2012 12 digital leaders exec briefing 2

Inbound MarketingHow to earn your customers’ interest, loyalty and passion

with great content, SEO, social & conversion marketing

Gillian Muessig, SEOmozDigital Leaders Executive Briefing 2012

Let’s Start with a Story

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My First 6 Years as a Startup Founder

Blog post: http://randfishkin.com/blog/103/just-keep-going

Rand and Gillian’s Combined Personal Debt

http://randfishkin.com/blog/103/just-keep-going

The Last 5 Years

More about Moz’s History: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

MonthlyVisits

We took one round of financing in 2007; $1.1MM

from Ignition + Curious Office

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-story-of-seomoz

The Last 5 Years


MonthlyVisits

Launched our Link Graph Index


The Last 5 Years


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In 2009, we dropped consulting entirely


The Last 5 Years


MonthlyVisits

2010 had 7,000 paying subscribers


The Last 5 Years

Full story at http://randfishkin.com/blog/128/misadventures-venture-capital-funding

MonthlyVisits

Failed to raise funding (despite long, nasty

efforts) in 2009 and 2011

The Last 5 Years


MonthlyVisits

2011 was our first 8-figure year, with 15,000

subscribers and nearly 1.5mm visits/month

How Do We Get Customers?

~18% of our signups come via paid channels (in blue); the rest are via inbound channels

Paid Channels

Inbound

Interruption vs. Inbound

Interruption Marketing

Inbound Marketing

Some Marketing

Interruption…

Stops Us

From Doing What We Want to Do

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So It Can Sell Us

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Stuff We Don’t Need

That’s Interruption Marketing

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Interruption Marketers

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Interruption Marketers Me

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Interruption Marketers Me

Ads

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That’sNotHowWeRoll

How People Buy in 2012

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Realize a Need

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Investigate Options

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Ask Our Friends

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Seek Out Experts

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Find Communities

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Dig Into Every Detail Available

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Convert

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You Don’t Buy Those VisitorsYou Earn Them.

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In∙bound Mar∙ket∙ing-noun

Any tactic that relies on earning people’s interest rather than buying it.

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We’re Here to Help

Startups Disrupt Markets. How About Marketing?

Inbound Channels

Content

Influences Everything

Without Great Content…

There’s No Chance of Success.

Content Can Mean:

“Content

.”

Community

Product

Or Distribution

No Matter the Form, Content is the Foundation of Great Inbound Marketing

Search

Search is How Things Get Found.

Search = Discovery

Discovery Leads to Sharing

Search is

Still Big

And Growing

Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day

on Google

Search Often Brings the Most Highly Qualified

Traffic

But Guess Where Searchers

Click…~20% of clicks

~80% of clicks

Social

Social Lives at the Top of the Funnel

Social is Discovery Prior to Interest

Social Demands Great Content,

And Rewards It.

Today, Social is a Huge Influence on Search

And Social Appears to Be Fragmenting into Multiple Large

Communities (and thousands of small ones)

Users: 50mm 750mm 200mm 120mm 10mm

Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm

Email is Social’s “Secret Weapon”

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/social-medias-secret-weapon-email.html

And Email Marketing is Insanely Profitable/Powerful

http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/

Conversion

The Funnel Only Exists So It Can Convert.

Optimizing Conversion Means Measuring & Testing

http://dmix.ca/2010/05/how-we-increased-our-conversion-rate-by-72/

It Means Listening, Too.

A Lot of Conversion is Wrapped in Soft Metrics

Branding

Messaging

Familiarity

CRO is a Critical Practice

But it Requires Holistic Marketing to Succeed.

Building an Inbound Strategy

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Who is Your Audience?

http://xrrr-slog.blogspot.com/2007/10/corporate-demographics-2007.html

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Where are they on the Web?

http://searchengineland.com/a-portrait-of-who-uses-social-networks-in-the-u-s-and-how-social-media-affects-our-lives-81653

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What Content Works There?

http://blog.echen.me/2011/03/14/hacker-news-analysis/

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Value of Content at Given Quality Levels

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How Will You Get Visitors Into Your Funnel?

Multiple paths can work, so long as you segment them when tracking CR + CLTV

Email

Retargeting

Social OAuth

Phone NumberMailing Address

Branding/Awareness Free Trial

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How Will You Measure & Improve?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media

Step #1: Discover

Step #2:Test

Step #3: Measure

Step #4: Repeat

Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.

Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.

Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact

Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

Top 10 Inbound Marketing Tactics & Examples for

2013

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#1: Create Sharing Incentives

http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

to link to!

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#1: Create Sharing Incentives

Urbanspoon’s “Spoonback” program allowed them to compete w/ Yelp and build awareness to foodies, direct traffic from relevant

sites and great SEO. Founders credited the concept as being the most important part of the company’s success.

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#2: Mine the Social Web for Engagement Opportunities

Twitter, LinkedIn, Q+A Sites, Google+, Blog Posts and Facebook can all work

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#3: Create & Spread Embeddable Content

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/home is a great example

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#4: Make Your Data Interesting; Share It

Probably the best case study around: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

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#5: Mine Your Twitter Followers, Emails, etc.

Via Wil Reynolds of SEER Interactive: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/using-twitter-and-backlinks-to-build-links/2011/07/28/; tool is here: http://simplymeasured.com/freebies/twitter-follower-analytics

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#6: Use Social to Connect w/ Journalists + Bloggers

An amazing research tool: http://followerwonk.com

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#7: Build Features that Require and/or Reward Sharing

http://www.quora.com/How-effective-is-Dropboxs-referral-program-at-bringing-in-*paying*-users-i-e-how-many-subscribers-do-they-have

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#8: Give Your Community a Platform

Moz has a Q+A forum, a blog and a user-generated content platform, along w/ robust user profiles and a

points/gamification system. Content contributed by non-employees is ~35% of our overall traffic

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#9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author - good how-to

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#9: Rel=Author & Video XML Sitemaps

We use http://wistia.com to post videos that automatically send video XML Sitemaps to Google

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#10: Create a Monthly Top X Influencers in Your Industry

http://www.seattle20.com/startup-index.aspx updates monthly, but doesn’t use badges (which I highly recommend)

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Blogs + Blogging

Comment Marketing

News/Media/PRSEO

Social Networks

Word of Mouth

Q+A Sites

Forums

Online Video

Podcasting

Webinars

Research/White Papers

Infographics

Social Bookmarking

INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA all the “free” traffic sources)

Direct/Referring Links

Type-In Traffic

Email

Local Portals

Every One of These Marketing Tactics

Helps Every Other One

I Can’t Wait to See the Awesome Things You’re Going to Build

@SEOmom

www.seomoz.org/blog

[email protected]

2012 12 digital leaders exec briefing 2

Technology

Transcript of 2012 12 digital leaders exec briefing 2