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You are watching television and within 10 minutes saw over 5 ads. Do you remember what they said, or do you remember the call to action? Did you have a chance to write down the number or memorize it in 5 seconds? Better yet, did you use your TiVo to skip them?

You are listening to the radio on your way in to the office and hear an ad for a local company running a promotion. What action do you take from that radio ad?

There are several questions that one can ask themselves when it comes to marketing and advertising. Knowing how effective an ad campaign or marketing promotion is can be crucial to understanding the performance of your carefully monitored budget. With senior managers and business owners keeping a close eye on their overall marketing ROI, advertising and marketing dollars are under the microscope.

Marketers are interested in results and qualified sales leads

A 2011 budget survey by Goldstein Group Communications and Hearst Business Media shows that marketers are showing more interest in lead quality and search engine marketing.

“Many marketers discuss the priority they place on lead generation, yet the bulk of their advertising spending remains centered on impressions or brand awareness buys,” said Hearst Electronics Group’s VP Publishing Director, William Barron.

While the ratio of online, compared to, traditional spending settled in at 51% traditional to 49% online;  two years ago, 60% of budgets were spent on traditional tactics such as literature/catalogs, direct mail, trade shows, and print advertising.

Quality of leads were a key focus of the survey as opposed to the actual quantity.

What does this survey really tell us? Companies need to increase their revenue, and they are tired of spending money that appears to be swirling around the drain.

How to get those qualified sales leads

The beautiful thing about following the inbound marketing methodology is that inbound marketing ROI is very measurable, especially when measured correctly.

You can’t only look at the amount of unique visitors your website receives over a period of time as a marketing campaign success. Where you need to focus attention is the revenue that website visitors are driving to your business. Are sales truly getting those quality leads that so many companies are looking for?

Since companies are still spending a significant amount of their budgets on traditional advertising, those campaigns can be, and should be, tied back to online marketing campaigns.

The important factor truly will be in 2011, how the marketing and advertising industry can educate, partner with and help drive the revenue growth through effective marketing for their clients. After all, that is what it is all about.

Inbound marketing, coupled with strategic content marketing strategies, lead nurturing, and a ready sales team is fully equipped and qualified to deliver those qualified sales leads.

(Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report .PDF)

How inbound marketing drives qualified leads

When people search for your product and service, they don’t want to be directly marketed to. They want an answer to their question, and a solution to their problem. Does your online marketing campaign offer that?

Once they find your product and service, do they have an offer waiting for them to further engage their interest? Using a landing page that can give them what they need and give your business a more ready sales contact, it is a harmonious situation.

Do you know the visit to lead conversion rates, and also do you know the lead to customer percentage through your website?

Understanding how the investment that you have put into your web presence should be a primary focus in 2011. Knowing how effective your dollars are in putting qualified sales leads into your sales teams hands, will be a determining factor in your overall advertising and marketing success.

Your website looks great, you filled it out with all the relevant information people will need to contact you, but aren’t receiving the traffic or contacts you had hoped for?

To get listed higher on a search engine is a great goal, and what will likely happen is that over time using a few of the things outlined below, your site will pick up steam and get targeted visits from those searching for you. Remember, this is a guide to essentially create backlinks as well as make it simpler for people to find your website and contact information, which is what they want, and you want.

This is available to everyone, and it is sometimes shocking when even large established companies aren’t taking advantage of these resources, because it is so simple.

First step: Custom domain (website address)

One of the most crucial elements of any website is the domain name, meaning the website address. This is your prime real estate as far as search engines are concerned. It would benefit you highly if you bought and owned yourdomain.com. You can usually buy a domain name for $10-12 a year. This is a pretty good price to own the domain, not bad. Owning your domain name is the reservation of the website address. You must point it out to a web host. Sign up for a reputable web host and point your domain name there. The important thing is that you have a custom domain for your website.

Second Step: Directories

Get listed on local directories, for free. This will build links back to your website and then in return help you rank higher as well. Also, remember people are searching for you, make sure they can find you.

Be sure to have the same information, exactly as you put it on your website. How you spell your business name, address and email address should be the same in all the directories so that it ranks the quality of your website and listing.

Here are some directories you need to get listed on, which should be typically free. You don’t have to upgrade or pay for higher directory access, unless you find it necessary:

• Google Business Profile (formerly Google Places): One of the best for showing up on Google and in their Google Maps search which a lot of people use. Once you sign up, add your listing, and verify, you can see statistics for your listing such as how many searches, what keywords, and what actions were taken (looking for directions etc.).
• Bing Places for Business (formerly Bing Local Listing): Although Google currently has over 65.8% of the search market share, Microsoft, owner of Bing since they now power search results on Yahoo! owns 28.1% of the search market share (as of December 2010). In other words, get listed on Bing as well.
• Yelp Business Listing: Yelp is a high-ranking directory that leverages many social elements, specifically the review portion to guide people to your listing

Keep in mind these services will email you from time to time, you aren’t under obligation to pay for them or upgrade unless you decide to.

Third Step: Address on website

Put your email, phone, and address (exactly as you have it on directories) on your website. Put it in the footer of every page to be sure that it’s easily found by search engines, however, if you have a well mapped out website specifically with a sitemap, then you may opt to not do this. Either way, it shouldn’t have a negative effect, it just assists the search engine in giving another few points of quality to your listing and website.

Long term strategy

The best long-term strategy with local search marketing is to continue providing quality content on your website in every shape and form. At the same time, keep the directories you are listed on up to date and it will serve you well. Making it easier for those searching for you to find you, and increasing their satisfaction and your business, is the end goal.

Sometimes the best blog article ideas you have come at the oddest of times and places.

By following the inbound marketing pathway, you can consistently over time generate more leads and convert those leads into customers. Great! But how can you get the momentum flowing? With a great content marketing strategy.

Your content marketing strategy could be as simple as writing out your blog article ideas on a piece of paper once a month, or as complex as a full out editorial calendar with multiple authors. Either way, just get to it and start generating content that your audience will love.

Don’t forget that at least twenty blog posts are enough to start generating leads as mentioned in our introduction to inbound marketing. Out of ideas? Just remember and take note of those wonderful ideas that you think of when you are brushing your teeth, in the shower, or driving down the road.

Come on admit it, I know that you frequently think about your business, competitors, customer experiences, life experiences and more that could turn into useful blog posts, articles, and information that your customers will enjoy. Who knows, maybe they will find and read your article while they are brushing their teeth too.

When most people sign in to their computers, fire up their iPad or tablet, or surf the Internet on their mobile device, they usually presume that their activity is anonymous.

Sure, you might expect advertisements to be targeted to you based on your surfing habits or products you’ve purchased previously. That has become normal. When you sign in to your Amazon account you get very custom recommendations for other products you may be interested in based off what you’ve purchased through Amazon before. This is pure convenience.

When does technology and data marketers collide? In the online privacy debate.

First for a little background information with some geek-speak.

The Internet is powered by networks, and each “node” such as a home computer network, or business network must be identified out to the Internet with a unique IP address. An IP address is like the physical address for your Internet connection, which also has DNS associated with it.

While this is a core necessity for you to be able to use the Internet, and won’t be changing any time soon, it makes your online activity much more visible than you would imagine.

This post isn’t to point out just a negative and create paranoia, but rather to create an awareness of the challenge privacy defenders and good, ethical marketers, and data miners have in the online privacy debate.

Should you be concerned about your online privacy?

In a word, yes. The same old rules still apply, even in our open society, and social networks pushing us to share even more of our personal information publicly.

How the world went from being paranoid about sharing their home address, to sharing it publicly, and telling people about their location through geolocation is something social scientists can analyze and let us know.

Some theorize it is the tribal mentality, and that eventually we all will, through modern technology, be part of a large “tribe” or “tribes”. While this is deeper than meets the eye, it does tell you something about the way we share information.

Why, on the other hand you SHOULDN’T be concerned

Although you need to continue using common sense with your online activity, there is room for debate saying that the convenience and freedom afforded through modern technology and communication platforms such as social networks are worth the perceived risk that the Internet is scary.

The challenge and need for ethical use of data

Marketers, especially those using the Internet to build awareness and generate new business for themselves and clients, have a unique opportunity to use the available data and information from the Internet.

You can use information for good, providing relevant and useful information, to those who wouldn’t mind seeing it using social demographics and online advertising.

Data miners such as large search engines, government organizations, analytic services, and to some extent the social networks themselves, have a need to strive for integrity with the data that they hold.

Many are taking the necessary steps to anonymize the data, particularly by taking out the IP addresses, before handing the information back to those who will use statistics to make marketing decisions. But the challenge and need for these large organizations to be responsible with this information and ethical is crucial to online privacy.

What you can do about it

Enjoy the technology that is available to you. Never before could the human race speak their mind so freely and quickly and connect on a different level. Don’t forget offline interaction, make that a priority.

What inbound marketers can do about it

Inbound marketers are a unique bunch. The premise of creating content and buzz that will be sticky and act like a magnet to draw prospects in is amazing. This is all achievable through the inbound marketing methodology. Put it into action, use information wisely and market with good inbound techniques and never spam or go to the dark side.

Should you invest more time into blogging or social media? The answer is both!

Blogging and social media work together to create a well-rounded platform for the collaboration, exchange, and spread of your message or story.  The two marketing “platforms” of social media and blogging are one in the same in many respects.

What is the most important thing to remember?

Have fun with blogging and social media! You do business with people not the business. Although many of the interactions that happen in business are primarily transactional, one of the elements of business that isn’t very transactional is communications.  Employees with customers, internally with colleagues, partners, and directors and more, each communicate with each other. It is social.

On the web it can be awkward at times trying to relay and convey a thorough and informational message to potential and current customers, without sounding boring, bland, and robotic.  Just look at Seth Godin’s five rules for your about page, to get an idea of what not to do. Be human.

You say be human, does that mean our brand has to be “human”?

Your brand takes on its own persona in a sense and doesn’t have to be literally human but indeed should relate to actual humans. (Unless your market is for pet treats, which of course needs the human owner to buy, but pets like being marketed to! free treats!)

Blogging is an awesome way to put a human element to your business communications.  One of the best ways to do this is to show off the authors of the blog.  At the end of the post put a little bio of them and what they do, what interests them, and how to contact them.  There is an instant connection between reader and author.

In your social media efforts, you can put a human face on your brand and still succeed. In fact, there is a chance people will be more likely to connect with your company via social media when a human face is on the brand. This takes some thought, and sometimes can have negative effects, so use where you think it’s best.

How to invest more time into blogging and social media

How can you put more time into social media, blogging and networking without breaking your back?  This is a common question I get asked.  I simply answer, do what you think will have the greatest impact.

It is simple. Do the math. Take the time you have invested in past efforts, categorize it by social media and blogging, then look at the number of interactions, leads, and sales, you can correlate to it.  It isn’t fair to say that every tweet you send has a dollar value, although social media economists would beg to differ, there are some interactions on X (formerly Twitter) that could be deemed more valuable than others.

Example: You search for questions, concerns, sentiments about your brand and industry and come across someone who is looking for help with services you offer. You reach out to them, offer a little help, they respond, a lead is generated, and eventually they become a customer.  That has value. Count it.  The same thing should be happening with website visitors, particularly if you are using call to actions.

Spend less time doing, and just be

I like the “just be” mentality.  Over analyzing can lead to analysis paralysis, which can hinder brand development.  Be active in the social media sphere, christen those in your organization, or consider outsourcing social media for portions of your overall strategy.

Create an editorial calendar and try to stick with it as much as you can, but don’t break your back if you can’t.  There are several SEO copywriting opportunities out there, and focusing on necessary elements like keywords and high-quality original content will be much more valuable overall than re-publishing news from across the web.

(photo credit: ccrismp)

We don’t live in a set it and forget it world.  Our alarm clocks don’t set themselves.  Food doesn’t magically appear in your refrigerator except for The Jetsons.  Why on earth would you think that your website with the same content from 5 years ago would be a magnet to new, unique visitors?

Thankfully, there are some simple ways you can spice up the content on your website to drive new unique visitors, while retaining and encouraging past ones to re-visit in the future.

There is so much talk on the Internet about how “content is king” and you need to have great content. I agree! How do you go about this?  Generate relevant, useful, understandable, content that your target audience will understand. Let’s get started.

Common types of content used on the web

To get things straight, and what is the primary focus of this post is content that will be seen and distributed on the web.  It doesn’t matter if it’s viewed in a web browser, mobile device, reading device etc.

What are the common types of content you generate and put on a website?

• Copy – the text that you are reading now, is copy. Written by a copywriter which is me, your host.
• Multimedia– video, audio, pictures, diagrams
  • video – think YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, self-hosted
  • audio – podcasts, music
  • pictures – photographs, artwork
  • diagrams – a generated illustration to show something such as a chart or graph

This paragraph wasn’t to insult your intelligence, but to clarify some of the most common elements seen across the web every day.

1. Repurpose old content and material

Recycling is great, go green! Well in the content generation world, why not recycle old copy if all it takes is some repurposing or editing.  In addition, sometimes old multimedia stands just as strong today as it did in the past. Take a stroll down memory lane and wander through your archives of information. The dusty folder in your pile, the neglected folder on your computer waiting to be re-clicked, and the advertising agency that created your award-winning campaign 10 years ago.

Take this information, see if it has any relevance today for your audience and if it does, wonderful, recycle it and see how you can fit it into your online marketing efforts.

Caveat: Don’t be too liberal with this repurposing and forget to generate fresh content.

2. Start with the homepage and work down the hierarchy of your website

Curb appeal is important. The view from the street as passing by will make the difference between keen interest or none. Design is important, but so is the content structure.  As humans, whether we want to admit it or not, we are more constructive and productive in organized environments. A website that has no clear direction or outline is crap, and no one wants to navigate around to their demise. The back button is their best friend, it’s the escape hatch from unfriendly websites.  Remember, if content is king, usability is the queen.

It helps to view your website in layers, or in a directory or hierarchy.  See the diagram below for a great visual example of how you can view your website.  The diagram is courtesy of Google from their recently refreshed and repurposed “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” (PDF).

Create a simple structure, something that humans can understand and navigate, and the search robots will be able to quickly bounce around. Use breadcrumbs to help navigation during the visit. Make and publish a sitemap for the search robots to gobble up.

3. Find out what content your audience likes best

Now comes the fun part. The part where you connect with your audience. How do you do this?  Take the first step, reach out your hand and say “hello, my name is…”.  Successful business owners and managers know that networking is critical to their success and the overall business.  Purpose driven content is no different.  There are ways you can directly receive feedback on the type of content your viewers like best.  Try polls or surveys.  Ask them candidly on Facebook or X (formerly Twitter), or in your next email newsletter.  Do they like video presentations of your product so they can get a “real life” feel for it online before they buy or share it with their friends?

There are also passive ways to find out what your visitors prefer. Use analytics and measure the response rate to one type of content over the other. In addition, play a bit with the performance by tweaking in different ways your top performing content. Not happy with the way a specific product or page is performing? Spend some more time and give a little SEO TLC to that specific page.  Example: Have a sweet video that you created but it isn’t getting the view numbers you thought it would, try tweaking the tags, and consider changing the title.  This is a simple form of an A/B test. For a true A/B test look to a product like Performable to create a special landing page, or alternatively if you have the means, do it yourself.

4. Keep things interesting with features and contests

If content is king, usability is the queen, then regular features and contests are the prince. I’m not talking about the prince that sits over in a dark corner of the castle looming over his royalty, but the kind of prince that gets things moving.

Feature

A regular feature could be something as simple as a weekly recap of your business activity online, a summary of news in your industry, or anything that would be of interest to your audience.  We have a regular feature of interesting links pertaining to the Internet marketing industry.

Many businesses also use it as an opportunity to highlight a customer, or even their employees. It is a great way to connect with your audience.

Contests

Running a contest helps drive traffic to your website and can be used in conjunction to help build brand awareness, while making the sale, and benefiting your customer.  Check out this good example of a recent contest ran by appSumo to help encourage growth to their X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook accounts, while driving business to one of their partners and the customer ends up with a great deal.

Summary

Have some fun with it. Features and contests don’t need to be dry and boring. Put some spice into it.

5. Find a champion and get on a schedule

Think about who in your organization could be a champion at generating awesome content that would help drive visitors to your website.  Do you have anyone with experience producing and editing videos? Ask around, you will be surprised.  Does your bookkeeper love writing and can write some fresh new articles for your company blog?  Once again, ask around. Poll your resources and get on the path to creating great content regularly.

One thing that helps get on a schedule or at least solidify your plans to more frequently produce the content your audience is looking for, is to create an editorial calendar.

Since I try to practice what I preach, here is an editorial calendar template for download. It’s an Excel spreadsheet.  I have to credit Jamie Lee Wallace for the original template, that I’ve revised some for my needs. (Update 1/11/2025 – this original template is no longer available, however, there are some new editorial content calendar templates available.)

In addition to having it written down, you may find it better, or a supplement to, to put the plans on a real calendar, such as a shared team calendar or personal calendar.

Making the connection between creation time and overall value to your business

There is a clear distinct connection to the time that you will spend repurposing, creating, and regularly featuring content.  It indeed does take time; however, the time you spend can have invaluable returns.  In our inbound marketing definition post the time vs. value factor adds up quickly, do the math.

Question: What are you doing to strategically create content for your business?

Most will have you believe that SEO copywriting is a magic act that requires expensive tools and hours of research.  While it often can involve tools and research, the basics when you get right down to it are quite simple.

Simple is good in the SEO world. Especially when you factor in all the complexity you are often faced with. There are many variables that go in to play with how certain pages and websites will rank. Overall, however, great content and the following SEO copywriting basics, are the first place to start.

Write targeted titles

The title of your page is crucial, whether it’s an ultra-targeted landing page, or a general blog post announcing something for your business.  Not only does the headline, or title, have to capture attention, it needs substance.

What is the best part to start off a conversation? With an interesting opening statement. Think of your title as the introductory statement. People love this and so do search engines. When the title accurately and concisely describes the content, it’s win win.

Examples –

Good example: London Travel Package You Won’t Want to Miss

A meh example: On Sale Now! London Travel Package, Don’t Miss It!

You could write and re-write the example headlines over and over, however, focus on your keywords toward the beginning of the title, primarily for readability. Make it clear right away what you are offering.

Use text links appropriately

Do ‘click here’ links describe the destination very well? Nope. Didn’t think so. So why take the time to craft a sentence to point someone to ‘click here’. Don’t do it. Admittedly, it sometimes sneaks in every once in a while, even for the best SEO copywriter, but it shouldn’t happen too often, or else… the link doesn’t mean anything!

When writing links on your website use keywords and or key phrases to describe your link. This gives juice to the destination link behind it.

Examples –

Good example: Check out the new vertex pond aerators that we just got in!

Bad example: We just got in new vertex pond aerators, check them out by clicking here!

See the difference? It doesn’t take long before it becomes natural for you to include targeted links in your writing.

Use keywords liberally, but don’t stuff

The old school way to rank for keywords involved stuffing, sometimes over-stuffing a given web page with gobs and gobs of keywords. This worked, for a time.

The new way is to focus on naturally including search keywords in your content.  There is debate as to whether bolding or italicizing keywords will maximize their effectiveness when a search engine reads the text. Whether or not that is 100% true, it does make for good readability for the human reading your content.

That is often more important, because if your content is useful to the reader they are willing to re-share it. Which leads into a whole different topic, off page SEO.

Be active in conversations about your brand and industry

A good SEO copywriter will also participate in social media marketing in a sense through actively participating in social media channels. Humans have great lie detectors built in and never favor a spamming friend or follower on social networks, so avoid that. But do share your awesome content with the world. That is a good thing! Watch it spread for the greater good.