HubSpot’s highly successful INBOUND 2015 event may have ended a week ago, but there were simply too many informative nuggets to include in one blog post. So, we’ve gathered together some of the top tactical action items that you can apply to your marketing strategy today. 
Check out the top inbound marketing concepts below:
Social Media
“Facebook Marketing Success: Proven Ways to Generate More Traffic, Leads, and Profits”
Mari Smith, CEO of Mari Smith International, Inc.
For many inbound marketers, Facebook has presented a unique challenge in the social media landscape. It seems that each year, it gets more difficult for companies to get heard over all of the noise on this network. In order to have posts appear in people’s newsfeeds, brands increasingly need to pay for sponsored posts.
But what happens when you sponsor an update or create an ad, and you’re still not getting found on Facebook? Unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence.
Mari explained the basics of creating a post that gets attention — including choosing the right content for your audience, adjusting targeting settings such as location and interests, and other necessary steps. But perhaps the most important takeaway from this session is remembering to put as much time and effort into the landing page you’re drawing people to.
Even if you become a master of Facebook ad creation, if your landing page does not have a clear Call to Action (CTA), how can you expect fans to convert? Think about the goals for each campaign, and make sure that your landing pages encourage users to take those actions.
Content
“Good vs. Good Enough Content: A Fight for Sore Eyes”
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs
As a marketer, you’re probably getting sick of the phrase “content is king.” You know that in order to get found online, you need to create content. And a lot of it. But if everyone is creating a lot of content, how can you make yours stand out against everyone else’s?
When you’re tasked with creating a never ending stream of long-form content, it’s possible to fall into the trap of producing “good enough” posts. There may come a point where you appear to hit your stride — banging out search optimized content on your way to the kids’ soccer games. But is all that content really helping you reach your goals? How many people are actually reading through these posts?
Ann suggests that in order to get readers’ attention in such a competitive space, your content must be bigger, bolder, and braver.
Want your new product to get attention? See if you can relate to a bigger story that’s in the news already. “Newsjacking,” when done well, can quickly advance your brand exposure and get you in front of a much larger audience. This will open the door to a bolder story that directly ties into a specific challenge or experience faced by your audience. Anybody can write about national news, but it takes a bold marketer to make people see how the news can impact them. And lastly, a braver story speaks for itself. In many cases, telling a story using personal experience requires bravery, but is so much more effective in getting a point across. In other cases, the key is simply telling a story using a perspective that others don’t want to discuss. Either way, it will set apart your content from all of the other versions out there already.
Sales
“Closing the Deal: Winning More, Better Business with Consultative Selling”
Drew Himel, CEO of PCR Agency
Let’s face it, we’re all interested in inbound marketing because it helps us get more leads to grow our businesses. But once we’ve generated the leads, what comes next?
Rather than sit around hoping and praying that prospects will navigate the sales funnel on their own, take charge of the situation without scaring them off with a hard sales call. The key to success here is finding the balance between informing and selling, using a technique called consultative selling.
We have all experienced the torture of a cold call by a rep who hasn’t done their homework. We’ve also all experienced sticker shock at one time or another — quickly comparing one product or service to another based on who has the most competitive price. So, how can marketers and sales reps overcome these hurdles and improve the buying process?
According to Drew, the secret is serving as a consultant, rather than a rep. Discuss this prospect’s needs and requirements and fully commit yourself to understanding them before you come up with any kind of proposal. A thorough discovery period will take weeks, if not months (depending on the product or service you offer), but by the end of it you’ll be able to create a solution that was designed specifically to solve this prospects need. At this point, they should see you as a partner rather than a salesperson, and they should see the value of the plan you’re proposing.
Technology
“Technical Marketing is the price of Admission”
Michael King, Digital Marketing Leader, Thinker and Doer at iPullRank
"We are on the verge of a technological revolution that marketers are not ready to capitalize on." While you are familiar with typical marketing tactics like SEO, PPC, Social Media, Blogging, and Email, you most likely aren't terribly savvy when it comes to advanced technology. By learning simple aspects of HTML and CSS you can pull back the curtain on the great and powerful OZ of development. The secret is that nothing is ever that hard. This knowledge will allow you to keep the development team honest with their deadlines and technology possibilities. Once you understand the possibilities, it will help you generate new ideas and execute more effective and measurable campaigns.
This session was chock full of great resource information on training, databases, making systems "talk" to each other, APIs, plan your UX and measure your activities. You can see Michael's presentation here.
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And if you’d like to learn more about how manufacturers can apply inbound marketing concepts to their business strategy, talk to one of our experts today.
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