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Beating Your Competition

Beating Your Competition is an entry level overview of how to successfully market your brand leveraging the power of inbound marketing.

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Andre LeBlanc
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
171 views42 pages

Beating Your Competition

Beating Your Competition is an entry level overview of how to successfully market your brand leveraging the power of inbound marketing.

Uploaded by

Andre LeBlanc
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 42

[B]eating Your Competition

Written by Andre LeBlanc

[B]eating Your Competition

2011 RivalEater Inc. Creative Commons Written by Andre LeBlanc Please feel free to post this on your blog or pass it on to whomever you think could benefit from it! Thank you!

[B]eating Your Competition [B]eating Your Competition


Written by Andre LeBlanc

5
6 7 8 9 11 12 16 17 18 19 20 21

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS


The Consumer Decision Process Awareness Inbound Marketing Awareness - Revisited Food for Thought: Research Food for Thought: Engagement Decision Discuss Bond Food for Thought:

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23 24 25 28 29 33 37

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION


Plan of Attack Build the Foundation Attract Visitors Food for Thought: Generate Leads Food for Thought: Food for Thought:

[B]eating Your Competition

38 40

Improve Over Time Food for Thought:

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03 - GET STARTED
Get Started

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

The Consumer Decision Process


Revealing how prospects become customers.
To market your company effectively (and beat your competition), you have to understand how your prospects make decisions. In a nutshell, your prospect starts this process by becoming aware of the need your company addresses. Then your prospect begins to research their need and compare the available solutions [you + your competitors]. Once your prospect has found a suitable option, they engage that option. Then your prospect makes a decision to purchase or not to purchase. After the decision has been made, they discuss it with their friends, family, and increasingly online. In a successful scenario, they will form a bond with the brand and likely purchase from the brand again. In an unsuccessful scenario, they will re-enter the research stage looking for other options. Lets take a closer look at each stage to see how your prospects are forming their options and how your brand can influence their decision (and ultimately, beat your competition).

CONSUMER

PROCESS
NO BOND

DECISION MAKING

AWARENESS RESEARCH

LOYALTY
BOND

ENGAGEMENT DECISION

LOOP

DISCUSS
Inspired from the Harvard Business Review

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

Awareness

Your prospect needs to know you exist.


The awareness stage begins with your prospect recognizing their need for your product or service. It is critical that the prospect makes contact with your company during this stage. In order to do business with your company, they first have to know you exist. This is the primary target stage of traditional marketing strategies. Commercials, billboards, cold-calling, print advertising, radio, trade shows, and yes...even skywriting are traditional ways of raising awareness of your company. For a long time, these traditional advertising techniques were the only way to advertise to your prospects; and furthermore, they were effective. But, the days of your prospects only having a few channels and watching the commercials died with the disco. Even during the Superbowl, commercials are being ignored more than ever. These strategies are like a shotgun approach to marketing your company. They interrupt your prospect and try to gain attention by being loud enough to distract them from what they are doing. Their is little targeting, so the goal is to spread your campaign wide enough that you hit something. Your prospects have become desensitized to this kind of marketing. If this shotgun approach to marketing isnt working anymore, then what is? [drum roll please]

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

Inbound Marketing

A smarter, cheaper, more efficient approach.


In todays world, people are looking for what your company provides. When they recognize their need, they immediately begin looking for potential providers to fill that need. They are able to compare products, access expert reviews, poll their friends, and engage with providers all from the convenience of their computer laptop, tablet, smartphone, hologram, etc. Inbound marketing is about flipping the strategy. Instead of shotgunning people that may or may not be interested or even have the need for the service/product you provide, its about targeting the people that are actively looking for a provider of the need that you fill. Its a much more cost effective way of marketing because youre not wasting your campaign ammo on unqualified and disinterested people. Now, to be fair to our old friend Traditional Marketing, inbound marketing wasnt around in the 60s. In fact, its only really started to take root with the growing popularity of the internet, specifically due to new developments like social media and search engines. Furthermore, traditional marketing is not dead, it still can be effective, but the most effective traditional marketing campaigns send the interested prospects online to engage with the company further. This makes your online presence the place to start.

In. bound Mar. ket. ing


-noun
Any tactic that focuses on engaging interested people rather than blindly building awareness.

If you have more money than brains you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing. -Guy Kawasaki

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

Search Phrase

Awareness - Revisited

Where your prospects are looking.


Revisiting the awareness stage with our inbound marketing goggles on, the prospect has recognized their need for something. As an example, lets say our prospect is in the market for a new car. In todays world of information readiness, the prospect is likely to start by searching through a search engine like Google or Bing. This is the results page for the search phrase I need a new car. These results pages return what the search engine ranks as the most relevant results for the entered search phrase. From here our prospect will likely click one of the top few results. Paid Ads Organic

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

10

Youre Company Can Get Found Online


If your company wishes to get traffic online, and what company doesnt, then performing well here should be a key component to your marketing strategy. With 3 billion searches a day and only 25% of them going past the first page, it is easy to understand why positioning your company on the first page for key search phrases is integral to your companys success. To get found online, your company should implement strategies that focus on generating traffic. These tactics include (but are by no means limited to): Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, and Search Engine Marketing. We will cover these strategies in a little more depth in the next section. Lets continues our prospects journey by entering the research stage.

SEARCHES ON GOOGLE PER MONTH


THATS...

88,000,000,000

WORLDWIDE WE CONDUCT

PER SECOND PER MINUTE PER HOUR PER DAY

34,000 2,000,000 121,000,000 3,000,000,000


Stats: Hubspot

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

11

Food for Thought:

-How is your company currently building awareness? -Is it working? -What are your prospects searching for? -Does your company have a presence in these results? -Do you know what steps to take to position your company better? -Do you know how to optimize your results for higher conversion?

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

12

Research

Social Media + Online Community = Modern Word of Mouth


Once your prospect has become aware of their need, they are going to begin researching their available options. The research phase has long been a weakness of traditional marketing. That weakness is even more emphasized now than ever. With the availability of information on the internet, your prospects can get more details and information than ever before. Using only traditional marketing, it is very difficult to target and influence your prospects during the research stage. This is not the case with inbound marketing. You can specifically target your prospects in the stage and influence their decision. Lets take a look at some methods to accomplish this.

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

13

Social Media Makes Cents (sorry, I had to).


A likely place for your prospects to research their need and your company is through social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. On these sites they will ask their friends and colleagues for recommendations and suggestions. The key is to have an active social presence and be listening for brand, company, and industry mentions. Following our example, you can see that when performing the search on Twitter for Car Recommendations the top result is a prime example of someone who is asking their friends for recommendations. The second result is a good example of someone using blogging as an effective inbound marketing technique that would probably result in a clickthrough from our prospect. A provider, a car dealership or manufacturer in this example, by listening for this phrase could quickly respond directly to this interested prospect. In addition, this prospect will likely feel the love because a company was listening to them and able to promptly reply.

Lead Opportunity

Likely Clickthrough

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS


Comparison Sites
Another way your prospects will research their options, is by comparing their ...ehem... options. Sites like CNET and Consumer Reports are devoted to comparing products, collecting consumer reviews, and providing expert opinions. Following our prospect on their car buying journey, they have found a couple of different car comparison websites where they can easily compare the cars they are interested in side-by-side. A smart provider will monitor the consumer reviews for insightful feedback. In addition, they will encourage their satisfied customers to leave reviews on these sites. An interesting thing to note, is the site on the right has provided an opportunity for car manufactures to advertise their car in the side-by-side comparison. These types of opportunities exist in your industry too, you just need to know where to look.

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01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

15

Beating your competitors.


Your company can also influence this comparison dance by tailoring your information and content to show why your company is so much better than that other company. You can even run ads targeting your competitors name and brands and show a comparison of your solution versus theirs. For instance, 3D Cart, an eCommerce system, is using this tactic for the search phrase Volusion, a popular competitor. When you click on their ad it takes you to this special landing page which compares Volusions features to their own. This comparison chart visually contrasts 3D carts strengths to Volusions weaknesses. This is a smart tactic because it targets a prospect that is not only aware of their competitor, but likely considering using them. These specific examples are good demonstrations of how smart companies have developed strategies to leverage this research stage. Once you know how your prospects are researching, you can also develop strategies to influence your prospects in this phase.

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

16

Food for Thought:

-How is your company influencing prospects in the research phase? -Is it working? -Where are your prospects going to research your companys product/service? -What are you doing to make the results they find better? -What are your competitors doing?

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

17

Engagement

Lead nurturing is key to effective engagement.


The engagement stage is where your prospect actually starts to take interest in your company. At this point, they have researched their available options and are looking to take their relationship with your company to the next level. They arent ready to commit yet, but they want to test the waters. There are a lot of way to engage your prospects. One of the most effective forms of engagement is through advanced content (eBooks, videos, demos, trials, interactive media, etc.) The important thing to remember is, the follow up is just as important as the content itself. Following up quickly is proven to increase lead to customer conversion rate. The most effective way to accomplish this is through an automated lead nurturing campaign. Automated Lead Nurturing Campaigns are email campaigns that are automatically sent when a lead is acquired. When your prospect engages your company, have an automated email campaign that is sent as soon as the prospect engages.

Our prospect has chosen to engage Jeep through their Build Your Own app. (Who doesnt love Jeeps)

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

18

Decision

The start of something beautiful...maybe


This is where all that hard work pays off. Because your company did such an awesome job of: 1) Showing that your company provides what your prospects need. 2) Doing the best dance during the comparison dance. 3) Lovingly engaging and nurturing your prospect when they reached out to your company. Now, your prospect has become your customer...or at least, thats how its suppose to go. Your marketing strategy doesnt end here though. Satisfied or not (and even customer or not), they are going to talk to about it.

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

19

Discuss

The power to speak life or death...too dramatic?


The discussion phase is perhaps the most important stage in the process (besides making the sale of course). Your customer is going to talk about your company and their experience with it. While they are doing this they are going to influence other prospects in the awareness and researches stages. This effectively turns your customers into brand evangelists. What your company needs to be careful of is the prospects that have decided not to purchase your product and customers that have become dissatisfied. As they will also influence your prospects effectively turning into brand devangelists (the opposite of an evangelist). The discussion can occur in many different places across the web: social media, shopping sites, comparison sites, forums, etc. They key to owning the discussion is to be listening. There are many different services that make this possible and we will talk more about that in the next section.

01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS Bond


Getting return customers.
In order to establish a loyalty loop where your customers keep coming back for more (and market you to their social circles), you need to form a long lasting bond with them. This is another area where social media can really come in handy. Through providing interactive content, updates, and useful information, you can establish a culture and community around your company. Honda and Jeep have both done an excellent job at this. They both have over 1 million fans (on Facebook alone) that are actively engaging with their brands and sharing the brands with their friends. This is the essence of viral marketing.

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01 - UNDERSTANDING YOUR PROSPECTS

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Food for Thought:

-Is your company satisfied with your visit to lead ratio? (Do you know your visit to lead ratio?) -Are your companys leads converting into customers? -What are people saying about your company? -Is your company getting return customers? -Is your company getting referrals?

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

23

Plan of Attack
In five easy steps!
The game winning plan is pretty straight forward, its not about building the most flashy website, or having the most followers on Twitter (though both may help); its about building a system focused on the bottom line, SALES! Its certainly great to have the most modern website coded with HTML 5 and CSS 3 (which ours are), but is that really going to make the difference in acquiring a new customer...probably not. What is going to make the difference, is a system that captures your prospects, has been built to form a relationship with that prospect, and will nurture them into a conversion. Thats how you beat your competition!

INTERNET MARKETING IN 5 STEPS


1 2 3 4 5

BUILD THE FOUNDATION ATTRACT VISITORS GENERATE LEADS INCREASE SALES IMPROVE OVER TIME

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

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Build the Foundation


Web Design
Good internet marketing starts with creating a strong foundation that captures your brand and makes it effective online. This starts with a website that is attractive, flexible, blog-enabled, socially integrated, technically sound, future ready, and ...um... fire proof. For more information about web design, visit our website.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

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Attract Visitors
Once you have the foundation built, you need to attract people; preferably qualified, interested people. This can be accomplished through a number of ways including Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Search Engine Marketing, and other future industry buzz words.

Blogging

Blogging is the backbone of generating traffic. Its benefits include: building content (useful for building a bond with your prospect/ customer), establishing you as an industry thought leader, and boosting your search engine ranking. Blogging begins by scheduling and creating blog entries that maximize your traffic generation and engage your audience.

SOURCE:HUBSPOT

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

26

Search Engine Optimization


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting traffic from search engines, like Google and Bing, for the words and phrases that people are using to search for your business solution. SEO starts by performing keyword research to determine what those keywords and keyphrases are. After that your company should optimize content, increase link generation, monitor user engagement, and tweak other vital metrics to boost your ranking.

75%

OF USERS NEVER SCROLL PAST THE FIRST PAGE OF RESULTS

SOURCE: MARKETSHARE.HITSLINK.COM

Social Media
Social Media is becoming an ever more powerful marketing tool for both B2Bs and B2Cs alike. It is a great resource to monitor brand sentiment, listen for brand mentions, scout leads, build relationships, keep prospects engaged, and interact with your community. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are platforms to build a loyal fan base, encourage interaction, and turn your fans into brand evangelists that will share your company. They key to social media is to engage your community wherever it exists. (Even if thats not Facebook or Twitter)

SOURCE:HUBSPOT

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

27

Search Engine Marketing


Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are targeted campaigns that drive new, qualified traffic to your site. The most common form of SEM are Pay-per-Click campaigns, but there are other equally effective forms including Search Retargeting. The idea behind Search Engine Marketing is to make your company more visible in searches and the sites that your prospects are visiting. To have effective SEM your company needs to determine what keywords and keyphrases to target. In addition, your company needs to optimize your campaigns to maximize their reach and effectiveness.

SOURCE: MARKETINGSHERPA

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

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Food for Thought:

-Does your company have control over the amount of traffic its website receives. -What are you doing to get more traffic? -Are you active in social media? If so, how are you measuring ROI. -Do you know what words people are using in search engines to find a product or service like yours.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION Generate Leads

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Once you have traffic, you need to generate leads. Leads can be on a micro-conversion level (like getting someone to like your Facebook fan page) or on a macro-conversion level (like getting someone to ask for a consultation or buy a product). Simply having a contact button is not going to generate the amount of leads that your company is looking for. The best tactics to generate leads is to combine solid offers with custom landing pages and effective calls to action across all of your marketing materials.

Sales Funnel
Developing a Sales Funnel will help you identify your audience and what kind of content and offers appeal to them.

LE S AD
SALES

Creating content for every level of your sales funnel will maximize your marketing efforts and help your company generate leads more effectively.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION


DEDICATED LANDING PAGES
Landing Pages
Targeted Landing Pages dramatically increase visit to lead conversion ratio. A landing page has one purpose (sell a single product, acquire lead information, etc) and should reflect how the visitor arrived at your site (Search Engine, Facebook, etc). When used in conjunction with other marketing services, such as Search Engine Marketing, these targeted landing pages are very effective at converting your prospects into leads (or sales).

30

92%

OF USERS AGREE, TARGETED

LANDING PAGES ARE EFFECTIVE


SOURCE: MARKETINGSHERPA

ITE S WHPER PA
LES

LOG B

S
E O -BO KS

Advanced Content
Advanced Content includes information such as E-books, webinars, podcasts, etc. It is premium content that your prospects find relevant and interesting. The goal of this content is to build a bond with your prospects and establish your company as an industry expert. In exchange for this content, they will excitedly become leads in your sales pipeline.

AR

TIC

A DV TEN A

CON

CED N T

O IDE V

T INS

CT RU

MA

L UA

ION

S ESSE PR EA
REL

N EBI

AR

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

31

Offers
Offers are a great way to get your audience to engage your brand and are a key in generating leads. The key is to develop offers that appeal to your prospects. If done effectively, your offers will capture leads and result in further interactions.

Calls to Action
Calls to Action are appropriately placed, well timed calls (graphics, links, instructions, etc) that encourage your prospects to take an action. Giving your prospects an easy and obvious way to complete the desired action is crucial to generating leads.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

32

Social Proof
Social Proof is formed from the public feedback the comments and reviews of your customers. Your company should encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews of your company on relevant sites and communities. In addition, your company should listen for negative reviews to both directly address dissatisfied customers and learn where your company may have room for improvement.

[YOUR COMPANY] I love _______ .

-Happy Customer

[YOUR COMPANY] _______ is awesome.

-Brand Evangelist

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

33

Food for Thought:

-When someone comes to your site, what is your company hoping they do? -How many leads does your company want to receive online? -Are your companys offers bringing you leads? -Does your company know how to improve lead generation?

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

34

Increase Sales

Converting those leads into sales is a process that takes time. Developing automated lead nurturing campaigns and a finely-tuned sales process can make this process more automatic.

Email Marketing
Email Marketing is a great way to periodically communicate with your leads or current customers. The more targeted your email campaigns are, the more effective they will be. Your company should plan and create email marketing campaigns that leverage your lead data to maximize sales.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

35

Automated Lead Nurturing


Automated Lead Nurturing are automatic email campaigns sent immediately after your prospects contact your company and subsequently at scheduled intervals. This quick communication is effortless (once setup) and is proven to increase sales conversions. For the best results, setup these automatic campaigns and make improvements by monitoring their success.

Lead Segmentation
Lead Segmentation separates your leads into different groups based on their source and what actions they have taken. This enables you to target your leads better during email campaigns, phone calls, etc.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

36

CRM Integration
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Integration provides your sales team the maximum effectiveness in tracking leads from your inbound and outbound marketing sources. It will help them determine what leads to pursue and even grade them based on interaction. In addition, it will help in measuring the effectiveness of your sales funnel, performance of your sales team, etc. Integrating your sales platform with your marketing strategies simply makes sense. It allows you to target qualified leads, customize your presentation, and nurture them into customers.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

37

Food for Thought:

-Does your company have a strategy to convert your leads into customers? -Is your system customized to target leads in their specific stage of the process? -Does your company have a way of tracking your leads?

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

38

Improve Over Time

Success is great, being more successful is ...more great. In order to improve your results over time you need to monitor your successes and failures. Your company needs to track what campaigns, keywords, offers, etc. are not only bringing traffic, but which ones are converting into leads and sales. Your company should also be performing A/B tests on all of your marketing materials to improve them and see what your prospects respond to better.

A B
or

A/B Tests
A/B Tests use two or more different versions of the a page, form, etc. to determine which is better and what improvements can be made to increase effectiveness. To maximize your internet marketing efforts, your company should constantly be running these A/B tests to determine how it can improve its marketing.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

39

In-Depth Analytics
In-Depth Analytics are critical to understanding and measuring marketing performance. Start by measuring how many visits, leads, and customers are coming from each source. Then measure which of these sources are converting into sales, which sources are assisting in the process, and which sources are not converting. This will reveal the value of the sources and be useful in deciding how to best apply marketing efforts.

Regular Analysis
Regular Analysis by your team is critical to improving the effectiveness of your strategy. Inbound marketing is not a one-time expenditure, it is a constant activity... if you want it to be the most profitable. This is why good analysis is the foundation to improving results.

02 - THE WINNING SOLUTION

40

Food for Thought:

-Is your company tracking the success of individual campaigns? -Is your company testing campaigns, pages, keywords, etc. against each other to see which is more effective? -Is your company planning how to improve your results? -Is your company staying current with changing trends?

03 - GET STARTED

03 - GET STARTED

42

Get Started
We can help!
Start getting leads and sales from your online marketing strategy today! To get started, we recommend following the steps outlined in The Winning Solution section. If you need help getting started we would love to be of assistance. RivalEater Inc. is a creative internet marketing agency. We are experts in internet marketing and branding. If you would like a free consultation to evaluate your current marketing strategy and begin discussing how we could improve it, visit our website today.

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