21 Essential Strategies for Growing Your Business With Inbound Marketing [Infographic]

From content creation, SEO, and social media to lead generation, lead management, and analytics, marketers who follow the inbound methodology have a lot of different channels and tactics to manage and master.

But the great thing about inbound marketing is that it pays off over time. It sets businesses up to get found by their target buyers more easily, and then helps them through every single stage of the buying process -- from stranger to brand advocates.

Which of these channels and tactics are involved in which stage of the buying process? What do inbound marketers need to do -- and when -- to attract, convert, close, and delight?

Check out the infographic below from ELIV8 to learn about 21 inbound marketing strategies that can help move future customers down the funnel and accelerate the growth of your business. (And click here for an interactive guide to inbound marketing.)

How have these inbound marketing strategies helped you grow your business? Share with us in the comments.

How to Use the 3-Act Structure To Improve Your Content Marketing

Unique… Helpful… Engaging.

These are the words that describe epic content marketing – but too many people are getting it wrong.

We can debate all day long about what makes for good content. But the one thing many would-be content marketers stumble on is coming up with an idea that hasn’t been rehashed or done to death.

There’s no point marketing content, if you can’t make it high quality and unique.

In the rush to have something to say, many businesses latch onto half-brained ideas and try to ride it out. The result is a jumbled mess that doesn’t make any sense, and only serves to frustrate their audience.

Storytelling seems to be a buzzword these days when it comes to content creation, but there’s much more to it than you think.

And I’m not here to tell you how to incorporate storytelling into your content, because that’s a topic that’s been done over and over.

However, what I can do is tell you how to avoid the trap of overdone ideas by using classic storytelling techniques. Helping you consistently create refreshing and amazing pieces of content.

Here’s how some classic storytelling techniques will help improve your content marketing.

Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth

The foremost storytelling technique I always keep in mind is the hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell.

In short, the hero’s journey is a classic sequence of actions that can be found in almost every story. Basically it’s a broad template which contends that every epic myth can be broken down into 12 distinct plot points.

As a content marketer you have to ask yourself, who is the hero of this story?

Most of you would have said yourself. Which is understandable, everyone naturally views themselves as the hero of the story.

But the key to creating consistently amazing pieces of content is to remember that you aren’t the hero in this story.

The hero is your audience.

Your role as a content marketer is not to be the hero, but the mentor.

The mentor is the character that every hero meets when they’re stuck. They provide all the necessary wisdom and advice that the hero needs in order to continue on their journey. Think Obi-Wan in Star Wars, Gandalf in Lord Of The Rings, or for a more contemporary example Jeff Bullas and this very article.

Every piece of content you craft has to be framed with the intention that it is the mentor dispensing valuable advice in order to aid the hero along their journey.

If you keep that in mind you’ll always be consistently creating content that is both valuable and useful to your audience.

Three-Act Structure

In screenwriting there is a model that divides a narrative into three distinct parts, or acts: the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Solution.

Like the hero’s journey the three-act structure is a basic template for most fictional narratives. It helps writers structure their narratives in a way that’s easy to understand.

Here’s an example of the three-act Structure in Star Wars.

But I don’t use the three-act structure as a way to model my content. Instead I use it as a way to help me generate new ideas.

You can use this to generate new ideas about any topic.

I’ll show you just how I used it to pitch Jeff Bullas a few ideas for a guest post. I personally like writing it all out in my notebook, but you can easily do yours differently.

The Setup

Classically the setup is where all the major characters are introduced, the world they live in, and all the conflict that will move the story forward.

In our case we already know who our characters are and the world they live in: the audience is the hero, and we’re the mentor. The conflict is fairly straightforward, the hero wants to know a piece of information that only the mentor can provide.

A key piece of advice when it comes to storytelling is this: you find the conflict, you find the story.

My process is to find a general topic of information that my hero wants to know more about.

When pitching Jeff I chose the topic of storytelling and content marketing.

Next up is to turn the hero’s problem into a goal, or declarative statement. What do they want to achieve by learning this piece of information?

As you can see the goal of my hero is, “I want to write an epic article about storytelling”.

There you have your Setup.

The Confrontation

In fiction writing the confrontation is when the stakes are raised because the hero encounters even more problems.

In my process I begin to break down the components of the hero’s goal. This is the most important step, because you have to thoroughly understand what questions your audience want answered.

What are the details they would need to know in order to achieve their goal? What questions would they ask?

I often use Quora as a way to keep in the loop about which questions are being commonly asked in my niche.

Although the easiest way is usually just asking: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Try and break down at least three different questions or problems that the hero will encounter.

As you can see with this other example I already have three different topics to write about. But those topics are just a little too generic, so I’ll break them down even further to generate more ideas!

The Solution

The final act is when all the narrative’s conflicts are resolved. All information and conflicts introduced in the first two acts are resolved in order to, theoretically, create a satisfying ending.

For my process what I do is come up with solutions to the questions raised in the previous section. I always aim for at least two different solutions to every question.

In the end what you’ll end up with is a handful of different topics you can easily write about!

When it came to pitching Jeff I was able to come up with a handful solutions to my hero’s questions. Eventually I settled on three different topics I particularly liked and pitched those to Jeff.

By using this process you’ll be able to consistently generate new ideas for content that are filled with actionable advice. Too many people try to solve every problem in one go, and what you’re usually left with is a very general article that doesn’t answer any specific questions and ends up a boring read.

Instead just focus on one idea and be as in-depth as possible when it comes to that single idea.

What you’ll find is that you’ll never be stumped for ideas again!

Show, Don’t Tell

Every writing student has heard this at one point, to learn how to show, not tell. The principle is that you shouldn’t just spoon-feed information to the audience. Instead writers are encouraged to think of different ways to showcase a piece of information.

The most straightforward way is to pick a topic and write an article about it. But there are so many ways to present a single piece of information.

For example, on this topic of storytelling techniques I could have, just as easily, created an instructional video, or an infographic instead of an article.

Or I could have held an event or workshop and directly taught my method to a group of people.

Using the content multiplier framework in Dan Norris’s book Content Machine I’m able to find different ways to present my information.

As a content creator you have to think of the different ways your audience absorbs information.

This is a great way to significantly increase the different types of content you can produce, and all from one idea!

Key takeaways

• Your audience is the hero of the story, you’re the wise mentor helping them on their journey
• Focus on the challenges your audience faces, and how you can help them overcome them
• There is always more than one way to present a single piece of information

Often the hardest part of content creation isn’t writing it out, it’s coming up with an original idea in the first place.

But what you’ll find is that by using these classic storytelling techniques, not only will you overcome writer’s block – you’ll also be able to constantly generate an awesome piece of content your audience will love!

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10 Stupidly Simple “Hacks” To Win At Content Marketing

Content marketing is hard. But it doesn’t have to be boring.

Lately I’ve been trying my hand at testing smart little tactics — or what I call “hacks” — to get better results out of the content marketing strategy I oversee. And I’ve been amazed at what tiny, innovative tests can do to drive some serious results. Plus, it’s pretty fun!

I was first inspired by researching the idea of “growth hacking” for a presentation I’ve done at a couple of conferences called, in short, “Hacking Human” … which doesn’t involve body parts and machetes, I swear. The gist of it is that marketers can optimize their content for what humans want and are looking for online, and then use growth hacking principles to test their assumptions and get the most out of their efforts.

But whereas growth hacking implies ninja-like manipulation of technologies and code, all I’m advocating here is more of a shift in how we, as marketers, can carve out smart solutions to reach our end goals. In fact, Dan Martell of Clarity says it best when he stated on Twitter: “Growth hacking is a mindset more than a toolset.”

Content hacks don’t have to be huge or time-consuming. You can apply these 10 stupidly simple principles that will unveil opportunities you may have not been able to even see before.

1. Adopt A “Double-Open” Email Marketing Strategy

This one-minute hack is my new best friend. The idea stems from Noah Kagan of OkDork and involves three simple steps:

1. Send an email to your list.
2. One week later, put together a list of anyone who didn’t open that email.
3. Resend the email to the list of non-opens and simply change the subject line.

Kagan argues that even if you have a relatively good open rate of 30%-plus, that still means 70% of your list isn’t giving your email the time of day. That could be for many different reasons, but this hack isn’t about finding out why, it’s about getting more eyes on your email.

You can see the results Noah got on his test in the images below, and I’ve experienced the same successes. Plus, if you have a marketing automation system, you can set it up to do this automatically! #stupidlysimple

2. Get Serious About Blog Subscription Forms

About a year ago, we redid the design of our Vertical Measures website to a responsive layout. Sparing you all the details, we never made our subscription form prominent on the new site (shame on us) and our subscriptions plummeted. The only way to subscribe was now tucked away in a small RSS button at the top of the site, hardly enticing or even visible.

We finally figured out this had to change and redesigned our whole blog. Since our new signup form went live, we’ve seen more subscriptions in our first month than we got in all of 2014, plus some. With the importance of subscription models resurging through the content marketing blogosphere, it was about time for us to practice what we preach. If your blog is part of your top-of-the-funnel lead-generation strategy, merely make it more visually prominent and watch the leads roll in.

3. Generate Tons Of Headline Ideas And Don’t Rely On Your Gut

Upworthy’s editorial process makes writers come up with 25 headlines for every content piece — 25!! That’s no joke. They understand that the first title isn’t always the best, and ideas will organically arise in the process of hammering out many. Plus, they combine this strategy with testing — i.e., find out which title actually draws in the most readers, rather than relying on best guesses.

If you don’t have the budget or resources for lots of automated testing, keep it simple and create a couple of tracking links for your different titles, and set a time limit. Then at the end of your time, see which tracking url performed better and continue to push and promote that version.

4. Keep The Journey Alive After Someone Fills Out A Form

Thank You pages — we all know they serve a purpose of delivering a simple message to anyone who fills out a form. But have you thought of really optimizing your Thank You pages as next steps in your lead’s journey to getting to know your brand?

Don’t leave them stranded; use the opportunity to engage them further. Here are some ideas:

• Build authority with trust signals, awards, and testimonials.
• Become a trusted source of informationby providing relevant and related content.
• Move the prospect down the funnel with a limited-time sales offer.
• Stay top-of-mind and give them an opportunity to connect with you on social.

5. A/B Test Your Email Sender Name

Another little email hack I haven’t heard much about has to do with who your email is being sent from. What you want to test here is the display name of the sender. So for instance, you can send from your marketing manager’s name, CEO, or whoever really, and then test that against sending with your brand/company name.

In the image below, you can see the results from one test I recently ran, and overwhelmingly the brand name lost out to the real live human. Also interesting to note, the email with the personal name sender had higher click-through rates. Make sure to consider the fact that you may lose out on some brand recognition this way, so use this hack wisely.

6. Resurrect And Repurpose Your Evergreen Content

Odds are you have quite a bit of content in your marketing arsenal. This hack is great if you struggle to come up with many topic ideas easily. Why not repurpose content you already have?! If it was successful once, there’s no harm in using it again with a fresh angle and messaging:

• That old whitepaper can be split up and rewritten into a series of blog posts.
• That long-ago video can be transcribed and reposted as an article.
• That webinar can be split up into segments and repurposed as a tutorial.
• That infographic can be turned into a more in-depth data visualization piece.

Don’t just stop at content creation; apply this hack to content promotion too! “Evergreen” content is like owning real estate online. Get the best ROI out of your investment by scheduling these older pieces of content into your current promotional schedule.

7. Jump On The Social Snippet Train

Make sharing simple and good looking with social snippets like OpenGraph, Schema markup, and Twitter Cards. These are all behind-the-hood coding elements that must be integrated across your whole website so your content will display the title, preview image, and description correctly on social sites. When in doubt, plug your URL into theFacebook Debugger or Twitter Validator to see how it will display on these two major networks.

If your content doesn’t look good or provide relevant information in the preview, you can kiss new traffic goodbye. Do yourself a favor and follow this hack for beautiful-looking social posts.

8. Understand That Humans Are Innately Lazy

One thing I’ve learned as a marketer and designer is that people are really lazy (yes, myself included). But rightfully so — we have a lot of information coming at us from all over the place.

That’s why it’s essential to make it very clear what action someone can take on your website, especially when it comes to sharing your content. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do I have sharing buttons clearly visible on my site?
• Can I test positioning for better results?
• What about more granular “in-content” sharing options like TweetThis and Pin It?
• Am I able to customize howpeople share directly from my site (like appending my Twitter handle, for example)?

You can be very intentional with testing this hack by utilizing a heat map tool likeCrazyEgg to see exactly where and how people are interacting with your site.

9. Make Link Earning A Priority

I don’t advocate the proclamation that “link building is dead.” Links are still the currency of the Internet, whether you like it or not.

What has changed is the approach — rather than buying links or hiring out shady international companies, link building should now be considered “link earning.” It’s about creating valuable content that naturally attracts links.

You can join the world of today’s PR, making authentic connections with influencers who may or may not include a link to your content, or even search out unlinked brand mentions. Either way, nabbing a link on an authoritative site can generate tons of traffic and conversions and is still one of the simplest and oldest hacks out there.

10. Create Seriously Useful, Helpful Content … And Lots Of It

The most important hack of all goes back to my recent Marketing Land article, “The 1% Rule of Content Marketing.” The best way for you to win at content marketing is to continually make incremental progress.

After all, it can take six months to one year to really see results, and the more you “step up to the plate,” the more likely you are to get on base … and maybe even get a home run. Play content Moneyball and keep producing useful and helpful content that will help you get found online.

I’ll leave you with one nugget of wisdom as you set out to try some of these hacks: Don’t guess … test. If I’m being honest, I can say the majority of guesses I’ve made when it comes to testing for content have been wrong. A title I thought was going to be hit out of the ballpark fell flat. An image I thought would garner tons of click-throughs was beat out by one I never thought would get any interest.

Don’t guess … test. And have fun hacking!

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5 Reasons Content Marketing is More Than Just a Fad

Forget about the people reading your content.

Instead of writing engaging content for your audience, just stuff a bunch of keywords into your copy and hire someone to buy backlinks to your site.

This might sound ridiculous, but there was a time when this type of strategy would deliver you lots of search traffic.

The actual content on each page of your site was of little importance as long as it had the ‘right keywords’ and some inbound links.

As easy as old school SEO was, it won’t get you anywhere today.

Google has caught on.

The days of attracting tons of traffic from search engines with low quality content are over.

Google, with the Panda update, eventually figured out a way to reward higher quality website content with higher rankings.

They have let us see into the future. Content marketing isn’t an option, it is a necessity if you want to win at this online marketing game.

Let’s look at 5 things content marketing will help you do that makes it more than just a fad;

1. Standout from your competitors

In content marketing, it’s okay to be guided by keywords when creating content, but actually creating meaningful content involves focusing on the INTENT behind the keywords first.

By making educated guesses regarding the outcomes searchers are looking for, you can predict what people will type into search engines and tailor your content accordingly.

When you write your pages’ content around information searchers intend to look for, you are filling their needs.

Your intent-focused content gives your business a competitive advantage because your pages are more likely to contain the information your visitors are looking for.

This builds trust and helps you build a relationship with your target audience.

Over time, your site becomes the ‘go to’ source for certain types of information your audience is looking for.

2. Attract more traffic to your website

Many marketers are shifting to content marketing because of the great hype and buzz surrounding it. However, it is important to understand that producing highly engaging content isn’t enough by itself.

Why?

Traffic won’t magically turn up. You may have the very best content in the world, but if no one has heard of your stuff, it won’t matter.

Your content marketing strategy needs to go beyond the content you publish on your own site.

Look to pitch content to other sites that are popular in your niche – known as guest posting.

The tighter the fit between the site that your content is published on, your contributed content, and the page you link back to on your site, the more chance you’ll pull the targeted traffic you are after.

3. Build your brand

Once you get into the swing of things with quality content marketing, you begin to build a brand worth talking about.

People begin to see your brand name mentioned all over the internet – because people are linking back to your content, your guest posting on credible sights, and they are discovering you in their search queries.

Quality content creation, backed by promotion and distribution of that content will build the perception of thought leadership and trust for your brand, quicker than any other online marketing strategy.

4. Help your customers make purchase decisions

The people who visit your site fall into three major groupings: people looking to know everything about a particular category of information, people who have an answer but are looking to refine their choices, and people who already trust your site’s content.

These distinct groups need to be approached differently – because they are all at different stages of the buyers’ journey.

At the very least, your pages must be written to filter people based on these groups. Usually, this is done through internal linking to relevant pages.

For example, if someone who is simply looking to get as much information as possible about a niche lands on a page of yours, your content should give them what they are looking for. This means deep and extensive information that links deeper and deeper into your site.

However, if someone who already has a general understanding about your niche lands on a general information page of yours, your page should have internal links that draw people who are looking for deeper or more refined information.

The idea of understanding each of these groups is so you can provide helpful information to each of them – making their decision to purchase your product a no brainer because they trust and respect you.

5. Improve your SEO

Content marketing helps with link building, which is what SEO is all about.

When you create high quality content and forge an emotional connection with your audience, you will begin to attract links from reputable sites over time.

For the most effective SEO, your content should target keywords that are both aligned to your niche, but not too competitive. This gives you a better chance to attract backlinks and start to make your way up the search rankings.

Your content won’t command the attention it deserves if you don’t drive traffic to it, and search engines are the single biggest traffic source.

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The 7 Components of a Magnetic Inbound Marketing Strategy

Email marketing, SEO, content creation, social media, influencer outreach, lead nurturing…

Yes, inbound marketing encompasses them all. And let’s face it – that’s enough to inspire fear in the steeliest and most seasoned of digital marketers. With so many tactics to consider and too many leads to deliver it’s easy to lose focus of what you’re trying to achieve.

That’s where a well crafted plan comes into play. Below we’ll reveal the strategic 7 step process that will help you deliver a customer-warming, boss-pleasing, prospect-loving strategy that’s achievable, realistic and bang on target.

1. Define Your Personas

Inbound marketing is all about your customers – you have no business in the um… business, if you centre your plan around any other silly tactics, tricks or gimmicks. The first step of your plan should, therefore, focus on understanding what makes your customers click, tick and get excited. Get to the heart of your customers’ thoughts, behaviours, problems, needs and desires by creating well-fleshed-out, fully-defined and real-to-life personas.

Use HubSpot’s (free) Make My Persona Tool to create personas worth referencing. Your entire inbound marketing strategy should be built around your core personas – you’ll storm ahead of your competition if you consult these fictional customers at every stage of your planning process. This includes when you’re creating blog posts, crafting email campaigns and conducting keyword research – you can even bring them into your brainstorm meetings to add real insight and depth to your ideas.

2. Discover Your Customer’s Triggers

Pain Points – You need to understand at which points your customers interact with your messages. It is important to identify the pain points your customers experience and the problems they encounter to make them search for your product or service. This core insight alone can add true depth to your messages.

Think about it – identifying your customers’ pain points enables you to target people with both reason and emotion at a time that makes sense to them. You’re basing your messages on real solutions rather than assumptions. And make no mistake about it – your competitors will assume rather than take the time to identify real solutions for real persona problems. That way you’ll win.

Different Needs for Different Stages – You’ve probably heard many digital marketers talk about the concept of context. Not all of your customers have the same needs – some arrive at different points of the buying funnel. When mapping out your pain points it’s essential to add context by considering the needs and desires of your different customer types at each separate stage of the operation.

3. Set Your Inbound Marketing Objectives

You will need to determine from the outset which inbound marketing objectives you would like your strategy to achieve. These should support and help you achieve both your digital marketing objectives and your business objectives. For example, if lead generation is the most important objective for your business, your inbound marketing plan should be centred around generating leads. And every tactic you employ should support your lead generation mission.

As with every digital marketing plan, your inbound marketing metrics need to be SMART. That means strategic, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. If in doubt, identify the information your CEO would want reported back to him/her in the boardroom – you need to answer the ‘what’, ‘how many’ and ‘when’ of your plan. For example, ‘We’re going to generate 200 new leads in a quarter.’ Each KPI needs to be realistic and achievable based on the success of past campaigns along with the predicted success of your inbound plan.

4. Define Your Content Strategy

Content is an integral part of inbound marketing. You will, therefore, need to create a content marketing plan to form the beating heart of your inbound marketing strategy. This is how you will keep your customers engaged with your brand and nourished with rich and valuable information. This is how you will keep your name on their minds at the point when they’re ready, willing and able to buy.

The Objectives – Your content strategy objectives should be SMART and need to support your inbound marketing objectives. Maybe they’ll be similar. If your inbound marketing objective is lead generation, for example, your content strategy should certainly support this.

Competitor Analysis – The purpose of this phase is not to copy your competitors but to define how you can be better. Research your competitors content marketing and investigate what they get up to on social media using a social media monitoring tool likeHootsuite. Sign up to their newsletter so you can partake in their lead nurturing campaigns and use a tool like Moz’s Open Site Explorer to track backlinks and discover how your competitors score on their overall SEO performance.

The Content – First it’s important to define how your content will help your customers. Will it educate them? Inspire them? Entertain them? Then you can decide on the types of content you’ll create and the topics you’ll tackle. For example, will you concentrate solely on blogging or will you try video marketing and webinars? Will you create long form posts or opt for shorter but more regular features?  Will you seek industry expert opinions?

More questions to consider at this phase include: Is lead generation important for your business and if so will you create gated whitepapers to help you generate new, quality leads? If you have a shoe company will you stick to writing about shoes or will you venture into the area of fashion and lifestyle?

Distribution – It’s equally important to create a plan for distributing your content. Will you enlist the help of industry influencers or will your trial paid promotion options like LinkedIn advertising, Facebook and Twitter ads or third party platforms?

5. Define Your Lead Nurturing Plan

Sometimes your customers will discover your website when they’re not quite ready to buy yet. Maybe they need more questions answered, maybe they need more time to decide whether it’s the right product/service for them, maybe they want to research competitor offerings or maybe they don’t have the money saved at that point in time. Whatever their reason for stalling, it’s your job to keep them warmed up for the sales team to prospect or until they’re ready to buy.

Automated email trigger campaigns provide the perfect means to nurture leads. It gives you the ideal opportunity to keep prospects engaged with your content, your brand and your mission. You can segment your lead database based on the action your prospects took to give you their details. You can then set about creating a series of tailored and relevant messages.

6. Establish Your Influencer Outreach Agenda

Building quality relationships with key industry influencers is one of the most important components for inbound marketing. That’s because these people hold significant reach and authority in your industry. They have already established trust and have hundreds of thousands of social media followers – followers who look just like your customers.

The Target List – Use a tool like BuzzSumo to help you identify and create an outreach list of potential influencer targets. Then you can set about creating mutually beneficial relationships with these industry influencers. Always give more than you take – offer value and lots of it well in advance of asking for anything back. Once you have established a true connection with these influencers you can ask for a quick quote and a potential share in the politest and most humble manner possible.

Guest Blogging Plan – It’s also important to define your guest blogging approach at this stage. Research potential relevant and influential blogs in your niche and read the submission guidelines. You’ll can create a pitch at this stage if you wish but you will have to make sure it’s customised and relevant for every publication you approach. Read this guide ‘Influencer Cheat Sheet: How to Connect, Engage & Get What You Want’ for more tips on how to perfect your personal approach.

7. Decide How to Analyse & Report

Now that you have your inbound marketing plan in place you will need to decide upon the tools you’ll use to report on the progress of your objectives and the success of your KPIs. Will you, for example, use Google Analytics to track your goals and conversions? Will you use BuzzSumo to track the success of your content marketing and break down your shares by platform? Will you use Moz’s Open Site Explorer to monitor your SEO progress?

Want to become an Inbound Marketing Specialist? Our Online Professional Diploma in Search Marketing is created, validated and accredited by industry experts and will give you the specialist knowledge needed to thrive in the field.

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