Inbound Marketing For Dummies

Book description

Don't chase business—bring new customers to you!

Outdated sales tactics have you chasing leads and fishing for new business. In today's competitive world, nobody has time for that! Inbound Marketing For Dummies is a one-stop-shop for everything you need to know about inbound marketing techniques that attract the attention of your target audience. Whether you have a small or large business, this approachable text offers insight into creating, executing, promoting, and measuring inbound marketing tactics through easy-to-follow instructions on setting up and implementing a new strategic approach. With the information in this book, you can increase brand awareness, enhance brand loyalty, engage with target audience members, and attract new buyers all by leveraging your website, social media, blog, and other resources that are, most likely, already at your fingertips.

A breath of fresh air brought on by the Digital Age, inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven marketing approach that calls upon digital-based resources, such as your website, social media platforms, blogging, search engine optimization, etc., to establish your company as an authority in its industry—and to help customers find you, instead of require your sales team to chase after each and every customer.

  • Build a reliable inbound marketing team

  • Develop deeper relationships with your customers

  • Convert inbound traffic into revenue

  • Combine inbound and outbound marketing strategies to optimize your business' resources

  • Inbound Marketing For Dummies is an essential guide for anyone looking to leverage tried and true inbound marketing strategies within their business.

    Table of contents

      1. Cover
      2. Introduction
        1. About This Book
        2. Foolish Assumptions
        3. Icons Used in This Book
        4. Beyond This Book
        5. Where to Go from Here
      3. Part I: Getting Started with Inbound Marketing
        1. Chapter 1: What Is Inbound Marketing, Anyway?
          1. Knowing the Basics of Inbound Marketing
          2. Understanding Inbound as a Philosophy and as a Marketing System
          3. Learning Why Inbound Marketing Is Important to Your Organization
          4. Exploring the Benefits of Inbound Marketing
          5. Defining the Differences between Traditional and Inbound Marketing
          6. Understanding the Four Objectives of a High-Performance Conversion System
          7. Introducing the Three-Step Inbound Process
          8. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 2: Introducing the Inbound Philosophy into Your Organization
          1. Creating Satisfaction within Your Organization
          2. Overcoming Internal Resistance to Inbound Marketing
          3. Things You Can Do Now
        3. Chapter 3: Diagnosing Your Current Inbound Marketing Performance
          1. Performing an Inbound Marketing Assessment
          2. Understanding Why You Should Perform an Inbound Assessment
          3. Knowing What to Assess
          4. Determining Who Should Perform Your Inbound Assessment
          5. Things You Can Do Now
        4. Chapter 4: Prescribing Strategic Inbound Marketing Solutions
          1. Strategizing Business Solutions
          2. Knowing the Components of Your Strategic Inbound Plan
          3. Building Your Strategic Inbound Plan
          4. Things You Can Do Now
        5. Chapter 5: Applying Inbound Solutions: Executing Your Plan
          1. Implementing Your Strategic Inbound Plan
          2. Developing Your Inbound Timeline
          3. Creating a Shared Strategic Blueprint (SSB)
          4. Delegating Ownership of the Work
          5. Establishing Your Inbound Metrics and Milestones
          6. Measuring Your Success
          7. Things You Can Do Now
      4. Part II: The Art and Science of Consumer Connections
        1. Chapter 6: Mapping Your Customers’ Purchase Paths
          1. In the Beginning: Lewis’s Purchase Funnel
          2. Welcome to Today: The Buyer’s Journey
          3. Evolving into the Future: The Lifestyle Loop
          4. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 7: Discovering Customer Needs with Keywords
          1. Finding a Need and Fulfilling It
          2. Understanding Keyword Research for the Inbound Marketer
          3. Using Keyword Tools
          4. Categorizing Keywords
          5. Things You Can Do Now
        3. Chapter 8: Connecting People with Your Products
          1. Creating Meaningful Connections
          2. Remembering the original 4 P’s of Marketing
          3. Introducing the New 4 P’s of Inbound Marketing
          4. Closing Communication Gaps
          5. Knowing Your Attraction Factors
          6. Things You Can Do Now
      5. Part III: Building a Customer Conversion Machine
        1. Chapter 9: Building Your Conversion Machine
          1. Understanding the Importance of a Conversion Machine
          2. What’s a Conversion Machine?
          3. Building a Super-Powered Website Engine
          4. Fueling Consumer Connections with Content
          5. Creating a Frictionless Buying Experience
          6. Achieving Unusually High Performance (Success)!
          7. Testing Your Attraction and Conversion Points
          8. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 10: Organizing Your Website for Attraction and Conversion
          1. Making Your Website Attractive
          2. Defining a Content Management System (CMS)
          3. Choosing Your CMS
          4. Involving Your Developer with Your Marketing Efforts
          5. Gaining Access to Your Website
          6. Building Your Website on Conversion Architecture
          7. Identifying Wireframes That Work
          8. Creating Your Website Content
          9. Applying Website Metrics
          10. Things You Can Do Now
        3. Chapter 11: Creating a Call-to-Action Map
          1. Building a Call-to-Action Map
          2. Creating Wireframe Templates as Part of Your CTA Map
          3. Using Your CTA Map as Part of Your Site Map
          4. Things You Can Do Now
      6. Part IV: Fueling Visitor Needs with Content Marketing
        1. Chapter 12: Creating Valuable Content: The 4 E’s of Content Marketing
          1. Why Content Is King, Queen, Jack, and Your Ace in the Hole
          2. Making Purposeful Content Connections
          3. Introducing the 4 E’s of Content Marketing
          4. Knowing Your Content Forms
          5. Fueling Offsite Engagement with Premium Content
          6. Improving Your Content
          7. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 13: Creating Inbound Campaigns with Content
          1. Connecting the Dots to Provide Conversion Flow
          2. Creating Connective Campaigns
          3. Building Your First Campaign
          4. Things You Can Do Now
        3. Chapter 14: Blogging for Attraction
          1. Going Beyond the Traditional Blog
          2. Creating Your Blog
          3. Things You Can Do Now
      7. Part V: Attracting Visitors to Your Website
        1. Chapter 15: Growing Your Organic Traffic
          1. Improving Your Organic Traffic
          2. Optimizing for Organic Rankings
          3. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 16: Attracting Visitors with Paid Search
          1. Rescuing the Reputation of PPC
          2. Building Your Paid Search Campaigns
          3. Knowing Your Paid Search Channels
          4. Things You Can Do Now
        3. Chapter 17: Attracting Visitors with Social Media Sharing
          1. Learning the Benefits of Social Media
          2. Matching Your Message with the Medium
          3. Building a Following on Social Media
          4. Segmenting Followers Based on Customer Conversion Path
          5. Sharing Your Content on Social Media
          6. Automating Content Distribution
          7. Things You Can Do Now
        4. Chapter 18: Using Email to Attract and Reattract
          1. Knowing Where to Start
          2. Writing Emails That Attract and Convert
          3. Emailing Individuals Instead of the Masses
          4. Creating an Email Workflow
          5. Things You Can Do Now
      8. Part VI: Understanding the Power of Conversion
        1. Chapter 19: Knowing Your Conversion Types
          1. Knowing Your Conversion Types
          2. Understanding the Customer Conversion Chain
          3. Collecting Customer Data
          4. Implementing Lead Scoring
          5. Organizing Your Data for Future Conversions
          6. Knowing What To Do with Contact and Customer Data
          7. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 20: Increasing Website Conversions
          1. Applying the Customer Conversion Chain
          2. Analyzing the Links in Your Customer Conversion Chain
          3. Everything Inbound Is Connected
          4. Understanding the Value of Your Conversions
          5. Things You Can Do Now
        3. Chapter 21: Building Effective Landing Pages
          1. Defining a Landing Page
          2. Improving Your Conversion Success Rate with Landing Pages
          3. Things You Can Do Now
      9. Part VII: Measuring Success with Analytics
        1. Chapter 22: Measuring Your Inbound Marketing Results
          1. Knowing Your Most Important Metric
          2. Understanding Google Analytics
          3. Choosing Your Reports
          4. Custom Reports
          5. Things You Can Do Now
        2. Chapter 23: Understanding User Testing
          1. Gaining Insight from User Testing
          2. Knowing What to Test
          3. Knowing Your Minimum Sample Size
          4. Performing A/B Testing
          5. Setting Up User Testing
          6. Things You Can Do Now
      10. Part VIII: The Part of Tens
        1. Chapter 24: Ten Steps to Implementing Inbound Marketing
          1. Determining Whether Your Organization Is Open to Change
          2. Discussing Internal and External Goals with Other Departments or Colleagues
          3. Formulating Your Company’s Customer Conversion Chain
          4. Determining Budget of Time, Energy, and Money to Achieve Goals
          5. Performing an Inbound Marketing Assessment
          6. Writing Your Inbound Marketing Strategy
          7. Assigning In-House and Outsourced Inbound Marketing Responsibilities
          8. Retooling or Rebuilding Your Website
          9. Writing Your First Shared Strategic Blueprint
          10. Beginning Content Creation
        2. Chapter 25: Ten Important Inbound Marketing Metrics
          1. Lifetime Value Of Your Customer (LTV)
          2. First Action Value (Purchase)
          3. Cost-Per-Acquisition
          4. Return-On-Investment (ROI) Cost-Per-Lead/Cost-Per-Acquisition
          5. Presentation-to-Purchase Close Ratio
          6. MQLs-to-SQLs Ratio
          7. Contact-Conversions-to-MQL Ratio
          8. Unique-Visitors-to-Lead Ratio
          9. Cost-Per-Lead
          10. Buyer Purchase Path Sales Cycle Timeline
      11. Glossary
      12. About the Author
      13. Cheat Sheet
      14. Connect with Dummies
      15. End User License Agreement

    Product information

    • Title: Inbound Marketing For Dummies
    • Author(s): Scott Anderson Miller
    • Release date: September 2015
    • Publisher(s): For Dummies
    • ISBN: 9781119120506