Week 14: MKTG 348- SEO Fundamentals

searchenginenews.com is a great website for you to get certified on. It looks great on a resume, LinkedIn, and employers really value it. The certification has four training course videos, that are very helpful on the exam. It is only 28 questions, and you can take as long as you want when taking the exam. The test is graded by hand, and they let you know what questions you get wrong once it is graded. You only need an 80% to pass, which is definitely doable! I took the test earlier today, and passed so I now have another certification to add to my LinkedIn. I highly suggest taking the exam!

Week 13: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 12

Lesson 12, the last inbound video is focused on the pillars of delight. Delight is so important for any type of a business because customers will become promoters. Once you have established trust, they become promoters and share your company with families and friends. This turns them into free advertisement. It costs much more money to attract a new customer than it is to sustain current customers. Great customer service can help create delight with your customers. Every area of your business should be focused on providing a great customer experience.

The three pillars of delights are innovation, communication, and education. Change is always happening so your products, services, and the experience you are providing to your customer should always be innovating and changing. Personal communication helps you build trust with your customers. They will trust you as a person over a robot any day. You also should be educating your customers on your product or service. Everyone can do this as well, it doesn't just have to be the sales team, a manager can help do this. Companies should be focused on solving customers problems, providing them with recommendations, and providing customers with a great experience by being genuine. In order to provide great customer experience, all team members should be trained in how to provide this experience. Below are the seven customer delight guidelines, to help create happy customers.

The Seven Customer Delight Guidelines:

1. Delighting team members
2. Educating team members
3. Empowering team members
4. Listening
5. Asking
6. Serving Follow up

These seven customer delight guidelines focus on hiring the right people, to help grow your company. Inbound marketing is all about creating great customer service, that all starts with the staff. 

Week 12: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 11

Inbound sales occurs in the close section of methodology. Sales and marketing go together because they work together in the smarketing process to increase revenue. Today, buyers have much more information on companies available, so they have a higher expectation for relevant, personal experiences when making a purchase.

Traditionally a sales team performed cold calling, were information gatekeepers, had static pitches, and were seller-centric. In inbound marketing they attract with content, are an open book, leverage the buyer's content, and are buyer-centric.

There are four best practices for effectively transforming the way you sell. They are, transform the way you target accounts, the way you prospect accounts, the way you connect with accounts, and the way your prospects perceive you as a sales person.

In order to do all of those steps you need to make sure you research your lead thoroughly. You should look up company information, read about their industry, check social media, and have overall lead intelligence. Today being a sales rep is all about understanding the customer before you call. You need to perform research, and have a game plan before you even think about picking up your phone and calling them. Inbound sales is all about providing a customized experience for everyone you call.

Week 11: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 10

Lesson 10 talks about how the marketing and sales team can come together to help increase revenue. This is known as smarketing, and it takes place in the close stage. 87% of the terms sales and marketing use to describe each other are negative. Lesson 10 focuses on combining the two teams to help grow a company.

In order for smarketing to be most effective, both teams must have the same organizational goals. This will help them focus their energy together. The marketing pipeline should be tied to sales quota, and there should be visibility into each other's goals. There should also be compensation based on shared marketing and sales goals. Last, there should be continual communication and education around personas. Smarketing is possible in any size company, it is all about working together as a team instead of as separate groups.

Smarketing can be integrated into your organization by making sure both organizations in smarketing speak the same language. Using the same terms helps them work together much easier. They also need to have a Service Level Agreement, an agreement that defines what each team commits to accomplishing in order to support the other in reaching the shared revenue goals. Closed-loop reporting also should be set up, it completes the feedback loop between marketing and sales. The sales and marketing team should also rely on data, while maintaining open communication. If
marketing and sales can find the balance to work together, companies will experience positive growth.

Week 11: MKTG 348- The Power of Images

Above is a picture of Stonehenge, if you are interested in history I'm sure this image would have grabbed your attention. It is one of the wonders of the world and it is an interesting topic for historians to talk about. If you are not interested in history, this image would probably have no effect on you and you would scroll right by it. Today, we will be talking about the power of images. A lot of people say "content is king," but a lot of the times, it is the image you post that draws the reader in.

For some the image of Stonehenge was enough to get them to start reading my blog. For others, they probably scrolled right by it. When writing an email, blog post, or any type of promotional ad it is important to really understand the audience of the advertisement. Being able to pin point who will be viewing your advertisements will make it easier for you to narrow down the focus of your ad. 

Two great image websites are www.clipart.com and  www.pixabay.com. You can find pictures that can be used to help enhance any email, website, advertisement, or promotion.

Week 10: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 9

Lesson 9 is all about sending the right email to the right person. Email marketing can be an effective way to reach your target market if you learn how to do it right.

Many consumers believe:

1. Email marketing is spam
2. Email marketing is old school

Reasons email marketing still works:

1. 4.3 billion email accounts that send 196 billion emails every day
2. 91% of consumers check their email daily
3. Email is a chnanel that you own
4. 77% of consumers prefer email for marketing commumnications
5. Email lets you be highly personal
6. Email has a marketing ROI of 4,300%

How to send the right email to the right person:

1. Determine your audience
2. Segment your contacts database
3. Send the right email at the right time
4. Nurture your lead into a customer

An effective email should include:

1. Personalization
2. Actionable language
3. Image as CTA
4. Personalized signature with CTA
5. Reason for sending email
6. Benefit to Reader
7. Direct link of communication

If you send an effective email it will help you turn your leads into customers. If you do not, it will turn away possible customers. Email is not old school, it is being adopted and used as a communication by more people every year!

Week 10: MKTG 348- Survey Monkey

We'll take a break from Hubspot right now and talk about SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a free online survey tool used to collect information and opinions of people who's opinions are relevant to a topic you are trying to learn more on. They are #1 free survey collector and one of their competitors is Qualtrics.

Professor Kelsey used SurveyMonkey to help collect data on MKTG 348 and learn our thoughts and opinions on the online course. It is much better than asking for an email on our thoughts, because it is anonymous so people can write what they want without him knowing who wrote it. It gives a sense of privacy so you can say what you want.

SurveyMonkey is a great tool to use, and we have utilized this website in many of my courses.

Week 9: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 8

In the last two lessons we talked about calls-to-action, landing pages, and the last step is the thank you page. Lesson 8 will give you a closer look of the importance of a landing page, as well as how to create a successful one.

A thank you page helps you to convert the next step to a newly converted lead. Once the lead goes to the thank you page, it will thank the new lead for providing their information, as well as providing a little bit more information on what they just signed up for. It is used to end the conversion process, and move on to the next stage of the buyers journey. Thank you pages are much better than inline thank you messages, because pages allow you to provide even more information.

On a thank you page it is important to deliver promised content offer or set expectiaons, display the sites navigation menu, provide additional content, move new leads further into the buyer's journey, and include social options.

Thank you pages are an opportunity to further draw in your leads and convert them into customers, further into the buyer's journey. it is a very important step, that helps you further grow your relationship with leads!

Week 9: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 7

Lesson 7 discusses landing pages and the importance of them. Landing pages are website pages used to convert visitors into leads. Landing pages are essentially digital sales representatives, using a form to gather information. They help you build a relationship with your leads and better understand their needs. They start with a call-to-action, that will lead to a landing page, and then lead you to a thank you page.

A landing page should always have a description of your offer in the headline. These landing pages should be clear with an action-oriented header, they should explain the offer clearly and place visual emphasis on the value, they should remove the navigation menu and links, the form length mirrors the value of the offer, include a relevant image, and add social sharing icons.

Numbers, bullets, and bolding can be used to create visual emphasis. The primary step of a landing page is to attract people to your page so you want it to be easy to read. 

Landing pages are a major step in the convert stage! They help you attract customers and further increase your business.

Week 8: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 6

Lesson 6 moves on from the attract phase of inbound marketing to the convert phase. In the convert phase companies are looking to convert visitors into leads using forms, call-to-action, and landing pages.

In class 6 we will be taking a look at how to use a Call-To-Action (CTA). A CTA is a button that promotes an offer and links to a landing page. CTA's can be placed on your website or blog to attract customers.

On a blog post, it is best to place your CTA at the end of the post, or in the sidebar. This is so you are not interrupting the content. CTAs in an email can be placed at the end of the email, at the end of a paragraph, or sentence. They should be noticeable but not distracting. Your CTA must stand out, so visitors will click on it. You should consider your buyer persona when designing your CTA. Highly contrasting colors helps a CTA stand out. 

As a review, the primary purpose of a call-to-action is to convert visitors into leads.

Week 8: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 5

Chapter 5 of Hubspot covers why social media is very important to Inbound Marketing. 9 out of 10 U.S. businesses are active on social media. It helps keep content in front of the right people and spread the word of your business. You can use your content to generate new leads.

Social media is used in the attract phase to increase your exposure. Once you've exposed a new visitor to your site, social media can help you convert these visitors into leads by promoting your content. Social monitoring is a way of computing popularity of a company by taking information from social media channels. It is a great way to gather information on your buyer personas. Not only can you monitor what they are saying about you, but you can listen to industry trends that will help you attract more visitors and grow your business.

Businesses should make sure that they have SMART inbound goals. This acronym stands for:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely

SMART inbound marketing helps increase visitors, convert more leads, close more customers, and even make customers happy.

Week 7: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 4

Lesson 4 focuses on the fundamentals of blogging. It is an essential part of being an inbound marketer, helping you to easily and effectively reach prospects on your website. Business blogging helps you attract new visitors, and convert them into leads. Blog posts can help strangers by answering their questions and turning them into visitors. People who are interested in your blog will visit it, share it, and help promote it. The more you blog, the more people will look at you as a reliable and trustworthy source.

When creating a blog it is important to follow these simple and easy steps:

1) Pick a topic and title: When choosing your blog title it is important to use long-tail keywords. The keyword should fit as a description of what the page is about.

2) Format and optimize the post: When creating a blog it is important to focus on one topic. The more focused a blog is, the better because it will make posts clearer for readers and for search engines.  Having empty space on your blog (whitespace) is a good thing, it helps visitors to focus on your content, not the clutter. Use short paragraphs, indents, section headers, and bulleted lists to make it easier to read.

3) Promote offers on your blog to increase lead generation: Use your blog to strategically promote your current offers. You want to attract someone and provide relevant information and offers. Feature CTAs on a blog sidebar, you want it to catch readers at the beginner of the buyers journey. Also, make sure that you make it easy for people to prescribe to your blog.

4) Promote your blog posts: Use your blog sidebar to promote your recent or most popular posts, and add your blog to your primary website navigation. Also, link internally to your blog posts, readers who are interested can click through to your blog. Sharing your posts on social media can help promote your product or service.

5) Analyze the performance of your blog posts: You will want to look at hte number of views for each blog post. It will help you determine which content is the most popular among viewers. Filtering your most popular posts by topic, author or channel of promotion. Last, look at the number of clicks on the CTAs at the end of an individual post.

Once you have done all of these steps, your blog will be even better! Just remember it is important to write consistently and frequently. Each new blog post is a new chance to reach new customers.

Week 7: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 3

Lesson 3 of hubspot focuses on creating content with a purpose. Content is what your trying to deliver to your visitors through social media, emails, and more. Not all content is created equally, remember quality is always better than quantity! In the attract phase content is the driving force to the convert stage. It fuels the inbound methodology, and helps progress visitors from step to step.

Your content should make people want to come back for more, or refer others to you. Every piece is an investment in your future goals. When coming up with content it is important to take in consideration your buyer personas (who you're trying to reach) and the buyer's journey (what content will be most interesting or helpful for them).

If your content is in the awareness phase you should be targeting a problem your buyer persona is experiencing. In the consideration stage you should be targeting a solution to a problem. In the decision stage content should be about your product or service because they have already chosen you. Content should be created for all different stage of the buyer's journey. The picture below shows the best places content should be placed in each step of the buyer's journey.

When trying to convert visitors into leads, you should utilize content in all of the stages of the buyer's journey. It is more important to focus on the content first, and the design second. Products should not be discussed until the decision stage of the buyer's journey. Delivery of content makes it relevant, so you need to make sure you can get your content out in an effective way. Make sure you are promoting and distributing your content. Lesson 3 focuses on content because it is a crucial step in inbound marketing. Without it, inbound marketing would not be successful at all. 

Week 6: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 1

Hubspot lesson one focuses on the essentials of an effective inbound strategy. An inbound strategy is less interuptive than traditional marketing, focusing on SEO, blogging, and the attraction of customers. Instead of creating commercials, they create videos to attract customers. It is much more customer focused, and inbound marketing wants you to find them, not the customers to find you.

The first step in inbound marketing is attract. You take strangers and turn them into visitors. This can be done through a blog, keywords, or social publishing. Next you convert them from visitors to leads. This is done through forms, calls-to-action, and landing pages. The last step is to close, this takes the leads and turns them into actual customers. This is done through CRM, email, and workflows.

The buyers journey consists of three stages: the awareness, consideration, and decision stages. This is the active research process someone goes through leading up to a purchase. Buyer persona stories should contain information about their background, their demographics, and their goals and challenges. These are all topics that were touched on in lesson one. It is important to have these concepts memorized because they are essential in inbound marketing.

Week 6: MKTG 348- Hubspot Lesson 2

Hubspot is a developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. Inbound marketing is drawing customers to products and services using content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optomization and branding. Hubspot offers a certification that will be a great resume builder. It consists of 12 video sections that give you information on ways to help improve your knowledge of Hubspot. The first section talks about the essentials of an effective inbound strategy. Section Two talks about optimizing your website for search engines.

Hubspot helps you with SEO, the  process of improving your website so it attracts more visitors to increase the clicks on your webpage. Having a solid SEO your page will get ranked higher and higher on a page. The use of keywords is first and most important step in SEO. In order to find more keywords for you to use is type one of your current keywords into the internet. This will help you find what keywords lead you to and help you find more leads. It is important to have keywords that optimize the amount of clicks, you should research your keywords and only use words that will get you lots of clicks. Try general words as well as more specific keywords to help target broad and specific audiences. One things that a lot of people forget to do is to optimize your website for mobile phones. Pages that are not mobile friendly lose lots of traffic. Hubspot is a great tool that will help you optimize your website. Look into getting Hubspot certified not just for your resume, but to help yourself grow your business.

Week 5: MKTG 348- Introduction to SEO Chapter 9

Hubspot is a developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. Inbound marketing is a technique used to draw customers to products and services using content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and branding. It is not just the process of SEO, it is the next step. It helps generate sales, and track them, using a platform such as Hubspot. Obtaining a Hubspot Certification is very beneficial because it helps place SEO in context, and it emphasizes content.

Sarch Engine News Certification is another great qualification to obtain, but it is pricey. Start off with obtaining your Hubspot certification, and from there see what your next best step is in the SEO world. Having these certifications looks great on your resume and companies will love that you have given your time, effort, and money to further your knowledge of SEO.

Week 5: MKTG 348- Introduction to SEO Chapter 8

Once you have mastered SEO you are not done. SEO is constantly changing so it is important that you are following the changes so you stay up to date. In order to stay up to date try reading blog posts, attending webinars, and reading books. Some websites that are great sources are; www.searchenginenews.com, www.moz.com, and www.semrush.com. One thing to remember is to always check the dates, when it was written it was current but it might be an old post.

A quick example of the constant changes in SEO is an event called "Mobilegeddon." It occurred on April 22, 2015. Google released an algorithm update, stating that mobile rankings would differ for mobile-friendly sites starting on April 21, 2015.

Just like fashion, SEO does go out of date. Think of it this way, would you want to show up to a prom wearing the same dress your grandma wore to prom? Unless you have an extremely fashion forward grandma, her dress is probably very out to date and you would stick out like a sore thumb. You do not want your SEO to be the outdated dress at the prom, keep up to date!

Week 4: MKTG 348- Introduction to SEO Chapter 7

One important thing to always check is how Google sees your website. In order to do this simply type in your website domain into the Google. It will then list all the pages it sees. You can click through and find your page, you may even find that you had published pages you did not mean to. Doing this helps you keep up with the maintenance on your page.

Before website templates were available, you had to create your own website templates. This process is extremely difficult and not something that can be done easily. Often a Webmaster is hired to be incharge of optomizing the website and making sure that it is running smoothly for customers. Using another Google tool go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools. Once there click add property, copy your blog address into the box, and click the add button. If you are signed into the same gmail you used to make your blog, Google will tell you that you are a verified owner.

Week 4: MKTG 348- Introduction to SEO Chapter 6

One thing to look out for is having duplicate content on pages of your site. Content should be unique, so it is worth going to Siteliner.com. This website is a good tool to scan for duplicate content. If you do find any duplicate content simply delete one of the pages. While duplicate content is not a good thing, sometimes it can be hard to get rid of all cases of it.

Something even more important to monitor is rank. The higher you are up on a page the more likely customers are to click your page. If you go to http://tinyurl.com/seocentrokp, you can enter your website and it will give you your rank. If you're above 100 for a given keyword, it will show the rank. Once you're ranked it is important to try and maintain the rank as well as work to increase the rank.

Week 3: MKTG 348- Introduction to SEO Chapter 5

SEO can be done not only on google, but it can be used on Blogger too. If you have a blog on blogger log into it and we can enter in our own overall meta description. Once you're logged in, scroll down in settings, and choose Search Preferences. Click edit next to description and you can add a maximum of 150 characters. Once you click save the description you just entered will appear in Google search results. Not only can this be done for the entire site, but it can be done for individual posts.

In order to do this, click edit on an individual post. On the right, in Post Settings, you can click Search Description. Enter in your description, click done, and do not forget to save. Now you have personalized not only your entire blog, but your individual post as well!