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How to Leverage Big Data for Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

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You obviously know what is big data if you have not been living under a rock. In today’s day and age, big data is the one thing, the most important aspect that impacts inbound marketing like none other. The implications of big data and the way it is transforming the…

You obviously know what is big data if you have not been living under a rock. In today’s day and age, big data is the one thing, the most important aspect that impacts inbound marketing like none other. The implications of big data and the way it is transforming the marketing scenario is for all to see. Data is one of the main forces that drives every inbound marketing initiative you execute. You need to look at the data available to create a flourishing business model and convert an inbound marketing campaign into a lead generating machine. Collating and culling out data because everyone else is doing it will not make any difference. You need to put this data to work so that you can make your inbound marketing strategies more efficient. Analyzing and implementing the data at hand is what will help you become more efficient and competitive. It will add to the prospects of attracting customers, converting leads and closing sales apart from delighting loyal supporters.

How can big data be utilized?

It can be used in a plethora of ways. From pointing out the shopping behaviour of customers to their demographics, big data can be used for inbound marketing services in many ways. Not just that, big data will also highlight your follies – from incompetence in your workflow to inefficient business processes, it can tell you just about everything. Inbound marketing companies are using big data to:
  • Recognize trends in shopping, so that top-selling products and services can be highlighted and the products that are either underperforming or not performing at all can be rejected.
  • Know demographic trends, so inbound marketing services can cater to the target audience based on age groups, income brackets and locations.
  • Find out what advertisements are faring well and which ones can be removed to avoid wastage of resources.
  • Divide user data to come up with customized inbound marketing campaigns that cater to a particular group of shoppers.

How can inbound marketing services be improved with big data?

The importance of big data can’t be undermined. It has unquestionably become imperative for your marketing strategy. All you need to do is understand and use it well to increase sales.

You get to know your target audience

Analyzing the data available can be of immense help in knowing and understanding your target group. With data on ages, geographies and income groups, you can make concentrated efforts for those specific markets. These factors can also lend themselves to comprehending sales, the influence of social media, ease of shopping online and much more.

Your readers can benefit from your pearls of wisdom

Your findings will benefit your readers/users because they could use it further and apply the data findings themselves. This leads you to become an authority in that field, and you know what’s going on in and around that area. This also showcases you in a highly positive light, because when your readers need an insight, they link it to you.

You can easily drive business efficiencies

With lesser efforts than yesteryears, businesses today can come up with a much better quality of work. This is all thanks to the insights that can be converted to opportunities. And these – in turn – can be streamlined into processes using the latest technologies that no longer require manual labor or multiple systems.

You can target new customers

Once you know and understand your buyer personas, it will become easier for you to appeal to prospective customers as well. With tools such as Facebook’s ad targeting platform, you can always get the right message across to your target audience, and acquire new customers in the process.

You understand the context that lies behind the content

Once you understand the way searches occur, or figure out the patterns of posts, you can pinpoint the issue your customers are facing. You also get to know who exactly can benefit from you. Every time you blog or post on social media, it will showcase your intent and define where you want to take your business.

The strategy for pricing can be devised

Inbound marketing tactics can’t be employed in a silo. Pricing is also an extremely important part of marketing. Big data can let you know what price tags work best. It will make no sense to direct innumerable leads to the website if the price is a put-off. Prices, when reasonable and competitive, can work really well, and with the correct usage of your data, you can identify various levels of pricing and know how it impacts your sales.

Monetization opportunities galore

Inbound marketing companies are taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves to monetize the data they garner from various sources. Programs like geo-targeting augment revenue models through alternative means.

You will be able to predict churn and loyalty

Specific strategies can be targeted towards the most loyal customers to keep them that way. Likewise, customer churn can be predicted and campaigns can be created to tackle just that aspect.

You can say what your users want to hear

Use big data to understand what the target group wants to hear and what it likes. Design your messaging around this. After all, your communication needs to resonate with the customers. If it fails to do so, then the marketing strategy is nothing but a complete failure. Once you know which advertisement has had the greatest impact on the users, then you will be able to create more ads around those interest areas.

New sources of revenue can be looked at

If you analyze big data for purchasing patterns and user behaviour, then you will be able to figure out opportunities for growth in areas other than the ones you operate in. According to newer demands of the market, you could create new products and services.

It’s the ultimate chance to cross-sell and upsell

Throughway of service requests, usage of products and other forms of communication, customers usually manage to say a lot and leave a history of interactions behind. These insights can be utilized to recommend products or services to the customers. It is a known fact that it is much more cost-effective to upsell to your existing clients than it is to acquire new customers, so why not?

What is the future of big data for inbound marketers

Inbound marketing is quickly becoming a discipline that uses all the marketing tactics such as pricing, positioning, product, messaging, and branding, apart from technical data. The coming years present a great opportunity (apart from a few hurdles that need to be overcome) to be able to leverage big data to the fullest. Business leaders, as well as their marketing counterparts, need to be educated so that one can be up to speed on available opportunities. They also need to be aware of the risks of using big data in inbound marketing. With the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR 2018 in Europe, that is all about protection of privacy, compliance and internet laws, marketers could face a few challenges. New platforms and newer technologies could lead to a shortage of talent adept in those technologies. With artificial intelligence and cognitive computing now a part of our worlds, marketers will need to smarten up to apply human thought processes to machines.

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    Reasons Why Education Institutes & Sectors Must Employ Inbound Marketing

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    The education industry is undergoing a major change, with most of the higher educational institutions and universities leaving their traditional marketing playbook and adopting niftier online marketing strategies. And, with a change in the pattern of how students and parents research and select their preferred educational institution, the challenge for…

    The education industry is undergoing a major change, with most of the higher educational institutions and universities leaving their traditional marketing playbook and adopting niftier online marketing strategies. And, with a change in the pattern of how students and parents research and select their preferred educational institution, the challenge for an educational institution is to increase student enrolments during the admission process. This is where inbound marketing steps in.

    What is Inbound Marketing?

    Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that involves the creation and distribution of relevant content for your audience, without having to pay hefty amounts for advertising. The principle of inbound marketing focuses on letting your prospects find your business and keeping them engaged by using channels such as blogs, infographics, social media, SEO, videos, whitepapers, etc. In other words, instead of cold-selling education courses, you produce and distribute content that people are looking for, and also provide some value to them by fulfilling their immediate needs. Adopting an inbound marketing strategy can enable educational institutions to go a few steps further in their marketing strategy, and meet all the marketing goals they have in mind. Here’s how inbound marketing strategies are effective for educational institutions: #1. Target and Nurture the Right Kind of Leads While you may be using marketing tools or resources to target and reach your target audience, your reach may be limited to a small number of clients, and a very specific pool of them to boot. This means that you would need to maximize every opportunity to gather those prospects, and it needs to be a consistent effort. By adopting the inbound methodology, you can use tactics such as building your content assets, participating in social media and other pull strategies which can draw interested students to your website, and thus widen your pool of prospects. And since inbound marketing is all about understanding the needs of your buyers and providing a solution to them, you can leverage this opportunity by creating customized content which is suitable to the specific needs of the buyer, and offer knowledgeable content which would add to their knowledge. #2. Opportunity to Nurture Your Leads by Educating them A major aspect of inbound marketing methodology for the education sector is to educate and make your prospects aware of the product or service which you have to offer, and how it helps them reach their end goals and ultimately add value to the lives. With an inbound marketing approach, you can capture those leads and nurture them at every stage of the sales funnel. This method is a lot more effective since you form tailor-made campaigns to create multiple conversion points and shorten the time between a prospective student’s first visit and their application submission. It would allow you to answer and foster interaction with your prospects about pertinent questions – from pricing and expected results, to what makes your education institute different. #3. Convert High-Quality Traffic Into Prospective Students Adopting an inbound marketing strategy would enable you to attract higher quality traffic to your website, convert them into prospective student applications, and then nurture them to take admissions. This is made possible due to a relationship based on information, advice and resources, which is instrumental in the lead generation process, and ultimately closing them for sales. #4. Exercise Relationship Building and Delighting Your Prospects Inbound marketing is all about delighting your customers – even after your customers have made their purchase – with the goal of turning them into the promoters of your brand. Building relationship with students beyond the course curriculum is every education institute’s primary goal, and inbound marketing provides a perfect solution to fit this requirement by throwing in a plethora of options for doing so. By adopting smart content strategies such as recycling cornerstone content, social outreach initiatives, etc., you can aim to foster a lifelong relationship with your students by constantly keeping them in the loop, thus gaining their trust and affinity.

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      A Recap of Inbound ’17

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      INBOUND ’17 was a raving success, featuring renowned personalities from all walks of life. Headlining the event were Michelle Obama and John Cena, who provided their valuable insights into the world on inbound marketing. The event was attended by over 21,000 marketing and sales professionals from more than 100 countries,…

      INBOUND ’17 was a raving success, featuring renowned personalities from all walks of life. Headlining the event were Michelle Obama and John Cena, who provided their valuable insights into the world on inbound marketing. The event was attended by over 21,000 marketing and sales professionals from more than 100 countries, making it one of the biggest social events when it comes to inbound marketing. INBOUND ’17 provided event-goers with new insights into the world of inbound marketing and enabled a large number of people to make valuable connections with other evolving businesses regarding the overall importance of inbound marketing. Perhaps the biggest attraction of INBOUND ’17 had to be the wealth of keynote speakers that had attended the event to share their takeaways from the world of inbound marketing. Here’s a detailed look at each keynote speaker and their talking points from the event:

      Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah:

      One of the biggest propagators of inbound marketing is HubSpot, and Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah opened the show with an absolute bang. https://twitter.com/INBOUND/status/912744736561221634 Being the co-founders of HubSpot meant that they had a ton of useful insights to share around inbound marketing, including tips on how to scale your business and to utilize effective strategies to get the most out of inbound marketing.

      Piera Gelardi:

      Being the co-founder and executive creative director of Refinery29, it’s evident that Piera Gelardi is a valuable source of gaining creative insights when it comes to the creation and promotion of media and content. https://twitter.com/INBOUND/status/912676318336217088 This is exactly what she provided at INBOUND ’17, and those who were lucky enough to attend the event received a bunch of essential insights that will be critical when it comes to promoting their business.

      Brené Brown:

      An American scholar, author, and public speaker, who is currently a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, Casandra Brené Brown was one of the most prominent intellectuals present at the event, whose intelligence was visible during her keynote session at INBOUND ’17. https://twitter.com/INBOUND/status/912449699126349824 Event goers received a ton of valuable intellectual advice on how to practice effective marketing techniques, making Brené Brown’s speech one of the most engaging keynote sessions of the event.

      John Cena:

      One of the noted celebrity speakers present at the event, John Cena’s immense charisma was simply overflowing at the event when he addressed the people present at INBOUND ’17. Gaining a fresh perspective when it comes to something like inbound marketing is imperative, and during the event, John Cena provided exactly that during his keynote session. https://twitter.com/INBOUND/status/913471995018465281 John spoke about how being a professional not only requires you to have the proper knowledge of your responsibilities but also how identifying the purpose of the brand/organization is vital to play up.

      Michelle Obama:

      Speaking of celebrity speakers, one simply cannot forget to mention the exciting keynote session of Michelle Obama at the event. The former First Lady of the United States provided a ton of valuable insights when it came to the concept of inbound marketing, providing another new and fresh perspective when it came to this particular theory. https://twitter.com/alisonleishman/status/913034124235034625 Michelle stressed on the fact that various events, jobs, and responsibilities teach you grace. An epitome of grace herself, Michelle further emphasized that no matter how difficult life, or for that matter a job gets, be graceful and not be afraid. INBOUND ’17 enjoyed rampant success as one of the most prominent inbound marketing events of the year, and those who attended the event came out with a new and fresh outlook on the world of inbound marketing. You May Also Be Interested In
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        What Experts Are Saying About Digital Marketing

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        Recent technological development – along with social media – have transformed the consumer’s thinking process. The way they behave with brands has also undergone change as well. So, even though traditional means and methods are very much in vogue, modern-day marketers are upping the ante and learning the ropes of…

        Recent technological development – along with social media – have transformed the consumer’s thinking process. The way they behave with brands has also undergone change as well. So, even though traditional means and methods are very much in vogue, modern-day marketers are upping the ante and learning the ropes of digital marketing strategies to get to know their customers better. The digital gurus who are high on big data and analytics are also extremely creative and masters in their respective fields of design and copywriting, photography and filmmaking. Some of the CEOs of top digital agencies came up with great answers when asked what is required to be on the top of the game.

        #1. Professionalisation is what is happening

        For a long period of time, organisations have hired other groups to perform digital marketing. Now, with consumers wanting to know a bit more – after all, they’re demanding authenticity as well as transparency – organisations have finally taken the plunge. The emergence of in-house marketing personnel has given birth to an all-new professional. This has – in turn – led to the inherent needs of training, certifying and backing the requirements of in-house digital marketing experts. As more and more digital marketing professionals get added to the workforce, businesses are quickly realising that there is a wide gap between skill levels. While some fare well in social media, others do a great job when it comes to research. In this scenario, certification courses add value and make a difference to the professional’s capabilities too.

        #2. Time is of great essence

        The ever-evolving digital world can overwhelm not just businesses but top notch marketers as well. There is a vast ocean of data and information available out there, and whether we like it or not we need it to stay afloat. But, apart from all the data analytics and consumption, we need to remind ourselves of one important facet which needs to be considered all the time, and that is time. To master the business and/or become a masterful digital marketer, the first thing you need to master is time. The way digital marketing is evolving, we need to understand that to manage everything from innovative technologies to changing trends, we need to focus our time and efforts on the most important revenue generators. Take time out and perfect the art of nurturing these generators without going astray. For the chosen revenue generators, put in your efforts into traffic channels which will bear fruit. They could be owned, paid as well as earned. This will help you garner awareness and exposure for your products or services which can then be converted to sales. See what works for you, and they don’t move away from it. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t try to do too many things at the same time. And most importantly, go ahead and build relationships, be true to yourself and form a renowned image throughout various social media platforms. You may think it’s frivolous, but your own branding is a must to build trust and get inbound leads. Your audience will find you credible and believable. When you manage to take time out for yourself, you will see that a lot of others are doing the same. While the inherent concepts of marketing will hardly ever get altered, it’s just the technologies and tools that shift. Think about it, give it time and don’t be intimidated or befuddled by them.

        #3. Native commerce is the next big thing

        Yes, this is about native commerce, not e-commerce. Just like the term native advertising native commerce also exists as well. Brands are concentrating their efforts to coerce a more direct response from their users, and native commerce is helping them with it. While practicing this type of commerce can be tough, you can serve customers best through this method. It attracts buyers of various genres through communities that are built and driven by content. So, if you’re into fashion and want to stay updated about all the latest trends, a business which is into native commerce will work towards building a content-rich community. And it would make perfect business sense to offer products that are in tandem with that community. So, if businesses have a community driven by content, where users or prospective buyers could ask questions rather than facing the hard sell that e-commerce generally does, you can get feedback that matters. It is predicted that in some years, you will stop just transacting and shop with other native commerce communities.

        #4. Differentiate

        Differentiation is the key in today’s cut-throat digital marketing scenario. You need to carve a niche for your business and differentiate your company from the competition. There are many evolving digital marketers that are generic, and might not last long in the rat race. Of course, there are some who would prefer to talk about past victories and not change with the times or adapt well, but they will also become obsolete in the near future. Digital marketing companies need to put in more effort and go that extra mile to remain competitive and make a mark in the industry. Agencies in the business should be questioning themselves, as they intend to go beyond the contract for their clients. They also need to introspect if they are bringing any extra value that their competitor is not offering. Apart from this, they need to know if their services are such that can be outsourced easily or even get replaced by machines or innovative software. If the answers to these questions don’t come quickly to you, then maybe you need to reconsider your stand in the industry – or maybe even look at doing things in a different manner.

        #5. Customer-centric business is in

        Digital marketers need to be in love with their customers, not themselves or the product that they’ve crafted with meticulous care. Businesses need to be defined on the basis of who is being served, and not what you offer to your target group. There is a serious difference between the two, and fully comprehending the difference is what will define whether you are a success or a failure. Apple became a giant of their particular industry solely because they stopped taking their computers seriously, and started serving a certain demographic. Most successful companies have a clear image of what their customer looks like. They go ahead and change their products and services if the existing ones do not meet the needs of their ideal customers. Those marketers who concentrate on just their products slowly move away from what their customers actually need. It is extremely important to be a customer-centric business and design products that your audience demands.

        #6. Strategize

        The most important element in the complex world of digital marketing is a strategy. Without it, how will you make sense of all the marketing activities undertaken and implemented by your brand? Strategy accords a framework for optimization as well as measurement of each and every activity. Just ask yourself: if a particular activity was not driving any ROI, would you still be doing it? A strategy that’s already set in place would be able to answer that. Marketing can be based on intuition, but it still needs the backing power of strategy to take it further ahead. It can’t just be driven by one’s gut or powered by technical and trendy buzzwords. Analytics, measurement, and statistics are all required metrics, and these come about only through the use of the right strategy. If you wish to grow in digital marketing, then you can’t shy away from analyzing the data that’s present before you. Quantitative marketing is here to stay, and strategy will drive this change.

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          BlogTechnology

          Reasons Digital Marketing is a Must for SAAS Business Growth

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          Every Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company needs to take a strategic approach to digital marketing, even if it thinks it can do without it! Because – as we all know and can easily admit – growing any business is not an easy task and this is especially true for SaaS companies. Digital…

          Every Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company needs to take a strategic approach to digital marketing, even if it thinks it can do without it! Because – as we all know and can easily admit – growing any business is not an easy task and this is especially true for SaaS companies. Digital marketing helps SaaS companies find their feet with some of the most memorable marketing campaigns. These campaigns are capable of driving greater awareness, garnering new leads and increasing revenues. SaaS companies can easily take advantage of all the creativity and innovation that comes with an integrated approach towards digital marketing. And, with things constantly evolving and transforming at speeds not known before, marketers need to remember that just changing software delivery models will not work anymore. As marketers who want to make a difference, you need to delve into decisions that are driven by data when it is about your sales, marketing, and other operations. SaaS marketing is not a cakewalk because you have to look for various means to find as well as attract quality leads, and then try to close the sales apart from trying to increase the lead volume. And – to top it all off – this has to happen on minuscule budgets! So, we’ve compiled some metrics that could help SaaS companies enhance their revenues and performance too.

          #1. The Digital Marketing Mantra for SaaS

          Marketing should be able to improve awareness as well as attract customers, and also convert the prospective customers to the ones who actually pay.

          #2. The recurring revenue per month

          You can’t dilly-dally when it comes to your investments for a SaaS business – it has to be upfront. Your product needs to be ready, and the prospects need to be spent on before they decide to spend anything on you. What’s more, the customers do not pay up like they need to for any other normal software business. You’ll have to be ready to collect monthly subscriptions and also brace yourself to survive long enough on that itself, which is why it becomes imperative to regularly track your monthly recurring revenue.

          #3. Unique visitors per month

          This is the number of individuals who visit your website every month. If an individual visits the site many times, he/she will qualify as a unique visitor. While this particular measure might not lend itself to providing many in-depth insights, it still manages to let you know the impact of your marketing efforts. And, if your numbers happen to grow, it will be a great measure of the efficacy of your top-of-the-funnel marketing. But, at the same time, you need to remember to look at the average time spent on the site, repeat visits, comments, email subscriptions and more. These are metrics that can help you with both quality and quantity.

          #4. The number of signups

          There are many SaaS companies that offer free trials or other options such as self-service. But, then there are many other SaaS companies who do not offer any of these options. So, for these companies and the ones that offer just self-service, signups present themselves as one of the most important metrics. Whichever plan you’re offering, your marketing goals should aim towards driving signups, and there are myriad ways to augment signups. By presenting content that is both appealing as well as educational, traffic can be grown to your site.

          #5. You need to look at the churn rate

          If you can manage to retain customers for the long haul, you will know that you’re here to stick around. On the other hand, churn lets you know the number of people you’ve lost. If you consistently and continuously have a high churn, then you need to know what is wrong with your product. Talk to your customers and figure out where the problem lies. Get in touch with people who upped and left and ask them the reasons. Likewise, get in touch with the people who have around for long. Know what’s the reason behind that as well. It’s about time you knew what is working with your product, and what isn’t.

          #6. Cost per acquisition will work well

          Opting for the wrong marketing channels can bleed you dry. You can know what is working for you if you can track the cost per acquisition of campaigns. In case your spends on acquiring customers is much more than what you are receiving or will receive, you will have to relook your strategy. In case you can manage, you will need to know the cost per acquisition for individual marketing campaigns. This may be a tricky situation, but with the smart usage of customer analytics, you can get all the required data about the customer and know which campaign is bringing in the most profit.

          There are many more reasons apart from the top 5 that have been listed above. Some of them are:

          #a. Average Revenue Per Customer

          Like the name suggests, it’s about the average revenue you get from your customers.

          #b. Lifetime Value

          This is fairly simple too, and can be estimated by combining the average revenue per customer and the churn rate.

          #c. Product Qualified Leads

          For businesses that offer free trials or freemiums, PQLs are the new MQLs (Marketing Qualified Lead). It aids SaaS businesses in pre-qualifying prospective customers based on their product usage.

          #d. Qualified Lead Velocity Rate (LVR)

          LVR lets you know how much you can achieve as future sales, based on the qualified leads.

          #e. Viral Factor

          Word-of-mouth marketing can do wonders. When your customers become your salespeople, you can grow exponentially.

          #f. Cost per Customer

          Knowing how much it will cost to acquire new customers, as well as identifying the right sales and marketing channels will help you beyond measure in SaaS.

          #g. Create content that’s unique

          Create e-books or white papers along with other microtools for informational keywords around your product. Use this tool/content to get email addresses or even social shares.

          #h. Email drip campaign

          Onboarding is crucial to a SaaS business, and an email campaign can work well in this aspect. It can be utilized to resell the value prop, re-educate and offer incentives.

          #i. Integration with other products

          Work with some other complimentary SaaS products. The marketing programs, as well as the web assets of the other products, could drive considerable traffic.

          #j. Lead Nurturing

          Take a shot at executing workflows for creating touchpoints a little differently. Use ideas such as expired trials, CTAs for "let’s stay in touch," and "are you happy/would you refer?" for customers.

          #k. Meetups

          Hosting meetups can help you to meet a lot of cool people in the tech industry who can come up with ideas that have not been tried earlier.

          #l. Industry-relevant Referring Sites

          Service provider directories can be extremely effective at lead generation for businesses of all sizes, but they work exceptionally well at generating revenue mostly from small business clients.

          #m. Request a quote

          Some people are just asking for a price quote from you. Give them what they desire, but in a manner that maximizes the value of your product or service.

          #n. Influencer marketing

          This can help you with engagement as well as in the generation of leads. Influencer marketing can also work well in increasing your conversion rates.
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            7 Things You Need to Look for in an SEO Management Company

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            When you look at SEO practices for the first time, it can look intimidating and challenging. But, if you have the right SEO company helping you out, then it’s a walk in the park. Choosing a full-service search engine optimisation company is difficult; choosing a superb search engine optimisation company.…

            When you look at SEO practices for the first time, it can look intimidating and challenging. But, if you have the right SEO company helping you out, then it’s a walk in the park. Choosing a full-service search engine optimisation company is difficult; choosing a superb search engine optimisation company. It can be difficult to find a company with whom you can work on something as important as your online image, but there are plenty of possibilities. Don't worry if you're not sure how to hire an SEO firm. Take a look at some key considerations that can assist you in making the best decision. #1. Be sure of what you want Do you have a to-do list? Or is it about a one-off assignment? Are you looking at ongoing SEO, link removal, an SEO audit, reputation management, link building, retargeting, PPC management, or any of the other services offered by SEO services companies? If you’re still wondering what is required, give it a think-over and come up with a list that needs to be taken care of. Is it sales growth that you aim to undertake next year, or do you wish to increase leads in the coming six months? Do you want to see your ranking increase, or do you want to feel satisfied that someone out there is doing SEO for you? Make sure you know what you want from your SEO management company. It will only help you determine your success once you associate with them. Have a goal in mind, and let the SEO company know about it. If you don’t know whether your SEO efforts will be successful or not, how will you manage to have a successful relationship with the SEO management company?

            #2. Don’t make the job posting easy

            You can figure out a lot about an SEO management company through your job posting itself, by setting up hurdles for the companies that apply. If they do not think about it too much and simply jump over them, then you know it is the best choice to pick the company up. This will also help you distinguish good applicants from bad ones without even poring over their resumes. Attention to detail is immensely important in SEO, and if this is compromised, then the results would be disastrous. Your Google traffic can be impacted by SEO which does not pay attention to detail. Coming to the applications, a careful review would go a long way in making the right choice. Typos, grammatical errors, or content goof-ups in the application would mean a lack of attention to detail in the very first step itself. This spells trouble, and taking the engagement further will not lead to acceptable results. You could also set up a problem-solution situation for the applicants that would demonstrate competence as well as the ability to solve problems. Do not consider applicants who do not adhere to your instructions. Not complying with your requests portrays a dreary picture of the SEO company, which shows a disregard for rules and regulations.

            #3. Test your job postings

            A/B split testing can be used fantastically to attract applicants. If you’ve been in marketing for a long, you know what we’re talking about. If you look at it from a new perspective, you’ll realize that job postings are pretty much comparable to PPC ads. You can use your imagination and creativity to optimise the postings with image and copy changes as and when required. Your workload will be lessened by a considerable amount if you manage to attract the right kind of SEO companies. If you wish to include the salary levels in the first round of tests itself, then you can try removing them in the later ones. Use words that resonate with the people who are applying, and make sure that the content and imagery are not ambiguous.

            #4. SEO Company's portfolio and case studies

            An out-of-the-box SEO management business is capable of flawless tactical and creative implementation. This method will assist you in determining what the SEO services firm is all about and what it represents. Examine the specifics of what an SEO business has done for other clients before choosing them. You may get a basic sense of their style and the types of results their clients achieve by looking at their portfolio and case studies. Find how they combine SEO with other services like pay-per-click (PPC), social media, and web design.

            #5. Use tricky questions

            Tricky questions will never bother a candidate who is good at his/her work. These questions are designed to trap those who pretend to know it all. These bookish people may come up with best theoretical practices, but SEO is more than that – it is about taking care of metrics like testing, measuring, agility, reacting, and dealing with an ever-evolving industry. To know more about your candidates, you could go for queries like: How do you optimise meta keywords? The smart candidate would know that it makes no difference even if one does not optimise the meta keywords because it has no significance for Google. The meta descriptions have no bearing even on the rankings. The candidate should know the basic difference between Penguin and Panda. While Penguin is all about links of low-quality, Panda is about content that is low-quality. If you went in to ask what a good keyword density was and the answer was anything but that then it’s a worthless metric to go for; you know you’re barking up the wrong tree.

            #6. Schedule A Consultation

            It's critical to meet with the SEO firm before you consider signing the contract. You might even request that an SEO expert join the conversation so that you can learn more about the process and possibly meet the individual you'll be working with regularly. Getting a consultation will allow you to learn more about algorithm upgrades, best practices, and industry news. So, if a candidate has trouble answering questions, seeking consultation is a good idea. Similarly, if someone tampers with systems or acts outside of established norms, scheduling a consultation is a good idea.

            #7. Go for a trial period

            So, you have finally found the right candidate. One who is capable of adding value to your company with her/his skills and the one who inspires confidence in you. You want to create a long-term relationship, but first, you should give it a try. This will show you how they perform in real life. The trial should be about handing over responsibilities to the candidate that are well-defined and clear. With projects and assignments to complete in a stipulated time frame, you will also get to know their pressure-handling attitudes. Their duties should also be connected to their values. Once you have invested time and effort in aligning personal values to the job duties, you will notice enhanced performance as well as loyalty from the candidates you have chosen.

            Wrapping up

            It might take more than a few months to hire the right SEO company, but you will realize that it’s well worth the efforts and see what it can manage to do to your brand and your business. With the ever-evolving digital landscape moving at light speed, getting the right SEO management company on board would probably be one of the wisest business decisions you will ever make. Take note of the tips mentioned above, and you’ll figure that you’ve done yourself a great favour that will transform the landscape of your business.

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            If search engine optimization (SEO) is something that you are interested in but don’t know how to get started, contact us today to schedule your marketing analysis.

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              BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

              HubSpot vs. Marketo: Which Automation Tool is Right for Your Business

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              Marketing automation tools have decreased the workload of marketers by delivering accurate and actionable results without any intervention required. With a huge spurt in the marketing automation industry, many big players have entered the market. Marketers often have a tough time comparing HubSpot vs. Marketo, which top the list of…

              Marketing automation tools have decreased the workload of marketers by delivering accurate and actionable results without any intervention required. With a huge spurt in the marketing automation industry, many big players have entered the market. Marketers often have a tough time comparing HubSpot vs. Marketo, which top the list of marketing automation tools. Others in the list include Pardot, Eloqua, Customer.io, etc. With so many unmatched benefits and useful tools that both services offer, marketers have a tough time deciding between HubSpot vs. Marketo. Both have carved a name for themselves in the market and offer a variety of functions in their automation tools for performing various “top-of-the-funnel” marketing functions. But marketers must make an informed decision and choose the one which best suits their business goals. We simplify your job, and provide you here with the distinct features which distinguish the marketing automation tools of HubSpot and Marketo :

              #1. User Platform and Pricing

              HubSpot

              HubSpot has a natively integrated platform for all the marketing automation tools, which enables marketers to seamlessly access all the tools at one single place. Thus, it saves a lot of time, since marketers have only one set of tools to learn and master. An all-in-one solution is attractive to most of the marketers since it provides seamless functionality and is priced as a single unit. Their core product is priced into three tiers according to scale and functionality – Basic, Professional and Enterprise. HubSpot also offers a number of pre-built integrations with popular business apps to allow further customization. Marketo Marketo’s system is broken down into four discrete modules – marketing automation, consumer engagement, real-time personalization, and marketing management. These modules can be purchased separately or combined to form an integrated suite. This lets marketers create a custom solution for their needs, but some businesses might find a unified system more useful. Users may also face some difficulty in transferring data points from one platform to another. This can lead to missing data points from multiple data transfers between systems. Hence, this leads to a wastage of time and resources while marketers are integrating different platforms. Also, due to the multiplicity of platforms, there are multiple logins, bills and support lines (and sometimes no support lines at all).

              #2. Ease of User Experience

              HubSpot

              HubSpot provides a solution to its user’s problems by making it easy to use and widely accessible for marketers of every skill level. It has made lead generation and marketing automation manageable even for managers who have less technical knowledge by creating an easy to use multi-channel platform instead of building out every marketing automation platform step-by-step. Marketo Since Marketo specializes in providing custom solutions for enterprises, their software requires marketers to have an in-depth knowledge about technical know-how. Therefore, many of its users make a lot of inconsistencies across these interfaces while using the tools, and custom coding skills are required to make several changes. In the software industry, ease of use is one of the greatest assets, and thus marketing automation tools should require minimum coding knowledge.

              #3. Optimal Data Reporting

              HubSpot

              Using HubSpot, marketers are able to conduct an in-depth analysis through their reporting efforts, gaining insights into how each marketing activity affects their overall strategy and goals. This is only possible due to the seamless integration of all the tools in one platform. The best part is that there is hardly any intervention required to generate these reports. For example, HubSpot’s reporting tools provide a campaign dashboard that makes it easy to see how each asset is contributing to the campaign’s overall progress and goals. Marketo Since Marketo doesn’t integrate all its tools under one platform, the reporting process becomes more difficult for its users. They must consistently attach tracking URL to every social media post, track call-to-action activity in their raw HTML code and other similar sources. Also, Marketo’s revenue attribution model may not be consistent with every marketer’s unique business.

              Conclusion

              By assessing all the above factors, it would be easy to say that HubSpot can prove to be a better marketing automation tool than Marketo. To sum it up, it integrates various platforms under a single roof, is cost-effective, saves a lot of time and money of the marketers, and allows its users to seamlessly track all data records and perform quality data reporting.
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                BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

                2x Your Efficiency With 5 Awesome HubSpot Sales Tools

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                Sales, as a vital function of any organization, has undergone a lot of changes since its integration with technology. Earlier, the process of sales used to entail just acquiring target customers and pitching about your product to them. Today, sales has evolved and has gone far beyond just acquiring customers…

                Sales, as a vital function of any organization, has undergone a lot of changes since its integration with technology. Earlier, the process of sales used to entail just acquiring target customers and pitching about your product to them. Today, sales has evolved and has gone far beyond just acquiring customers and closing the deal with them. It has become much more scientific and organized, with sales professionals employing a proper strategy to manage and retain customers during each of the sales stage. Modern-day sales professionals now use smart tools and softwares such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which enables them to gain new insights in sales, manage sales-ready leads effectively and build a long-lasting relationship with them. HubSpot is a very powerful tool for inbound marketers, which covers all the marketing and sales requirements under one platform. Here are some of the amazing sales tools in HubSpot’s CRM, which you can use to stay organized and gear up your sales processes:

                #1. Templates

                HubSpot’s template is a really handy tool when it comes to communicating with your prospects. This is used in creating email templates and enables email customization for every prospect. It has been proved by many experiments that by customizing your content leads, there’s a higher chance of your email being read and liked by your customer. HubSpot’s template saves a lot of your time by saving you from typing the same message over and over again. You can use this tool to create a folder where you can store predetermined format for your emails. From the first outreach to the closing sale, it will have a standard language ready to send to your prospects that you can use and customize for each individual. This ensures that the prospects have the required knowledge to make an informed decision. Another great advantage of using this tool is that not only can you tailor them to contain each of your prospect’s name individually, you can also put them in a sequence which you can use throughout your sales conversation. This is possible since the template tool allows you to send an email sequence to prospects according to the sales stage they are in and will continue to send reminders to them if they don’t respond after a certain amount of time. It also gives them a chance to schedule a time to speak with you.

                #2. Documents

                The process of sales is all about making use of an opportune time to close your deals. Generally, sales team lose a lot of precious time tracking important sales documents, and this can make them lose some very good customers. The Documents sales tool allows you to build a library of helpful sales content for your entire team, and share those documents directly from your Gmail or your Outlook inbox, and maintain its consistency among your team members. Another amazing feature of this tool is that it allows you to track when your prospects viewed your content, and for how long. This gives you an insight into how your documents are enabling to take the sales process forward.

                #3. Meetings

                Consuming a lot of time to schedule a meeting can make you lose out on your prospective clients and also decrease your overall productivity. The meetings tool allows you to give the power of scheduling meetings in the hands of your clients. It enables you to share your calendar with your prospects, so that they can see when you are available and schedule a time that works for them. The link can be shared with anyone, and it eliminates the need of manual intervention to do anything. This tool also provides you with the flexibility to apply specific increments of time based on which stage of the sales process you are in. This allows you to allocate more time to prospects who are further down the pipeline.

                #4. Email Sync

                Most of the times, when the sales team needs to contact a prospect, they cannot remember the details of their most recent conversation with them. HubSpot’s CRM allows you to sync your email with your sales tool, so that your correspondences with with prospects get logged in your notes and you don’t have to hunt for them in your inbox. You can view the details of your message and the time of sending it by viewing the HubSpot database contact timeline, and also sort the contact record. This enables you to automatically send emails directly through tools so that you can organize everything at one place.

                #Task Queues

                The process of sales requires a lot of follow-ups and meetings, and for that the sales team needs to have everything organized in place. According to a stat, 80% of sales require follow-ups, and yet 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up. Task queues are like sales reps to-do lists. It greatly helps to increase the functionality of the sales team, and allows you to follow-up on every single deal step-by-step, so that you don’t let any good client slip by. Task queues function by simply creating certain categories of to-do lists. You can categorize it on the basis of zone, territory, priority or any other variable of your choice. HubSpot sales tools are really very handy and boosts the efficiency of HubSpot’s CRM. It really helps sales reps to manage time and work smart by doing everything in an organized and efficient manner. By eliminating the requirement of doing a lot of tedious and repetitive tasks by automating them, it allows them to focus on nurturing their leads and meeting their sales goals. You May Also Be Interested In
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                  BlogSearch Engine Optimization (SEO)

                  Strategic SEO Decisions to Make Before Starting a Website Design

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                  In today’s digital age, it is imperative for any business that wants to grow and be found online to have a proper SEO plan in place. Take a situation where you run an SEO audit, and the test results conclude that you need to redesign your website to optimize your…

                  In today’s digital age, it is imperative for any business that wants to grow and be found online to have a proper SEO plan in place. Take a situation where you run an SEO audit, and the test results conclude that you need to redesign your website to optimize your SEO. In such a situation, before telling your web designers and developers to redesign the website, you need to take some strategic SEO decisions to ensure that your SEO efforts are going in the right direction so that you can get fruitful results and attain an increase in the traffic after your website redesign. Know more about the Best SEO Techniques to Rank #1 in Search Engines. Here is a step by step SEO for new website and SEO decisions which you need to take in order to ensure that your SEO website design strategy provides better results after your website redesign:

                  #1. How to Communicate your Mission Statement Online

                  As a performance marketer, it is very crucial for you to determine what would be your company’s marketing “value proposition”, i.e., what are the core solutions or services which your company offers to your prospective customers in order to satisfy their needs and/or queries. After identifying this, the next thing which you need to ensure is that do your prospective customers know about your value proposition, i.e., whether you are able to communicate it to them online. You need to analyze some strategic issues, which can be as follows: are the terms describing your customer’s problems or the solution you provide being searched online? If there are not many searches for your value proposition, then you need to create a brand association with the solutions you offer to your customer’s specific needs. You also need to take into consideration the competitiveness of the keywords you use. If the keywords which you find are suitable for your business but are highly competitive in the industry, then you need to focus on long-tail keywords, which will be very helpful in bringing huge traffic to your website in a short period of time.

                  #2. Analyze your Customer Segment

                  Before redesigning your website, you need to do an analysis of your customer segments. Introspect and ask yourself some critical questions, such as how large is your market, and whether the potential audience is growing or shrinking. You need to research your buyer personas again and identify their demographics, motivations, roles, etc. You also need to analyze how they behave in both offline and online circumstances. This analysis will help you optimize your site’s architecture around the stages of your buyer’s journey. As a performance marketer, your most important goal is to bring more and more customers to your website to result in maximum sales. Ideally, this process needs to be implemented before you build your site so that you can optimize the pages of their interest with keywords that are specifically targeted according to their intent or queries.

                  #3. Introspect about your online competition

                  Analyzing your competitors in the online space and knowing the strengths or opportunities that you have against them can be extremely helpful while taking critical SEO decisions, such as undergoing a website re-design. To begin with, you must identify who your competitors are, that generally fall under these three main categories of competition:
                  • Search competitors: These are the competitors who rank for the product/service that you offer. They will compete for the same keywords that you are targeting but may cater to a completely different intent.
                  • Business competitors: These are the competitors that are currently solving the customer problem you aim to fix.
                  • Cross-industry competitors: These are not your direct competition, but aim to solve your customer’s problems indirectly.
                  After you have conducted your competition analysis, analyze where each competitor stands and how much operating cost it will take to get where they currently are. You need to ask yourself a few questions, such as what’s your competitor’s size and performance, how you can differentiate yourself from them, and what improvisations you can make from their website.

                  #4. Technical Area

                  Use HTTP - Use HTTPS to keep your audience's website experience private and secure. Your website will be ranked higher if your clients feel reliable. Speed of your website - Your website's user experience is a very important need. Optimize your website design and SEO so that your target audience isn't disturbed by its slow loading time. Decide on a canonical version of your URLs - A page is unique if it has a unique ID in the website's database, whereas the URL is a unique identifier for search engines. A developer should be informed that each piece of content material should have a URL. The Geographical and Linguistic Aspect - If you want to appeal to people from all over the world, you'll need to decide if your site should be multilingual, multi-regional, or both. Localised keyword research, flang considerations, and duplicate content are all difficulties that should be addressed prior to launching a website. Using different country-level domain names has the advantage of allowing you to target a country or language more specifically. Ease of editing and flexibility in a platform - Google's suggestions and standards are frequently updated. Your platform must be adaptable enough to allow you to make rapid modifications to your site at a large scale. When it comes to seo website design, flexible systems that are simple to change are the ideal options.

                  #5. Digital Area

                  Content Architecture - If you want your audience to find the information you're offering, then the manner in which you organize it is critical. When clients and search engines are looking for precise information, flat site structures are the most effective. Analyze your users' behaviour to provide suggestions for structuring, categorizing, and linking your website's information and pages. Responsive Design - The best websites are those that adapt to a variety of devices in a way that is both functional and appealing. Responsiveness is a "must-have" characteristic when it comes to website design. Check out the most popular SEO and web design trends using web research and adapt with digital advancements. Machine readability (Flash, JS, iFrame) and structured data - A range of technologies that are difficult for crawlers to understand, such as Javascript, Flash, and Ajax; although they are required for a better user experience, you must be mindful of the problems that these technologies can cause. To improve your site's machine readability, add structured data to your pages. Once you decide to undergo a complete website revamp, it will certainly be difficult for you to optimize some critical SEO areas. Hence, as a prudent marketer, you must take these key SEO decisions before going for your website redesign. Not paying attention to these SEO factors can prove to be detrimental to your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings.

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                    BlogPaid Media

                    Startups Guide to Cost – Effective PPC

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                    Startups face many challenges while trying to gain an initial foothold in the market and industry. They have to increase the awareness about their brand or company among their prospective customers, and also have to keep in mind their budget constraints while implementing any large-scale marketing strategy. Hence, most startups…

                    Startups face many challenges while trying to gain an initial foothold in the market and industry. They have to increase the awareness about their brand or company among their prospective customers, and also have to keep in mind their budget constraints while implementing any large-scale marketing strategy. Hence, most startups and SMEs turn to inbound marketing tactics such as SEO and social media to increase awareness about their product or company, since it is practically free and very effective. But opening a page or an account in various social media platforms won’t be enough to reach your marketing goal. While having a page on Facebook may earn you many fans and followers, all of them will not be your prospective customers. So, to have an extra edge over your competitors, you’ll need to explore more options beyond the organic optimization of your site. You’ll need to consider paid marketing methods such as PPC in media buying and Planning to increase traffic to your website in a short period of time as well. Many startups hesitate to consider paid marketing methods such as PPC since they assume it would consume a lot of their marketing funds, without any guarantee when it comes to performance. And for any startup, investing cash in any activity is a great concern. But with careful consideration, thoughtful planning, and the right hacks, PPC advertising can be a very useful investment for startups to kickstart their business in the industry.

                    Some useful hacks for startups for cost-effective PPC

                    Here, we explain some useful tips for startups to implement a cost-effective PPC campaign, and how can they make their PPC campaign worth their investment and give fruitful returns :

                    #1. Identify your PPC goals

                    It is the most logical step to identify and research about your desired goals for your PPC campaign before implementing it. It will help you determine whether your PPC efforts are going in the right direction, and how they align with your overall organizational goals. You must define your goals as specifically as possible. In order to implement a proper PPC campaign, you need to ask yourself a few questions, such as :
                    • What is our daily/monthly budget for PPC?
                    • How much should our customer acquisition cost be to remain profitable?
                    • Who is our target customer?
                    • What is our conversion goal? (lead submission, phone call, purchase, etc.)
                    • What demographics do we need to target?
                    • Where are our competitor's advertising?
                    • What sets us apart from our competition?
                    It is very crucial for you to answer these questions before proceeding ahead with your PPC campaign.The more accurately you are able to answer these questions, the more effective your PPC campaign would be. It takes lot of time and planning to successfully run a PPC campaign.

                    #2. Build a comprehensive list of keywords

                    When it comes to startups, their main challenge is to be discovered by their customers (potential or otherwise) online. Using short-tail keywords won’t bring any results for them since they are too general and there is too much competition for them. Hence, using long-tail keywords is the best option for startups. They are highly targeted and would help to bring your targeted audience to your website. The most efficient way you will be able to do this is by understanding your target audience well and aligning your marketing goal with your business goal. Researching upon the search terms which your target market uses to seek your product or service, and incorporating them as your keywords can help you increase the number of qualified prospects to your website. To get new ideas about which long-tail keyword can best suit your purpose, and which ones have the least competition, you can use tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner, or HubSpot’s Keywords tool.

                    #3. Understand Your Competition

                    When you understand your competition and do a complete SWOT analysis of them, it allows you to identify opportunities or learn about what you are possibly missing out in your advertising strategy. If your startup has a distinct advantage over your competitors, then you need to let your target audience know about it. You need to analyze your competitors’ keywords and check if they are using any potential keywords which you might be missing out on. You must also check their ads and landing pages and analyze what is different in them, and make any improvements in yours if the need arises. While every startup has some competitors, not all are required to be taken into consideration. Keep in mind to identify and segregate the weak competitors from really strong ones. You don’t need to waste your time, money and efforts in pursuing competitors that aren’t a major threat to your business. Instead, search for the ones which have established themselves in the market, and which your target audience search for the most online.

                    #4. Track Your Conversion Data

                    One of the keys to optimizing a PPC campaign and measuring its success is implementing conversion tracking. By doing so, you can analyze which expenditure results in conversion, and which didn’t, and adjust your budget accordingly. Analyzing your conversion data lets you get a clear picture about which keywords are bringing the most traffic, and which are resulting in the most conversions. Hence, you can get a clear picture about whether your PPC campaign is working or not, and can delete the poorly performing keywords. Not only that, it would also help you to gain a fresh perspective about your target audience and their reactions to your marketing assets. This way, you can tweak your content across different marketing assets accordingly.

                    #5. Continue Optimizing Your Campaigns and Skills

                    You may have a very unique and relevant concept for your startup, but it will fail if you don’t know how to promote it online. Implementing a PPC campaign requires fine skills and experience. PPC is a highly dynamic concept, and hence – as a marketer – you must never stop learning, and always keep yourself updated with the latest trends and updates in the PPC campaigns. You can also try various tools which will help you optimize your campaign. There are various management tools available in Google AdWords which you can try to optimize your PPC campaign automatically and utilize the time you’ve saved to optimize your ads, landing pages, and other important assets.

                    Conclusion

                    The main challenges of a startup business are to create awareness about their brand or company to their prospective customers within a limited budget. Creating a page and/or account on social media platforms won’t give you the desired results and fulfill your marketing goals, since while you may get a large number of likes and fans on your page, only a small number of them may actually be your qualified customers, and thereby result in sales. Hence, if implemented with a proper plan and expertise, PPC can really be a worthwhile investment by bringing a large amount of qualified traffic to your website in a short amount of time. Hence, PPC campaigns can be really beneficial for startups and SMEs to bring quality traffic to their website, and give them an edge over their competitors. >> Know more about Media Buying and Planning.

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