you can see this myth and variation have to do with the fact that Google purchased YouTube. People have assumed that since that is true, Google will give a higher rank to a YouTube video. Therefore, if you have a YouTube video in your blog article, the Google will rank the article higher than if you did not have the video. Likewise if you have your URL link in your video, that fact will help your video pull more site traffic.

Where did that prospect go? He showed some interest in something connected with your service or product, but then he drifted away. The truth is that with so many marketing tools available, your leads are showing up much earlier in the buying cycle than ever before. You might see some activity on your blog, social media or from a web search; but this might just be a case of information-gathering on the part of the prospect. Could you use some internet marketing tips on using lead intelligence so you don’t lose that lead?

By doing a little mining of the lead intelligence information you get when someone drops in, you can develop a super sales advantage. Lead intelligence is all about learning vital information about your prospect to help you close the sale. It enables you to create personalized, targeted lead nurturing campaigns geared to the needs of the prospect. Using lead intelligence you can create personalized, lead nurturing suiting your prospect’s needs.

Here are 7 internet marketing tips that will help you collect information on your quest for lead intelligence.

1. What’s in a name? A lead’s name is one of the easiest pieces of intelligence you are able to mine. After you have her name, you can address her by name when you send out an email. You have just created a more personalized experience for your prospect. This is one of the super internet marketing tips to add to your lead nurturing campaign.
2. Demographic lead intelligence is a must. We can’t stress demographics enough as one of the must-have internet marketing tips. You want to know your prospect’s age, gender and location. With these bits of intelligence you can get information about your prospect’s wants and needs, and how you can qualify this person up front.
3. Is your persona on stage? Another of our internet marketing tips on lead intelligence concerns well-defined marketing personas. You need to know where your actual lead might best look for information. One persona will be looking to your website for information on your business while another has a particular question that he wants answered. You want to be sure that each different kind of lead can find you though the noise of all the other sales businesses on the internet hawking something similar to yours.
4. What pages has your prospect viewed? By getting this piece of internet marketing lead information you can tell what stage of the sales cycle your lead is in. If your lead visits your product pages, this could mean the prospect is close to a sale and is ready for nurturing with information and content focused for that product.
5. Let’s get sociable. What if your lead comes to one of your social media platforms? Of all our internet marketing tips, this is one not everyone takes adequate advantage of. Does your prospect get sociable or just lurk? If he leaves remarks, you can get an idea of what his problems and pain points are. You have a great chance at this point to answer back as soon as you can to nurture this prospect with content on your website that addresses his pain points.
6. It’s free (well, almost). Has your prospect already gotten some of your free whitepapers and reports?  While he thinks they are free, he does “pay” by giving you his information. How many times has he done so? Do you know how many forms the prospect has completed and what type of business lead generation material the lead has looked at? How long has this prospect been on your site? If you can, offer a discount or coupon to those who have come to your site often. If it works for Starbucks, it can work for you.
7. Email in good measure. Email is another of the great internet marketing tips. How much have you emailed this prospect? Is your lead a part of an email list or lead nurturing campaign? Has she clicked on any links (you should have at least 3 places per email to encourage her to do that)? Which links did your prospect click on? Be careful. This piece of lead intelligence is not an opportunity to bombard her with all kinds of campaigns and multiple email posts a day. Remember we want to nurture our prospects, not have them unsubscribe from our email.

Newsjacking—love it, hate it, never heard of it? How can an internet marketing tip that has been around since 2011 when David Meeman Scott wrote Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage not be a part of common marketing terminology? You need all the internet marketing tips you can get to help you publish interesting blogs. So what is newsjacking? Scott, describes it as “the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”

Why does inbound marketing work? Why are people attracted to whitepapers, blogs, webinars, posts and tweets like a bee to a flower? Why do we look for internet marketing tips? The proof that inbound marketing works is the fact that you are here on the internet.  You found this blog and so many more things that perhaps you have even forgotten what you started searching for. In the old days people would get lost in encyclopedias the same way when an article indicated more on a piece of the subject could be found elsewhere. There are some special things about us that are the core reasons why we and many other people love internet marketing tips about inbound marketing.