Mautic Marketing Automation Update for Inbound Marketing University
It’s been a while since I posted anything about implementing Mautic marketing automation. That is because there as a delay in getting the content for my sales funnel ready. What I describe below is what I’ve done and the purpose of my sharing it is to provide a template for people who just now embarking…
Why do so Few Companies Use Marketing Automation to Nurture Leads?
The payoff can be enormous… So what’s the issue? Why do so many companies not implement marketing automation while others implement it very poorly? It’s a case of money and time. Until recently marketing automation software packages were expensive, such that small businesses were simply left out. But that doesn’t explain larger businesses who pay…
The Buyers Journey, Content, and Marketing Automation to Nurture Leads
Content marketing is marketing through publishing content. Inbound marketing is content marketing with a focus on attracting people to your website. Lead nurturing is walking people through their buyers journey once a website visitors becomes a lead. This occurs when they fill out a form and you then have a name and an email address…
Creating an Email Opt-in Form on Your WordPress Website
This post shows in some detail how to create (find is really more accurate) the email opt-in HTML code within your email marketing service (MailChimp is used in this example), and how to embed that code into your WordPress website. NOTE: To enlarge any of the images below, double click within the image Step 1:…
Open Source Marketing Automation for Small Business: Mautic.com
Marketing automation is a form of email marketing on steroids. The “steroids” in this case is the ability to suggest actions in the email’s, track if those actions were or were not taken, and to send the next email based of whether the suggested action was taken. These “if – then” branches is what gives…
The Effectiveness of Marketing Automation DRIP Campaigns
What is a DRIP Campaign? It’s where you continuously contact someone (generally via email but I suspect tools that do this will incorporate social media messaging in the future) in an effort to move them through your sales funnel (their buyers journey) one step at a time. There are two “flavors” or types of DRIP…
Lead Nurturing for Small Business: The Purpose of Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation is Sophisticated Email Marketing The main concept of Lead Nurturing is to stay in touch with people who have visited your website, but either have never bought, or who have not bought recently. Marketing Automation is a very sophisticated form of email marketing where you send email’s to people, suggest some action that…
Small Business Marketing Automation Investment is More Time than Money
Marketing Automation is Super Sophisticated Email Marketing It may help to think of marketing automation as email marketing on steroids. Rather than a standard DRIP campaign where everyone gets the same set of email but on their own personal schedule, marketing automation software and services are different for two reasons: 1) When someone clicks a link…
The 3 Forms of Email Marketing: Newsletter, Drip Campaigns, and Marketing Automation
Overview Those infamous studies show…. email marketing works. The optimum combination for generating business online is….. Attract visitors through Inbound Marketing. Obtain their email address in exchange for something. Stay in touch via email. Not that social media marketing doesn’t serve a purpose, but these studies show the money is in Inbound Marketing and email.…
The 2 Most Important Things to Help You Spend Money On Effective Marketing
1. The Buyers Journey When we buy something, we through a decision process. I’ve called the The Buyers Decision Process, but recently learned a term (from Hubspot no less) I like better…. The Buyers Journey. The concept here is we (all) go through a decision process when we buy stuff. For inexpensive products and services…
How Marketing Automation Converts Contacts into Leads for Your Small Business
Most of Us Do Not Buy Right Away In fact 67% of prospects don’t buy right away. When you don’t stay in touch with these people, they buy from someone else. Staying in touch with them is called Lead Nurturing. Automating this process is called Marketing Automation. It’s a way of staying in touch with leads in…
Email Marketing Works in Generating Website Conversions and Sales
Social Media Experts Question Social Media Conversions Even with defining conversion as “the website visitor takes the desired action” (which could be to sign up for an email newsletter or download an eBook and not necessarily makes a purchase), social media experts are hard pressed to provide data demonstrating that social media marketing updates generate…
Growing Organic Traffic with Inbound Marketing is Processes, not Tools
Inbound Marketing is Processes, not Tools Per Se The best tools, used poorly, do not generate the outcomes you want. I spoke to a young entrepreneur the other day who recently graduated from a Silicon Valley incubator where the graduation came with a 90% discount to the Hubspot toolset. She mentioned she has been working…
Marketing through a Blog or a Newsletter? What Grows Your Audience and Converts?
Blog or Newsletter? Seriously? Every time I see a post like the one I link to below, I’m curious if the author is really serious. The question being posted is should you blog OR should you send out a newsletter? It doesn’t look like it’s intended to be satire, but at the same time it…
Low Cost Marketing Automation for Lead Nurturing for Small Business
Marketing Automation Tools for SMBs Marketing automation is catching on. Internet searches for the term “marketing automation” have increased 50% in the past year. Hubspot is the leader of this pack, with 75% of it’s reviews coming from what they consider to be SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) which is defined as businesses with fewer…
Inbound Marketing with CRM Changes how Leads are Generated and Nurtured
Inbound Marketing plus Marketing Automation In a similar way that the Internet has disrupted various industries, the way businesses generate leads and sales is also being disrupted. What works is changing and costs are coming down. As we all receive too many interruptions during our busy lives, what we’ve come to know as “traditional marketing”…
Personalize Content Marketing with Automation Software that Walks Visitors Through Your Sales Funnel
Personalized Content Marketing Personalized content marketing simply means that content you bring to the attention of a website visitors differs depending upon where they are in their buying decision process. The picture below shows a sales funnel, with the various (and admittedly generic) stages or phases people go through in the course of buying. Phase…
What is Marketing Automation? How does it Fill Your Sales Funnel with Leads?
Marketing Automation The title of this post is intentionally misleading. Marketing automation does not fill your sales funnel, it allows you to more easily stay in touch with people who are already in your sales funnel. So what is Marketing Automation? I like the definition in Wikipedia…. Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies…
Inbound Marketing Generates Leads you then Nurture with Marketing Automation
Lead Generation vs Lead Nurturing This post describes the differences between lead generation and lead nurturing, but first let me describe briefly what a sales funnel is. Of all the people who see some mention of your product or service, some of them become aware (as they have some interest). Of that group, some set…
Marketing Automation is a Misleading Term | Attracting Prospects and Generate Leads is Operations not Tools
Is Marketing Automation a Meaningless Phrase? Only when the idea is taken too far. Let me explain. When we automate the assembly line where cars are built, we never fully automate, we just need fewer people because we have sophisticated tools that allows people to work more efficiently and do more work in a given…
Lead Nurturing through Marketing Automation Needs Human Guidance
Marketing Automation Is (amongst other things) the process of staying in touch with people who have expressed an interested in your product or service, but have not yet bought. It’s called marketing automation as you set it up, then let it run. However, some people leave it alone for too long, trusting in the automation…
Growing Your Business with Leads Generated from Marketing Automation Requires Content
Marketing Automation without Good Content is Like…. I’m sure you have your favorite metaphor here….. A car with only 3 wheels A grape press without grapes A farm without farm hands The core principals of marketing are as relevant for marketing automation messages (emails, social media updates, etc) as they are for blog posts (except…
Content Marketing Efforts MUST include Email for Customer Engagement
Why Email Marketing? That’s Not Inbound? Those who know me well know I’m a huge proponent of Inbound Marketing, to the exclusion of other forms of digital or content marketing. For example, I do have a Facebook account, but I have only 11 friends and they’re all immediate family members. I have not yet created…
Marketing Automation is Strong Lead Nurturing for Your Sales Funnel
Marketing Automation is Lead Nurturing Plus Yes, but plus what? When you understand the concept of the Sales Funnel, you understand the importance of Lead Nurturing. The main concept is most of us don’t buy right away. In fact only 21% of leads received by a business are ever closed (on average). For those people…
Educating Prospects During the Interest Phase of Your AIDA Sales Funnel
Not Everyone Buys Right Away, Some Need Time and Attention A prior post discussed an article recently published by James Green about the need to nurture leads in the middle of your sales funnel (another way of saying in the middle of their decision process). This post picks up where that one left off and…
Link Network: How Does Google Knows a Link Was Paid For or Not?
Google Doesn’t Like Bought Links, but How do They Know? When you read articles in the various trade publications you see a lot of press about the importance of not violating Google’s guidelines for what links are valid and what links are invalid. But how can Google tell? The Obvious Ones Are Google maintains a…
What are Google Link Network Penalties? How are they penalized?
Google Punishes More Link Networks A headline this morning announced that Google has punished two more link networks. What exactly does that mean? What is a “link network” and how does Google punish them? Unfortunately the Google Webmaster Article on this is a little vague. What is a link network? There does not seem to…
Internet Marketing Strategy | Critical Off Page (and Site) SEO Factors
This post is part of a series about the Internet marketing strategy I call Inbound Marketing. To access the lead post please click the link in the prior sentence. Background If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times…. If you want to rank high on Google you need back links: both quantity…