We recently changed our name to 'marketing machines'. The reason being to better represent what we at Real Inbound actually do for our clients! We build marketing machines. Its simple and straightforward and hopefully easy to understand. Let us know in the comments what you think about that maybe?
As an Inbound agency, and HubSpot website specialist we feel very strongly about you getting the most from the technology that is easily available to you these days, through platforms like HubSpot of course, but many other options exist too. So there is no excuse to not be actively driving return for your business through your online presence.
So what actually constitutes a marketing machine?
We recently ran research that shows the majority of business with a website are not using it to its best.
In polls we ran on LinkedIn (a combined reach of 1500 views at the time of writing) we saw a staggering 26% of respondents saying that they didn't even need a website, they could exist on social media, and in the follow poll, 25% of respondents replied 'nothing much, sadly' to the question 'what do you expect from your website'.
The websites content management system or CMS is the most important part of keeping your website up to date and optimising it for conversions and sales. These days, marketers need access to the CMS to avoid lengthy and potentially expensive delays to updating the site, or worse, being locked out by a rogue developer or hosting company.
Marketers want to test and optimise as much of the website's real estate as possible to ensure the best experience for the customer and ultimately the best return from the site too.
Your marketing machine needs to work for your developers and IT teams too.
If you build it, they almost certainly won't come. You need to ATTRACT that highly targeted audience to your site so that your marketing technology has someone to work with.
Using your understanding of your target persona's and their buyer journey, including the 'key words' they use to search for help, think content like blogs, and organic social media post. A powerful SEO strategy is essential to build slow but consistent audience growth for your site.
The internet is some times called a 'pay to play' environment. That means the fastest way to get targeted website traffic is to buy it. There are several ways that you can do this. PPC, or pay per click advertising is one, which involves you 'bidding' on clicks on the same key words we mentioned earlier.
Or there are 'ads' Adverts can take many forms these days and again benefit from the ability to target a specific audience. Facebook or Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads or even Ads in the Google feeds are easy to but and cheap to experiment with.
There is no doubt that the most powerful and successful ads work because they send audiences to specific landing pages designed to make the clients journey seamless. Taking people from say, social media to your website can be disconcerting unless you are careful about your landing page design. Great copy can turn someone browsing into to submitting more data when downloading a lead magnet, or even registering for future information.
Super powerful text or pictures asking readers to click and progress through the journey are called 'calls to action. They usually look like a button or even a picture that leads to the next step you need the client to take. They play an important psychological role is advancing your potential client through your process.
One of the most powerful tools on your website are your web form. These are the main way you will gather information or data on your potential and existing customers and discover exactly where there are in the buyers journey. Blog forms can capture and publish readers comments. Contact forms allow clients to get in touch and provide vital information that means you can quickly fix their issues. And Landing page forms allow you to capture the clients data on their first touch of your website.
A site without forms is pretty blind and lacking in interactivity to your potential and existing clients.
You need a place to store all this data you are collecting. And a way to organise it to make sure you can track it through the various parts of your customers journey through pre purchase, purchase and after sales. CRMs can also help manage your email marketing and even be used to personalise the content on your website. The CRM is the heart of your marketing machine and can be the most powerful tool in the whole marketing technology stack.
All the above tools will 'plug in' to your CRM giving somewhere for the data from your adverts, landing pages and webform to be stored and tracking your ongoing conversations with prospects or from a customer services perspective too.
One of the staples of modern digital marketing and still the number one media for response - especially when used in conjunction with your up to date and interactive website. You will find you'll be using email for transactional purposes like sending contracts and agreements, marketing efforts like automated nurture emails, and even sales emails to try and breakthrough to potential prospects.
Email is simply an essential these days, and there are any number of specialist suppliers out there.
Also know as marketing automation. A must for a team of sales and markers that need to be allowed to do the most important tasks like actually talk to clients, rather than spend time in the CRM, or the website backend.
There are many people who still don't really understand automation worrying that it leaves the human out of the equation which can risk a negative customer experience. Actually the reverse is true. Automation helps the people involved in company / customer interactions talk to each other more quickly and more efficiently.
Your website allows you intimate conversations with your customers. From what they think of your products or services (Customer Satisfaction) to how hard they needed to work to get where they wanted to be (Customer Effort) the less effort the better generally, and even the brilliant Net Promoter Score (NPS survey) that shows how likely they would be to recommend you and your business to their friends.
Nothing says you know, and value your website visitors like Smart content. Pre filled out forms, or customised page views for returning visitor transports your site from good to great.
Lots of people will use your social media and website channels to make their feelings known. Customer service is one of the most often quoted uses of social media for brands all over the world. But the cast majority of these social conversations will be on dark social.
That is accounts you don't follow talking to each other 'about you' rather than 'too you'. Social listening or monitoring is a vital step in building your marketing machine as it allows you to understand what the marketing is saying about you in its most unprompted forms.