Inbound Marketing Blog

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In the Elements of an Inbound Marketing Campaign, we covered:

• A checklist for the technical aspects of an inbound marketing campaign, including landing pages, thank you pages, follow-up emails and workflows.
• Ways to drive traffic to your offers via additional types of content such as blog and social media posts, as well as emails.
• And the kind of skill sets you’ll need to make it all happen, including a designer, web developer, writer and a Google SEO specialist.

With all of those basics laid out, we wanted to delve deeper into the email marketing portion. Although many businesses (maybe even yours) may dismiss email as simple one-on-one digital communication that doesn't require strategy, it is actually a powerful tool that too many businesses miss out on because they don't understand how it can be used for so much more.

Poole Family Farms is a small, four-generation family farm, joyfully bringing locally grown produce to communities in the Pacific Northwest. They provide high-quality produce, direct from the farm, at bulk rate pricing.

The Poole family offers an opportunity for “You-Pick Cherries” right from the Poole Family Farm property in Hood River, Oregon, as well as deliveries of a variety of fresh produce from their farm and from other Oregon family farms, to Portland, Newport, Corvallis, and beyond (12+ locations).

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If you've ever tried talking with someone who doesn't seem to listen to you, you know how annoying it can be. You try to make a point, but they just run over it like a steamroller and talk about something that interests them.

Why is this so frustrating? Because, even if they don't mean to, these people send the message, "I only care about me. I don't care about you. You don't matter."

No one likes hearing this. Especially not potential clients--after all, why give money to someone who doesn't respect you? That's why it's so important to understand buyer personas and the buyer's journey--it helps you create content that tells customers, "We understand you, we value you and we have what you need."

"Our experience with Tribute Media has been fantastic! Web marketing can be a complicated strategy for small business, and the entire team at Tribute Media has done a great job educating us as well as getting to know our business personally. We truly feel that this process has been a collaborative effort from the start. Tribute Media has proven to be a team of professionals working together to create the best possible outcomes for our business."

-Kim Mulvahill, CVT, Hospital Administrator

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Have you ever thought of the parallels between marketing your business and dating? They are more similar than you might think. Trying to find the right prospects to invest your marketing and sales efforts into can be a lot like finding love. And when you're looking for love (or creating buyer personas for your business), it's just as important to know your deal breakers as it is to know the characteristics you are attracted to. Let's break it down.

They're Just Not That Into You

Think back to your dating days (or, if you're still single, think about the current dating pool). You might have run into this one particular type of guy/girl. They had something that you really liked, but it always came with waaaaay too many red flags. Perhaps you even worked out a kind of checklist for this type:

Tribute Media has been a HubSpot Agency Partner for about three years now. During that time, we've learned a lot. When we started with HubSpot, there were, if I remember correctly, only four certifications from HubSpot Academy. HubSpot has worked very hard to improve their training offerings for their clients and their agency partners.

When we first signed up as an agency partner early in 2015, I knew that the only way we'd be successful was to embrace HubSpot fully. It's paid off in spades for us and for our clients who have done the same. The Inbound Methodology is paramount to that success.

The most important question that I'm hoping to answer is: Is it worth your time to invest in attaining HubSpot Certifications?

If you’re a data nerd like me, then you know that one of the most frustrating things in marketing is to *not8 know information about the users browsing your site content. Sure, you could sift through all the information that Google Analytics provides, but there’s got to be an easier way to get some quick insights about leads and users…

What’s this? HubSpot has software that does this? And it’s FREE?

You've pored over buyer personas and invested in understanding your audience. You've concocted a compelling offer, a valuable piece of content, a meaningful event. You've got what they want. You've got what they need. You're a marketing genius. 

The goal of any inbound marketing campaign is to convert your audience, your contacts, your leads, your prospects, into paying customers and raving fans of your business. And when you create an offer or an event, you are engaging that audience and showing them you've got what it takes to earn their business. You are building a relationship and earning trust and proving that your company can best serve their needs or that your product will solve their problems.

The best part is that people will just know you've done all that work and will just find your offer. 

Oh, wait. That's not right.

This is where your campaign collateral comes in. These assets are the big flashing arrows pointing people to your offer. They are placed where your audience already spends time online and create a path to your offer.

Below, we've listed a few of the major assets associated with pretty much every inbound marketing campaign and provided best practices to increase conversions. Keep these in mind when creating collateral for your next campaign. 

If your company has been blogging for years, you have likely had many campaigns that have inspired blogs posts. But now that those campaigns have ended, you may be wondering: “What purpose do these posts serve now that my campaigns are over?”

Besides the obvious SEO benefit of blog posts, there is another benefit to keeping them in your repertoire: You can recycle them.

Here are a few ways to repurpose your old content to drive user engagement and traffic to new campaigns.

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When I first started hearing about this idea of sales and marketing being a strained relationship, I didn't really understand. At that point, I think I had just been very lucky that all my experiences with marketing and sales alignment were positive. It was just a big ol' love fest over here at Tribute Media.

But I've seen the data. I've watched some of our clients struggle. And ultimately, the proof is in the numbers.

For those looking to improve the relationship, alignment, and general understanding between these two departments, here are a few super simple ideas to get you started.