Inbound Marketing Archives - Modern Marketing Partners

Micro-Vertical Marketing Guide image

Prior to Micro-Vertical Marketing, there was Vertical Market Development, a mature and proven marketing approach or process defined as marketing activities that target and communicate with decision makers in specific/defined market segments. More recently, micro-vertical market marketing has gained interest as competition grows in software, consulting, capital equipment, and truly any "considered purchase" market (considered purchase is a typically complex, high dollar value scenario vs. impulse purchase, which is simple and low dollar value). This micro-vertical marketing guide will start with a definition, followed by details on industry classifications. Next, objectives and some tips for identifying viable micro-verticals. Of course, effective marketing is the key to success, so best practices are delineated. Finally, a micro-vertical marketing case study will share a real life ...

Develop an Inbound Approach to Creating Relevant Content image

There’s a sports adage that many coaches tell their athletes, “let the game come to you.” It may seem like odd advice, because most sports-related activities and matches seem to be all about controlling the tempo and taking charge of the game. However, this different and disciplined approach can yield important benefits for players and professionals alike. For marketing professionals in today’s business climate, it means being patient, not passive, just alert and resolute. And it means letting the customer come to you. You still have to entice them of course, but it may be over a longer period of time. How do you establish visibility and credibility with this approach? By creating relevant content that has more in common ...

What the Future Holds for Dating Affiliate Programs standard

Affiliate Marketing has been around for some time now. It has proved to be a straightforward business model, enabling entrepreneurs to construct web platforms for backspace marketing at a relatively low cost, while offering the potential to gain considerable income. Retailers have discovered a way of promoting their products without having to commit to a marketing budget. But what lies around the corner for this particular type of business model? Global trends Although it is difficult to make predictions in a global marketplace where shorter-term trends rather than longer-term seismic shifts are the norm, affiliate marketing is certainly not immune to minor fluctuations. Anything involving a degree of technology will be subject to external impacts. For instance, according to the latest e-commerce ...

14th of June, 2018
In: Email Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Best Practices, Paid Search, Social Media
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Inbound Marketing Primer image

The term “inbound marketing” originated on Hubspot years ago, but it’s still critical for marketers today. You earn the customer or consumer’s interest, often in a more targeted way, rather than blasting it to the masses via traditional marketing. 4 Phases in the Buying Process There are 4 phases in the a typical buying process: (1) attract, (2) convert, (3) close, (4) delight. The first step involves attracting strangers to your website, turning them into visitors. Then, in turn, interested visitors are turned into leads. You then attempt to close those leads, turning them into customers. Keep customers happy, and they’ll promote for you. Image Source: https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing Step 1: Attract The best ways to attract new visitors include: blogging, SEO, and social media. Blogging ...

Salesforce and Dropbox Partnership to Enhance Collaboration and Customer Experience image

Dropbox and Salesforce announced a global partnership agreement last week to help customers of both companies get more from the joint use of their products and services. Salesforce has the No 1 marketshare in customer relationship management products and Dropbox Business is the largest collaboration network in the world. According to Salesforce, the idea is to enable companies of all types and sizes to work with their value chains to better understand and serve their customers’ needs across sales, service, marketing and other commerce channels. Increase Brand Engagement & Productivity The companies wanted to focus on two main areas – brand engagement and digital asset management and productivity and collaboration for teams working in a cloud environment. The integration will allow customers ...

9th of November, 2017
In: B2B Marketing, Cause Marketing, Inbound Marketing
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How to Market to Millennial B2B Buyers image

The millennials are growing up, and as they do so, they move to more prominent, decision making roles. Take company B2B buying committees, for example. 82% now include at least one millennial employee. Considering the majority of buying teams now have some millennials to impress, it’s important to consider what they’re looking for when making purchasing decisions. So what roles do millennials play on their buying teams? 13% Decision-Maker 27% Influencer 17% Project Manager 38% Researcher This information shows that most millennials are not yet making the final decisions, but the fact that so many are researchers and influencers shows that they have an effect on the final decision. Without impressing them, you’ll likely never be seen by the decision-makers, so ...

5 Tips for Marketing IT Services image

Information Technology (IT) is growing exponentially. Although there is plenty of demand, there are also plenty of firms willing to supply such services. That’s where marketing comes in. It’s not enough to simply offer your services; you need to effectively implement marketing to achieve sales. But how? We’ve compiled both 5 IT firm challenges and 5 tips for marketing IT services. 5 IT Firm Challenges Identifying the challenges of the IT industry can help us determine what their marketing needs are. What are IT firms struggling most with? It boils down to 5 major challenges: 8% have difficulty attracting new business. 6% have difficulty finding and retaining good employees. 8% struggle to remain innovative. 7% face a difficult economy or an ...

6 Features Every IT Company Needs on Their Website image

Your website is one of the most important marketing and business development tools you have. A majority of prospective clients will begin their hunt for IT services with a search engine, with these searches often being local in nature. The primary purpose of your website is two fold: 1) to help prospects find you; and 2) once they find you, to tell them about what your business does (services). Whether a small or large IT services provider, there are 6 essential website features that are crucial to generating more leads: Mobile-Friendly Easy to Contact Services Case Studies/Testimonials/Reviews Blog Local SEO Mobile-Friendly Potential clients are almost certainly searching for your services on a phone. More often than not, searches with local intent (e.g. local ...

31st of May, 2017
In: HubSpot, Inbound Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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How to Add Meta Descriptions to a HubSpot Blog image

how to add meta descriptions to HubSpot blog

In this article, we will be providing instructions for adding a meta description to your HubSpot Blog. What is a Meta Description? A meta description is the text that shows up with your listing in a search results page (like Google). Each page and blog on your website should have a keyword-rich meta description (also relevant and specific to the page) that is approximately 150 characters in length including spaces. While technically, meta descriptions do not effect rank, the meta description is what displays in a search result, so keyword relevance can effect click-through rate, and hence authority. It's also worth mentioning that social media sites like LinkedIn and Facebook will use your blog's description tag when it is shared on their sites. Without a meta ...

16th of May, 2017
In: B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing
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Why It Matters: Proving the Value of Your Content to Prospects image

In the great grocery store that is the internet, your content could be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It could be a well-written, topical, informative, and even slightly entertaining blog post, eBook, or infographic that is sure to turn a reader into a lead. Unfortunately, if you've ever bought bread at a grocery store, you know that you face a two-part challenge: Getting to the bread aisle/remembering to buy bread and choosing the right bread. The same goes for your content. Some people will think it's generic white bread content that you've written, and it's your job to convince them it's not. In part one of this two-part blog, we explored the many distractions that exist for your ...

18th of August, 2016
In: Blogging, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Best Practices
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Blogging Best Practices: Top 10 Tips image

According to a recent study, blogging is used by 81% of business marketers, and 77% of consumer marketers (Source: Content Marketing Institute). No question, Blogging is now a proven marketing tactic for most marketing scenarios. Why? Because effective blogging can drive significant and measurable website traffic, build search engine authority, improve social media engagement, reinforce a thought leadership image, and even generate sales leads. So how can a marketer blog more effectively? Following are Top 10 Tips for Blogging Excellence with explanations of each, along with some additional resources. Top 10 Tips for Blogging Excellence: 1. How to Plan a Blog 2. Key Content Considerations 3. Properly Integrate Blog and Website 4. Employ all possible SEO 5. Blog Titles are Critical 6. Lead Generation Techniques 7. Use relevant ...

27th of July, 2016
In: Inbound Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized
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Find an Influencer that Fits Your Influencer Marketing Strategy image

If you read our previous article, you know to take influencer marketing seriously. But how do you need to approach this strategy? It’s difficult to track down an influencer that’s the perfect fit – both a balance of a large social following, and followers that would be interested in your niche. Selecting an influencer with too few followers is not going to be seen, but an influencer with many followers is useless if their interests don’t align with your product. If you find your perfect influencer, you need to think about your approach. How are you going to compensate the influnecers? It may not be enough just to give them a product sample. Give them a reason to talk ...

21st of July, 2016
In: Inbound Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Social Media
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Why Influencer Marketing Needs to be Taken Seriously image

As the popularity of social media marketing continues to grow, so does the use of influencers. Influencer marketing is a strategy companies use similar to word-of-mouth (WOM). Businesses find influential members within online communities and incentivize them to promote their product in a more organic or native way. Typically, these influencers are experts within a product category or have a large social following. Companies may offer free products, cash, or other compensation; in exchange, the influencer chats up or reviews the company’s product on their platform(s). Influencers may spread the word on a multitude of social platforms, blogs, or websites. Why Influencer Marketing? Advertisement exhaustion. We’re each exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads per day. Consequently, the population is sick of ads. This is ...

17th of June, 2016
In: Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Thought Leadership Marketing
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Thought Leadership Marketing Guide image

Thought leadership as a marketing discipline has been around for several decades. Some credit large consulting firms that published research (e.g. The McKinsey Quarterly, Deloitte Review). Defined as positioning a company or individual as an expert through current, relevant and valuable content, thought leadership marketing (TLM) is intuitively appealing because customers seek information, education, and expertise when evaluating options, or making important decisions. Another TLM definition references the need for expertise when a high degree of financial or emotional risk is involved. That said, TLM is likely important for a broad range of categories including information technology (IT), software, consulting, big ticket purchases, new technologies, and complex products or services. As you might expect, there are many challenges to effective thought ...

3rd of March, 2016
In: Inbound Marketing, Marketing Best Practices
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Marketing Automation: Online Tools That Will Save You Time image

Inbound marketing can be very time consuming work when it relies heavily on lead generation, email marketing, and lead management. As we discussed in our last post on social media marketing automation, that not all the work should be automated. It’s still important to focus on managing a marketing strategy manually as it is to utilize online tools that will help cut your time in half. Here are 5 Online Tools That Will Save You Time: 1. Hubspot Software Hubspot is considered a pioneer in automated digital marketing and as an inbound marketing software company, they have helped numerous businesses transform their marketing. Hubspot proves that marketing automation goes beyond email and helps you integrate everything on one platform. For more on ...

6th of May, 2015
In: B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing
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Beyond the Blog: What B2B Buyers Need to See on Your Website image

At Modern Marketing Partners, we know that the blog holds significance to appeasing prospective buyers. We also know that it’s still only part of the solution. We were right all along. Testimonials, whitepapers, product and service page, and the about us section are all keys to conversion—and a new study proves that. The 2015 B2B Usability Report, a survey of B2B buyers and their preferences once reaching a website, recently found that strict reliance on blogging and social media is detrimental to a vendor—unless content marketing efforts lead to something. Key Takeaways There is a lot of good information in the report, which breaks down the information into three stages of the purchase decision: Discovery, Evaluation, and Impact on the Buyer Process. ...

Key Takeaways from Hubspot State of Inbound 2014-2015 image

For five years, HubSpot has been producing the State of Inbound Marketing. This guide is part of a survey conducted asking 3,570 respondents on their opinions surrounding the desires, strategies, and results of an inbound marketing campaign. As inbound marketing solidifies its name as a comprehensive strategy for both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) marketers, this study is becoming the canon of best practices for organizations and agencies. Learn more from Modern Marketing Partners. Key Takeaways from State of Inbound So nice of the organization to provide, in its own words, the TL;DR version of the survey. We look to share their insights and takeaways as your go-to source of marketing news. 1) Opening the Doors: Inbound begets ...

7th of April, 2014
In: Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Infographic
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B2B Content Marketing Survey Findings for 2014 image

How can you plan your Business to Content Marketing in 2014? Through a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, this information provides guidelines and benchmarking information for content marketing strategy in 2014. What did the survey find out? What should you expect in this year and beyond? Read more to see what will come of content marketing. We would like to thank Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute and Ann Handley of MarketingProfs for surveying individuals and providing this data. To register for the CMI study, you can register and download the B2B Content Marketing Survey from CMI Website. Content Marketing Tactics Understanding content marketing is a valuable factor to developing a strategy. Although the strategy and distribution ...

11th of November, 2017
In: B2B Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation, Website Best Practices
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IP Lead Tracking — Just the Facts image

There’s a new tool in your marketing tool box. A tool that can identify your website visitors, that until now, often remained anonymous. IP Lead Tracking is typically a subscription service that uses analytics code and databases to deliver timely and user-friendly reports. It is reported that although 90% of B2B sales begin with a web search, only 2-3% of website visitors complete a contact or registration form. While website analytics software report traffic or visitors, page views, bounce rate and other useful statistics, actual sales leads from registrations are a fraction (2-3%) of website visitors. What if you could identify all those anonymous website visitors? A marketing no-brainer, right? Enter IP Tracking Software Think of a Caller ID for your website. ...

Top 10 Inbound Marketing Strategies image

Inbound marketing, one of the top marketing buzzwords emerging over the past of couple of years, will be used by 58% of companies this year. In addition, 48% of marketers plan to increase their inbound marketing spend in 2013 (Hubspot). For the old-school marketer or traditionalist, inbound marketing is considered a “pull” strategy, while outbound marketing is considered a “push” strategy. Our new inbound marketing whitepaper, will share the top 10 inbound marketing strategies, followed by details on our Integrated™ Inbound Marketing Process with an accompanying infographic, and an inbound marketing case study. Top 10 Inbound Marketing Strategies Thought Leadership Blogging Social Media Search Engine Optimization (SEO) PR Integration Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Use Calls-to-Action Generate Word of Mouth Leverage events Integrated Inbound™ Marketing To download a printable PDF version of the whitepaper visit: ...

Inbound Marketing in 2013 – Survey Findings image

Today Hubspot released their 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, shedding insights into what inbound marketing means to marketers and their companies. In this fifth anniversary edition, they asked 3,339 marketing professionals from 128 countries to share their perspectives on everything from strategy and organizational alignment to budget and channel management. Overall, marketers are increasing their inbound spending nearly 50%, for the third year in a row! No question, the marketing mix has has significantly changed, shifted, and evolved from traditional marketing to Internet-centric approaches. Below are Hubspot’s 10 key takeaways from the State of Inbound Marketing 2013 report. 1. Inbound marketing is gaining traction 58% of companies plan to execute inbound marketing strategies in 2013 48% of marketers plan to increase their ...

17th of April, 2013
In: Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategies
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B2B Buyer Personas – Development Tactics and Content image

“A buyer persona is a composite of different factors that affect your buyer and motivate him/her to buy. Your prospect’s buying cycle and buying decisions are situated within a larger context that must be understood in order to motiveate his/her buyer behavior” (MLT Creative). For B2B, buyer personas are especially complex due to typical B2B sales cycles. MarketingSherpa found that 41% of B2B firms have established buyer personas, while 47% of organizations have not (See more). A complete understanding of your buyer is critical in the development of communications, marketing materials, and content. Below we will share tactics in developing buyer personas. In addition, we detail what type of content to develop for four different B2B personas. Effective Tactics For Developing ...

9th of January, 2013
In: B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Planning
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Modern Marketing Resolutions image

In this time of New Year’s resolutions, why not set some resolutions for achieving marketing success? Following are 5 key initiatives that can help marketers crush the competition and get that promotion. Commit to these modern marketing new year's resolutions to improve your bottom line. 1. Customer Insight The more you know about your customers, the more effective your marketing can be. Do market segmentation and sales analysis to identify top customers by sales and profit. Determine purchase criteria and decision-making process. Understand keyword search volume that drives website traffic. Conduct frequent surveys, and invest in market research. 2. Marketing Plan Larger brands do planning months before a fiscal year. But, even smaller companies should develop and implement a marketing plan. Establish a marketing ...

13th of December, 2012
In: Channel Partner Marketing, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Infographic, White Papers
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Channel Partner Marketing – Top 10 Best Practices image

In the not so distant past, marketing of software systems, hardware or IT services by channel partners or value-added resellers (VARs), was secondary in importance to sales and business development. Today, changing marketing dynamics have forced channel partners, vendors, and publishers to reconsider and elevate marketing to mission critical status. This blog will identify four (4) reasons that effective channel partner marketing is more important than ever, followed by Top 10 Marketing Best Practices for Channel Partners, a channel partner marketing infographic, and links to additional resources. 4 Reasons Channel Partners Should Reconsider Marketing First, sourcing or selection IT related products or services has shifted. Studies show that up to 90% of technology products and professional services sourcing begin with or use ...

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