Category: Inbound Marketing

4 Keys To Lead-Generation Success

Information from Forrester Research Inc. shows that B2B marketers still spend the lion’s share of their budgets on in-person trade shows and events, closely followed by digital advertising/marketing, with content marketing, websites, and digital marketing tied for third place, followed by a broad range of other expenditures.

Our experience in aviation, aerospace and defense marketing confirms the Forrester findings. We especially see that website updates and development has become a priority for many clients. In some cases, these marketers have realized that the time has come to modernize their current site for content, design and functionality. But, increasingly, the need to update a website is driven by a higher-level strategy to use the site as the hub of a larger marketing effort, often an inbound marketing program designed to generate leads from a pool of self-directed buyers who navigate the sales process without the help of a sales rep. In fact, Forrester reports that today’s B2B buyers are two-thirds to 90 percent of the way through their purchase journey before reaching out to the vendor they have found online.

If your marketing group wants to begin using inbound marketing techniques for lead-generation, start by evaluating these four areas:

  1. How will you get visitors to your website?
  2. How will you reward visitors who visit your site? What will you give them?
  3. How will you collect information from them?
  4. How will you use the information you collect?

How will you get people to your website?

The first step in converting a website visitor into a lead, is to attract and build web traffic. But how can you make sure the right people are finding and visiting your website?

  • Organic SEO — Optimize your website to appear in top-ranking search positions by using targeted keywords and by frequently publishing content, including helpful blogs, that is relevant to your audience.
  • Social media — Engage with a social media audience by posting content that is entertaining, educational, relevant, and timely. Observe patterns, note when your audience is the most active online, and post then. Posting articles and links back to your website will drive traffic.
  • Eblast marketing — Sending out an email is a great way to increase website traffic. Eblasts can include a brief preview of blog posts (this week’s most popular blogs, recently published, etc.) or links to other tools on your website, webinars, and other events.
  • Cross linking — Make sure that your business is listed in all relevant directories, and offer to guest blog on other websites. Reaching out will increase your reach and drive additional audience to your website.

For more information, refer to “What is Inbound Marketing?” the first blog in this Flight Manual series.

How will you reward the people who visit your website? What will you give them?

To generate leads, you need to collect contact information from the people who visit. But once a visitor is on your website, they are not just going to fill out a form for the sake of filing out a form. Make sure your website is full of useful tools, and valuable information or offerings that are so desirable visitors will be motivated to complete a form.

  • Variety — Provide a range of content types (checklists, infographics, tool kits, white papers, educational seminars or webinars, etc.) and subject matter to attract the audience you want and to ensure that visitors find something that is a good fit for them.

To see a related infographic, click here.

How will you collect information from the visitors to your website?

Leverage technologies to gather the contact information you seek in the most efficient, effective ways possible.

  • Forms — Forms are the most common way to collect information from website visitors. Make sure you aren’t asking for more information than you need, though, because lengthy forms may scare leads away.
    • Subscriptions — Encourage people to subscribe to your newsletters or podcasts.
    • Register for an event — Host local events (panel discussions, happy hour mixers) or virtual events (webinars or conferences) and encourage people to register ahead of time online.
    • Download content — Consider gating some of your content (with a form) to gather additional information from website visitors.

SumoMe — Evaluate tools like SumoMe that make it easy to add forms to quick and easy sign ups on your website. Free and paid options are available, depending on your needs.

Landing pages — Research tools like Unbounce to create custom landing pages. For each campaign, there should be a specific landing page that drives the visitor to convert, instead of allowing them to get distracted on your website and venture away from completing a form.

How will you use the information you collect?

Once you have your leads, what happens next? Is there an immediate handoff to sales? Is marketing out of the picture?

This is where lead-nurturing techniques come into play, and where close alignment between marketing and sales is essential.

Next week’s blog will focus on setting expectations and how to nurture and guide prospects through the funnel to a closed sale and satisfied customer.

In the meantime, there are plenty of online resources where you can learn more about best practices in B2B lead generation. These include, but are not limited to, Pardot, Hubspot, and Marketo.

Don’t forget: Digital marketing is key to most lead-generation efforts. Download this useful digital marketing guide to learn more.

How to Make Inbound Marketing Work for Your Aviation Business

Inbound Marketing can attract customers to aerospace businessesAerospace and aviation companies looking for every competitive advantage should be taking a closer look at inbound marketing. Inbound delivers a range of important benefits, including:

  • Reaching and engaging closely targeted prospects
  • Generating quantifiable leads
  • Elevating and building credibility for your brand
  • Becoming a thought leader in your market
  • Increasing your website traffic and search engine ranking (SEO)

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a philosophy that challenges traditional, interruptive techniques for an all-new approach based on attraction. It’s designed to complement today’s B2B buying behavior, and it works.

It’s called inbound because it draws potential customers in to you, eliminating the need to reach out with a cold call or email. Just imagine – the customers come to you!

Inbound marketing works when you help your audience find you (via your website) and give them answers to burning questions, hard-to-find information they need or want, help with their most difficult challenges or even authentic inspiration or motivation. In a word, content. We’ll talk more about that in next week’s chapter.

As HubSpot, an inbound marketing authority says, “by publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive.”

The most important thing to remember is this — everyone is looking for help — but no one is looking to be sold.

Why Should You Care?

If you want a more relevant, efficient and effective marketing program, you should care about inbound marketing. Inbound generates more qualified and receptive leads, at less cost with a higher conversion rate, than traditional outbound marketing.

Traditional Marketing Examples

Depending on the plan and frequency, these items can add up fast, potentially totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  • Advertising
  • Direct Mailers
  • Purchasing Lists

Inbound Examples

Depending on your internal resources, many inbound tactics have little or no cost.

  • Blogging
  • Content
  • Subscriber List

If you have something to say, or something to sell, inbound marketing creates an environment by which someone who needs your product can easily find you. And that’s something any marketer can get behind.

What Should I Do to Get Started?

Here are 7 phased steps to jump-start your effort.

Phase 1

  1. Create and maintain a modern, up-to-date website that is mobile- and search-engine friendly. This is the hub of your inbound program. Be sure to include an area for viewers to subscribe to your content.
  2. Hold a brainstorm meeting to gather content ideas. Ask yourself “what questions do customers or prospects most frequently ask? What are current hot topics or needs in the market?”
  3. Create a content and tactical monthly calendar – this should be the foundation for all your marketing-related activities.
  4. Create and distribute your content through channels like email, social media, website and blogging.

Phase 2

  1. You should see a spike in website traffic as a result of your content and promotion strategy. Begin converting traffic into leads by using landing pages, savvy calls to action and substantial content and offers.
  2. Use lead nurturing techniques to convert leads into sales, integrating with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
  3. Convert customers into brand ambassadors.

How Can it Work for Aviation, Aerospace and Defense Businesses?

BDN began using inbound techniques for our own business in July 2015, and the results have been more than encouraging. In fact, this blog is one important element of a multi-dimensional strategy that is delivering real results.

A wide variety of B2B businesses in an array of industries are making inbound work for them, and you can, too. Hubspot did a helpful piece about “16 Companies in Boring Industries Creating Remarkable Content,” and if boring industries can do it, imagine the potential for aerospace. Our work and products are exciting, but we default to presenting them in expected, non-interesting ways.

GE — well known within the aviation sector — is breaking away from the norm and is widely recognized for having a best-in-class inbound program that is refreshingly modern and unexpectedly unique and creative. Examples include Pinterest boards entitled “Mind=Blown” and “Badass Machines,” and a humorous take on the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme featuring Thomas Edison. Other examples include entertaining science-related YouTube videos and Txchnologist, a magazine designed to highlight “the great challenges of our era through industry, technology and ingenuity.”

In addition to BDN’s Inbound Marketing case study and Hubspot, here are some other relevant resources to expand your knowledge and understanding of inbound marketing:

  • Learn how to cultivate subscribers and why they are better than leads here.
  • Marketo is an alternative to Hubspot.
  • Jay Baer is a renowned social media and content marketing consultant and his Convince and Convert blog is a great, worthwhile read.

Don’t forget: Digital marketing is key to most lead-generation efforts. Download this useful digital marketing guide to learn more.

How Selective List Building Drives Results: A BDN Case Study

shutterstock_120159649Building and using lists for targeted marketing outreach programs is important to your marketing program, but where is it all leading?

Is everyone on the list subjected to a one-way onslaught of interruptive sales messages? Or are you using a permission-based approach where the target actually wants and welcomes the information and messages they receive? And what about the legal and ethical implications of your email-based marketing program?

Legitimate email marketing providers will not allow the use of purchased lists, and though it is permitted under CAN-SPAM laws, you can still be labeled a spammer if recipients complain. The solution is to provide great content and allow your target audience to opt in or subscribe. That’s exactly what BDN has done with our own email marketing, and our experience helps illustrate the approach.

One of our favorite blogs explains that that “the difference between a lead and a subscriber is akin to the difference between a date and a marriage. Both are important relationships, but one often requires more commitment than the other.”

They go on to say that a subscriber is much more valuable than a lead because subscribers have made a commitment and are actively engaging in a relationship with you. A lead, on the other hand, is completely non-committal, always keeping you at arm’s length. One is likely to buy from you in the future and the other — not so much.

BDN is making a move from interruptive to permission-based marketing, and here’s what we have learned.

In one month our company has built a list of qualified leads, and it’s growing rapidly. We are reaching fewer people overall, but the people we do reach actually want to hear from us.

In the past, when we sent our messages to a large, unqualified list of industry marketers , the results were uninspiring — although list building has to start somewhere.

Our performance was poor, with significantly below industry average rates for opens and click-throughs, and an above-average number of unsubscribe requests.

Here’s where we are today. In just one month we have built a list of 70+ qualified leads and our performance is top notch.

  • Our open rate (58%) is 37% above the industry average of 21%
  • Our click-through rate (24%) is 22% above the industry average of 2%
  • We have had no unsubscribe requests. The average is .53%
  • We are ranked as a great quality sender with no spam complaints, and no hard or soft bounces.

What’s more, thanks to the new list, web traffic has skyrocketed. The first email alone brought 57 new visitors in just one day, and the momentum continues to build.

Tips and Tricks to Gain Subscribers

  • Install SumoMe. BDN has collected 23 email addresses in less than a month using the free version of the app. (We could upgrade and would probably collect more)
  • Gate content on your website and include an opt-in button
  • Promote on your homepage
  • Promote in email signatures
  • Promote at the bottom of eblasts
  • Promote on social media
  • Add a list builder to Facebook

For more information about the difference between leads and subscribers, see this SBI blog. This BannerView article has more information about the legal and ethical implications of email marketing. For more analogies about how marketing is like dating, visit BDN.

You might also be interested in Do You Have What It Takes To Succeed With The Aerospace News Media? or Is It Time To Hire An Outside Marketing Firm?

An Introduction to Inbound Marketing for A&D

shutterstock_109980299I’ve officially jumped on the Inbound Marketing bandwagon, and I hope you do, too. Inbound marketing is a way to enable your target audience to find you at the right time — precisely when they are seeking knowledge and information. You’re pulling them in gently, and they are allowing it to happen. In a push, you are broadly sending your message out, hoping against hope that someone takes notice. And the less they notice, the more you push. Because you want to sell them something. And they know it. No one wants to be sold to. However, when we are ready, we appreciate having the information and resources at hand to enable a smart buying decision. Inbound marketing transforms the marketing engagement from interruption-based to permission-based.

I don’t believe it replaces the outbound process, especially for aerospace marketing, but I do believe we need a better balance. In general, interrupting people who have no interest what you want to tell them does not make a lot of sense beyond perhaps planting a seed for the future. But, what if you create compelling content and become a hub of valuable information for your potential customers? What if you optimize your website to improve the ranking in search engines, so it’s easy for prospects to find you? And what if you engage in social media as a force multiplier where others share your content with their networks? Try it and see what happens. By embracing inbound marketing techniques, BDN averages 16 leads a month just from people who visit our website looking for information about aerospace marketing. Inbound marketing is not a panacea. But it’s an important and effective tool that marketers must acknowledge and understand to stay relevant and effective