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 8: MKTG 345 Introduction to Google Analytics Chapter 7

Just like the past two chapters, chapter 7 provides another way to learn about analytics in a live setting. The last two chapters talked about Shopify and AdWords, while this chapter will talk about Gumroad. Gumroad can be easily linked to Google Analytics, and it has its own built-in analytics.

Conversion analytics is very important to learn because they help you to optimize a campaign. It helps make campaigns more effective, and more efficient. In the process, generating more revenue and using the existing budget more wisely. Knowing a conversion rate helps you measure the effectiveness of your efforts to improve things, over time.

Let's get started with Gumroad! Go to: https://gumroad.com/ click "Start Selling:" then create an account. Next, name your store and enter a description. You will want to add a username, which will appear in the link. Once your account is all set up, you want to connect with Google Analytics.

Go to: https://www.google.com/analytics/ click "Access Google Analytics," click "Property," add your Gumroad website in, and copy the Tracking ID it gives you.

Now, you'll want to go back into Gumroad, and select "Settings." In the "Advanced" section paste in the Tracking ID, you just obtained from Google Analytics. Update the account details, then add a product into Gumroad. Once you have a product added in, share it on Facebook to generate some traffic. Once you have some traffic you can go to Analytics in Gumroad and see how your conversion rate is doing.

Google Analytics will allow you to dig a little deeper into the statistics than Gumroad will. You can use both websites to track your website, and make improvements to increase your revenue even more!

Week 8: MKTG 345- Surfing the Tsunami Ch 8

Chapter 8 is the last chapter in Surfing the Tsunami and it discusses what to do next. Now that you understand AI, the causes, and the effects, it's time to discuss what to do after you implement the three A's (adapt, adopt, and adept) into your life.

As a reminder, a couple great books to read about AI include Rise of the Robots, Master Algorithm, and 2nd Machine Age.

Once you've read these three books try Machine Learning and Deep Learning to help you become more adept in AI.

Books can only take you so far though, once you have read all these books front to back, your next step is to take courses in AI to further your understanding. These courses can be done at a local community college, online/book refreshers such as Khan Academy, or Coursera. Coursera offers free courses as well as courses for payment. Through Coursera you can receive actual certificates that will look great on a resume! They also offer online Master's Degree programs in Computer Science.

Another great option besides Coursera is Udacity. You can get their "Learn to Code" nanodegree. It starts with HTML and moves to python. They also carry an online Master's Degree in Computer Science.

All of these books and websites are great sources to help you stay up to date with AI. While Artificial Intelligence does not seem to be affecting you, it affects everyone in some way, shape, or form. It is very important to address AI and understand the effects it has on everyday life.

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 7: MKTG 345 Introduction to Google Analytics Chapter 6

Last week we talked about Shopify and how it provides a foundation for e-commerce. This week we will move on and talk about how AdWords provides a way to advertise a site and track conversion.

To start off lets create an acount, go to http://www.google.com/adwords. Once your account is created go to tools and then to conversions. The goal is to set up a connection between AdWords and your e-commerce site. You can then code it with Shopify and it will allow AdWords to track your site. It will allow you to track how much money you spend on ads to the revenue you will make on your your e-commerce site.

Click the conversion button and ad Shopify in the box. Add the conversion channel as Purchase/Sale, the markup language to HTML, and last click "I make changes to the code." Click done and you are set. Take the code Google gives you, log onto your Shopify, click checkout, and paste the link into the additional content and scripts area.

Congrats, you have successfully linked your Shopify and AdWords, now you will have a better understanding when you are tracking your site!