Inbound Marketing: Trick or Treat Marketing for Halloween!
October 31, 2011 by Brandon Aday | 0 comments
Digital marketing today reminds me of trick or treating. A customer does a search on Google, and browses from one website to another on the result page. They are looking for content about products and services, just like a trick or treater goes from home to home looking for treats! This post will explain how this emerging trend in marketing is like our favorite activity on Halloween, and how you can use it to grow your business!
In the early days of Halloween in America, homeowners who had become weary of being vandalized or "tricked" by neighborhood kids on Halloween night, began giving them "treats", such as homemade sweets and chocolates. The better the treats, the less likely you were to have your windows broken or your plants knocked over. This practice spread and seemed to qualm the more mischievous aspects of the holiday and lead us to the Halloween we know and love today! When kids come knocking on your door, are you giving out yummy treats or are you popping out a plate full of pennies?
You can think of companies that pursue an inbound marketing strategy as the houses who give out the best treats for Halloween. You don't want to be known as that house with the candy no one wants or are rude to the neighborhood kids. Trick or treaters don't like that, you don't want your house to be egged! When you are utilizing an inbound marketing strategy, you are making sure you have something to offer the visitors to your website, so that they don't leave empty handed! Unfortunately, when it comes to website visitors, if you don't have something for them to take with them, they won't hit you with eggs, they may just never come back to your website or remember they were there! So you definitely want to have some form of offer for visitors who come to your site, that meets their needs.
For this reason Inbound marketing differs from "outbound" or traditional marketing, which includes tv, print, banner advertising, direct mail, telemarketing and email marketing. Instead of sending out a large mass message, inbound marketing relies on the research behavior of today's consumer to attract them to a website that offers products and services that fit their specific needs. You can utilize that behavior to help potential customers find information related to products and services they want to consume. Since this is based on the customers own search engine research, as opposed to a banner ad or email message telling them what to buy, they are more likely to convert from a lead to a customer, since they are pre-qualified to purchase that product or service. However, you need to make sure you have content available, and have the web pages optimized in a way that attracts the organic web traffic to the page, and provides the right call to action for the visitor to obtain that content.
As with trick or treaters, not every website visitor on your website has the same needs. If the trick or treaters are very young, you don't want to give them something they can choke on. Likewise, if you they are older, you don't want to give them something that they feel only a baby would want. It is the same with website visitors, you need to have a different offer for each of the customer segments that come to your website. Maybe they are not ready to buy from you now, but they do want to sign up for your newsletter. Perhaps they don't want to schedule an appointment, but they do want to download a white paper or case study on a similar company who used your products. Finally, if they are mature enough in the marketing/sales life-cycle, perhaps they will want to schedule that free 30 minute consultation with you! Make sure you have something to offer, and it is displayed somewhere they can find it easily!
So what do you do to give the best experience to the different visitors that come to your "home"? Well don't be one of those people who just put all your candy in a bowl and let the kids pick out "one". Not only will they take everything, but they will rip the bowl apart, take all the candy...oh and guess what, it wasn't a child but a high-school kid out with his buddies, wrestling each other for candy (ok...ok...that was me and my friends growing up I admit it)! Instead, you want to know who you are giving content treats to, so you can give them the proper type of treat. You should also keep track of what is popular (all the Snickers are gone, but you have tons of tootsie rolls left over), and if possible, to track who took what.
On a website this means using simple newsletter sign up forms, and website forms that gather the persons information, such as name and e-mail. These forms should have special codes that alert your website analytics package (such as Google Analytics) when a transaction occurs. In this way, you both win, since they are taking with them valuable content, and you are getting their information for lead tracking (or in the case of candy, you won't eat it all and gain 5 pounds the first week of November!)
So how do you give away your treats and what kind of content treats should you give away? Setting up a blog should be the first step in your content marketing strategy, and this is of course to publish free content to all visitors to your website. Think of your blog as your doorway and trick or treaters will come here first to "knock on your door". From there, you can promote your yummy content, which should be in the form of downloadable files that visitors can take with them to consume (and hopefully spread via social media or word-of-mouth marketing).
Great examples of treats for your website visitors include white papers, caste studies, ebooks, infographics and podcasts are all great treats to give to your website visitors. A white paper may be a special report or specific research you have conducted on a topic that is important to your customer segments. An ebook may be a compilation of your past blog posts, which you have re-edited and formatted to be consumed in PDF format on an e-reader or tablet. Audio and video podcasts can include interviews with employees, clients or industry leaders, or even recordings of seminars you have presented in the past. Infographics, which are a newer form of a down loadable graphic that can display your research and data in a visually attractive way. These are especially great for viral marketing, as they can spread very quickly through the Twittersphere and Facebook!
So are you going to have one of those homes which all the children rave about each year, about getting the best treats, or are you going to get egged? Check out these resources to learn more about inbound marketing: First, check out the Hubspot blog on inbound marketing, the leading website on all things related to inbound marketing. Second, you can check out this great Infographic from Mashable on Inbound vs. Outbound marketing. Here are some books you can check out to study how you can adopt an inbound marketing strategy: Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (New Rules Social Media Series), Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (New Rules Social Media Series), Think Outside the Inbox: The B2B Marketing Automation Guide, and UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.
Finally, if you have any questions, feel free to contact Aday Interactive at 305-918-2329 (ADAY) or schedule a free 30 minute consultation to discuss your Inbound Marketing Strategy!
