August 2014

GROW YOUR STARTUP WITH INBOUND MARKETING

MARKETERS STRUGGLE TO CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT

7 MARKETING TIPSFOR STARTUPSGnuCreations

AUGUST 2014

WHAT’S INSIDE03 Grow Your Startup with Inbound

Marketing

06 7 Marketing Tips for Startups

10 Marketers Struggle to Create Engaging Content

GROW YOUR STARTUP WITH INBOUND MARKETINGOne of the reasons so many startups fail is because of ineffective marketing. Learn how inbound marketing can grow your startup into a successful business.

One of the reasons so many startups fail is because of ineffective marketing. Instead of seeing marketing as a key to their success, they see marketing as a necessary–or even unnecessary–evil.

But the fact is, they’re wrong.

HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah has helped entrepreneurs and startups take a different approach to marketing. He recently published a slide show on how to grow a startup with inbound marketing.

Below are some of the highlights.

1. Your startup needs marketing

Some entrepreneurs believe they can succeed with-out marketing. After all, who needs marketing when you’re building something people will love?

The answer is, you do. Marketing can help you find people to love it.

Now, you may be thinking about hiring a PR agency instead. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work for most start-ups. It’s terribly expensive and only provides short-term results.

2. Stop worrying that somebody will steal your idea

Some startups avoid marketing because they’re worried that somebody will steal their idea. They go into stealth mode, then hope that people will miraculously line up on the first day to buy their product.

If this is you, stop worrying that somebody will steal your idea and start worrying that nobody will care about it.

3. Start marketing the day you start building

Ideally, you should start building your brand the same day you start building your product. It’s never too early to start publishing content on your website or building followers on social media.

Waiting until launch day to promote your product is too late.

4. Don’t pay “rent”

If your startup has raised funding, you may be thinking that you can just buy your way through. Spend enough on ads and your startup will be a success.

The problem is, you’re not really buying attention, you’re renting it. Ads are temporary. When you stop paying the “rent”, you stop getting attention.

5. Don’t get into an arms race for attention

Your well heeled competitor has a massive market-ing budget and can outspend your startup at any time. So don’t get into an arms race for attention. Let your competitor waste money on ineffective advertising.

6. Focus on attracting people instead of annoying them

Inbound takes the marketing people know (and hate), and turns it on its head.

Instead of using traditional forms of marketing that interrupt and annoy people, inbound can help you attract the right kind of people to your startup.

7. Create helpful content

The most common way to attract people to your startup is to create content that’s helpful. Some types of content that you can create include blogs, infographics, videos, and eBooks.

The key is to publish early and publish often.

8. Optimize your content

In order for your content to get found, you’ll need to know at least the basics of Search Engine Opti-mization (SEO).

Begin by choosing the search keywords you want to rank for. But be careful about the keywords

you choose. You want keywords that have decent search volume. However, don’t pick keywords that are so competitive that you’ll never rank for them.

9. Spread the news

Once you’ve created content and optimized it, the next step is to spread it. That’s where social media can help. Make it simple to share your content. The easier it is to share, the more people will share it.

Also, don’t try and automate getting fans or follow-ers. Your numbers may go up, but your brand will go down. Instead, create value for the connections you hope to get someday.

10. Convert visitors to leads

Once you’ve created some great content and es-tablished a presence on social media, people will start to visit your website. Once they do, you need to convert these visitors into leads. You can do this by using “calls to action.”

“Calls to action” should point people to the next step, like downloading an eBook or signing up for a demo. Then you can begin to nurture these leads into customers.

As you know, turning a startup into a successful business is difficult. However, don’t make it more difficult by focusing on ineffective marketing that annoys people. Instead, use inbound marketing to attract visitors and convert them into customers.

7 MARKETING TIPS FOR STARTUPSNow that you’ve built a product that people will love, it’s time to find those people who will love it. By taking the following steps, you can give your startup a fighting chance at success.

Now that you’ve built a product that people will love, it’s time to find those people who will love it. So how can you possibly gain attention for your startup when consumers are already inundated with countless messages already?

By taking the following steps, you can give your start-up a fighting chance at success. But before you begin, make sure you have a firm grasp on two key concepts.

First, you need to have a clear idea of what differentiates you from everyone else. Will it be price? Will it be process? Will it be exceptional customer service? Whatever it is, keep this in mind as you plot out your marketing strategy.

Second, identify your marketing goals, both near-term and long-term. How many website visitors will you be aiming for on a monthly basis? How about social followers? What percentage of visitors are you hoping to convert into leads, then into customers? Knowing exactly what you want to gain from your marketing

efforts will help you analyze and refine each one.

So, read on for 7 marketing tips for startups.

1. Define your ideal customer

Startups can and should have a buyer persona.

Why? Because buyer personas are who you are try-ing to reach with your marketing efforts.

“Personas allow you to journey into a relational ter-ritory where you can understand on an emotional level the most important determinants of real consumers’ brand preferences and purchase decisions,” Dale Buss writes in Advertising Age, “And personas give you a meaningful shorthand for communicating with them.”

Once you’ve finished your buyer persona, refer to it often. That way, you can apply your future mar-keting efforts to this persona, and get an idea of whether it will resonate with your target market.

2. Develop your brand message

Your brand message is more than a pithy state-ment or catchy slogan. It’s essentially a promise to your customers of what your brand will deliver and what experience your customers will have with your brand.

For Disneyland, their brand message is to be “the happiest place on earth.” For Porsche, it’s “there is no substitute.” For Subway, it’s “eat fresh.”

As you define your brand message, keep these key elements in mind:

• Be honest. Don’t make promises that your brand can’t keep.

• Be inspiring. Use your brand to move your cus-tomers. Challenge their thinking and help them make their lives and their world better.

• Be concise. If a multi-billion dollar company like Disneyland can tell you their promise in five words, so can you. If you can’t, keep working on it until you can.

3. Build an effective website

Your website is usually the first impression that people have of your brand. According to Stanford University, 75% of people judge the credibility of a company based on the design of its website. That means your website should have a professional look that reflects positively on your brand.

Your website should also be effective at attracting visitors and converting them into customers. Now, there are many factors that can influence the effec-tiveness of your website, but these are especially important:

• Mobile-friendly. According to Telemetrics, 46% of online searchers now use mobile devices exclusively for research. This tells us that if your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you’re losing potential customers.

The solution is to have a website that is responsive so that it looks good on any device.

• Optimized for search engines. Make sure your web-site has SEO-optimized title tags, meta descriptions, URL structure, and content. By having a website that is optimized for search engines, you greatly increase the chance of being found by customers.

• Relevant content. Content is still the best way to attract and retain visitors. So it’s essential that your website is updated on a regular basis. Blogging is a great way to keep your site fresh.

• Easy-to-use navigation. As the use of mobile devices continues to grow, the importance of easy navigation does as well. The best approach is to avoid drop-down menus and use a clean, minimal menu instead.

• Fast loading web pages. If your website takes several seconds to load, you’re not only losing potential visitors, your site is also losing search engine ranking. So make sure that you’re not ignoring this important factor.

4. Leverage social media

Social media may not be the silver bullet of marketing, but it has become a part of the buying process for many peo-ple. Therefore, it’s important to establish and maintain a viable presence on social media.

The best way to do this is to choose one or two of the most popular social media sites (i.e., Facbook, Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn) and follow these best practices:

• Complete your profile. Make sure your pro-file page includes your company logo, image, description, and contact information.

• Share content. Whenever you create a blog post, video, or eBook, share it on social media. And make it simple for others to share your content as well by putting sharing buttons on your site.

• Interact. Social media is a conversation, not a monologue. Interact with your followers by ask-ing them questions and replying to their posts.

5. Guest blog

Guest blogging is a good way to increase your reach, gain new followers, and build reputable backlinks.

Sites like Squidoo, HubPages, and StumbleUpon, generate most of their content from users them-selves. Jeff Bullas says, “These types of pages fa-cilitate interactive information sharing as well as collaboration, where you yourself can add articles that include up to 9 free backlinks per article to your website.”

Just be sure to use orginal content on these sites, as search engines filter out duplicate content.

6. Network with other businesses

Find some local networking events and plan to attend. Get to know other startups in your area and find out what marketing strategies are work-ing for them.

You might also consider partnering with an estab-lished brand. Choose a business that has compli-mentary services so that you can refer business to each other. If you have a referral fee on both sides, there is a monetary incentive on top of the new business partnership that each of you will bring in.

7. Invest in marketing automation software

Marketing automation software is not just for well-established businesses anymore. Startups can benefit from this tool as well.

When considering marketing automation software, keep the following in mind.

• Cost. Make sure to keep your costs low. HubSpot, for instance, offers a monthly plan for $200 a month. And they’ve recently launched a scholarship program for incubator and acceler-ator-fueled startups.

• Ease of use. Ask to demo the software and use take advantage of a free trial. You’ll also want to be sure that the software is easy to use. If the software is too complex, you’ll be wasting a lot of time trying to figure it out.

• Tools. Choose the platform that offers the best tools at the best price. Look for a system that combines web design, blogging, social media publishing, and email marketing into one plat-form. And make sure that it offers plenty of data to show you which marketing efforts are working and which ones are not.

Guest blogging is a good way to increase your reach, gain new followers, and build reputable backlinks.

Sites like Squidoo, HubPag-es, and StumbleUpon, gen-erate most of their content from users themselves.

MARKETERS STRUGGLE TO CREATE ENGAGING CONTENTB2B marketers have more work to do when it comes to consistently delivering a valuable exchange of information with prospects and customers.

While content marketing is a powerful tool, most B2B companies struggle to create an effective content marketing strategy, according to the latest research by Forrester.

According to the study, more than half of marketers (51%) said their content marketing efforts are only somewhat effective, 6% said their strategy is some-what ineffective, and 1% said that it was not effective at all. Only 14% of marketers rated their content marketing strategy as being very effective.

As researcher Laura Ramos states, this study “shows that B2B marketers have more work to do when it comes to consistently delivering a valuable exchange of information with prospects and customers.”

Some of the key lessons of this study include:

1. Content must be a priority for marketers.

A startling 72% of marketers said that most of their

marketing staff is not involved in content market-ing today. This suggests that their approach is in-consistent at best.

However, one of the keys to a successful content marketing strategy is consistency. If you only post a blog once a month or create one eBook every six months, you’re probably not posting frequently enough to increase traffic to your website.

Ideally, you should write 3 or 4 blogs per week and offer premium content, such as eBooks or webi-nars, at least once a month.

You also need to realize that content marketing is a long-term strategy, not a get rich quick scheme. One of the mistakes that most marketers make is not waiting for the results. In general, it usually takes about 6 months for your older posts to signif-icantly contribute to your overall traffic. It’s around this time that you’ll start seeing incremental spikes in traffic, subscribers, and leads.

2. Content must be engaging to buyers.

Eighty-seven percent of marketers said they strug-gle to produce content that truly engages with their buyers. Most admit that their content is limited to product descriptions and features, rather than in-sightful information that buyers crave.

To overcome this deficiency, you need to have a detailed picture of your target audience in order to create optimal content for them. Who are your ideal customers and prospects? What are their big-gest concerns, needs and interests? Where can you

reach them – on search engines, social media, or blogs – and what kinds of content do they prefer?

Once you have a detailed picture of your target audience, align your content around these find-ings. That way your content is not just about your-self, but about the concerns, needs and interests of your ideal customers.

3. Content must reach customers at every stage of the buying cycle.

Sixty-two percent of marketers admit to producing content on a campaign-by-campaign basis, while 16% said they mainly develop content for sales col-lateral.

This data shows that most companies are focusing their content on the awareness stage, while pay-ing little attention to the other stages of the buyer process. However, a successful content marketing strategy reaches customers in every stage of the buying cycle.

During the awareness stage, customers are going online to research a specific problem or opportu-nity. They’re not ready to compare products or to make a purchasing decision yet.

Blog posts, eBooks, and whitepapers are particularly effective for customers in the awareness stage.

However, it’s important to remember that your content should be relevant and informational in nature. It should not focus on your company or your products and services. Rather, it should

address the goals, challenges, and plans of your buyer persona.

During the consideration (or evaluation) stage, customers are researching all of the available approaches/methods to solve their problem or opportunity.

Comparison whitepapers, expert guides, and live interactions are most effective in this stage. Thus, you might want to consider publishing a podcast or video that explains your approach.

During the decision (or purchase) stage, customers seek out data, benchmarks and endorsements to make a final decision. That’s why product compari-sons, case studies, and free trials are particularly effective at this stage.

Therefore, whenever you brainstorm content, it’s important to ask yourself if your buyer persona has all the information they need at each point of the buy-ing cycle.

Ms. Ramos states it well: “Those organizations who are better adept at understanding their customers, obsessing over them, speaking in their voice and liter-ally doing the kind of content that will help win new customers, serve the customers they have, and retain the customers they have–those will be the ones that stay in business.”

IF IT’S NOT GNU MARKETING, IT’S OUTDATED MARKETING.Let us walk you through how inbound marketing can transform your business, and why it’s the proven method for doing business online.

Request your free assessment and learn more about what we can do. Call us today at (360) 241-5799 or visit www.gnucreations.com.

GnuCreations

August 2014

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