Why You Need An Inbound Marketing Agency

 

With inbound marketing being the most effective strategy for growing your brand online, it is crucial that your business is focusing on and adequately executing each of the incoming components to achieve optimal results. They must be fully operating to reap the rewards of generating quality traffic, leads, and sales for your business.

However, this can prove challenging for some brands. Not having the time to create ongoing content, overwhelmed by all the different strategies and how to manage them, and unsure where to begin in online marketing are all common obstacles that some businesses face with implementing inbound marketing. If any of these hurdles hit home, hiring an inbound marketing agency is your solution.

In fact, check out these four reasons why your brand should strongly consider an inbound marketing agency to help improve your online strategy:

Leverage the Experts

Online marketing techniques are always changing. What works today in SEO, for example, may not work tomorrow. Instead of trying to keep up with the trends, leverage the expertise of an inbound agency that knows of the latest marketing techniques. They know what’s working in online marketing and what’s not. Use their knowledge to your advantage so you can focus on what you do best in your business.

Enhance Your Content Strategy

The key to a solid content marketing strategy is aligning your content with your ultimate business goals. If you consistently find your team struggling with content ideas an inbound marketing agency will help you get a clear picture of the brand's goals and target audience so that you’ll never run out of ideas of what content to share.

Eliminate Paralysis by Analysis

Because there are so much information and plenty of internet marketing strategies you can implement, some companies get stuck in trying to decide which techniques to use, what to do next, or what tools to deploy and so forth. Your inbound marketing agency will know which online tactics and marketing automation tools that are best for your unique business goals and objectives.

Bottom Line, Get Results!

You've spent a lot of money on your websites, yet your pages are not generating any traffic or leads. You're not even showing up on the organic searches in Google! It’s simply time for you to get results. Every day that you wait in trying to figure it out, you miss opportunities for leads, sales, and new customers. Contact us today for a consultation on how you can get to your next level and create the results you deserve!


13 Facts About Video Marketing You May Not Know

Camera Capturing a Man for Video Marketing

There’s an old but true axiom in the marketing world: consumers justify their purchases based on logic, but they buy based on emotion. Your neighbor will tell you he bought that shiny, new convertible in his driveway because it gets great gas mileage, or performed well in crash tests, or its great resale value. The truth is he probably bought it because it’s sexy and tells you he’s climbing up the social ladder.

Creating that emotional connection with customers sells your products and services. And the best medium to sell with emotion is video. Video brings your company to life and shows rather than tells customers who you are, what you value, and why you’re better than your competitors. Study after study shows that consumers prefer a compelling video about a product or service to a comparable print description.

How Do You Sell Wearable Cameras? Rescue a Kitten

GoPro sells wearable action cameras, high-definition gadgets for outdoor sports enthusiasts who want to capture their thrill of victory moments skiing, surfing, and skateboarding. In 2013, firefighter Cory Kalanick got the call to rescue an unconscious kitten in Fresno, California. He was wearing a GoPro camera. That video, heart-breaking and hopeful, made its way to YouTube where it caught the attention of 1.5 million viewers in its first few weeks. GoPro saw an opportunity, edited the raw footage, added its logo, and re-released the result (“Fireman Saves Kitten”) on its own YouTube channel. The video went viral, capturing 5 million views in its first week.

Founded in 2004, GoPro racked up $150,000 in sales in its first year. By 2013, annual sales had shot up to more than $985,000. In 2014, that number jumped to almost $1.4 million, taking the company to an IPO valuation just shy of $3 billion. It would be hard to argue that a kitten put GoPro on the map, but it sure didn’t hurt.

Video Sparks Emotion and Emotion Boosts Sales

GoPro isn’t alone in boosting sales and company image by tugging at the heartstrings. For example, Chipotle’s video (and mobile game), “The Scarecrow,” brought awareness to its sustainable farming campaign with images of animal confinement and toxic pesticides. More than 17 million consumers have viewed the video on YouTube.

And then there’s HelloFlo, which sells feminine hygiene products. The company scored big with a video using humor and heart, “The Camp Gyno,” featuring a young girl who gets her first “red badge of courage,” then helps other girls at summer camp. The video cost about $6,000 to shoot, got 6 million views in its first week and was named ad of the week by Adweek.

By the Numbers

The numbers tell the story: video marketing works because it’s what consumers want. Here are 13 facts about video marketing you may not have known:

  1. Four times as many consumers want to view a product video instead of reading about it
  2. Half of internet surfers want to see a product video before entering a store
  3. Consumers who see a video are about twice as likely to buy a product or use a service
  4. More than half of internet users watch videos all the way through
  5. Half of consumers say they want to see more company videos
  6. Companies which use video grow revenues twice as fast
  7. 52% of marketers say video content has the best return on investment
  8. Two of three consumers want videos of 60 seconds or less
  9. More than 100 billion people are active users of YouTube
  10. Half of all marketers plan to add YouTube to their marketing strategy in the next year
  11. Two of five marketers plan to add Facebook video in the next year
  12. Almost half of consumers watch an hour or more of Facebook and YouTube videos each week
  13. 80% of consumers say video demos help them make purchases

What now?

Video is an essential component of an integrated, inbound marketing strategy. To learn more about the ways you can generate leads and drive sales by engaging marketing content, contact us today.


How To Succeed at Outdoor Retailer

Outdoor Retailer: How to be successful?

Exhibiting at a like Outdoor Retailer or even just attending, can be one of the most fun and effective ways to grow your business. But it can also be challenging to connect with new people, form relationships, and then follow up with those people to create real growth in your business.

Trade Shows are often the most expensive line item on your company's marketing budget. Which means that it is vital to ensure you do everything possible to maximize the return on your investment in travel, tickets, promotions and time at a trade show.A properly prepped Outdoor Retailer, as you will see in our Outdoor Retailer Success Series, can massively improve their trade show results with a few simple steps.

Being at a Trade Show with your competitors is an invaluable experience. You can measure your efforts against the competition to capture quality leads or drive traffic to your booth. To get the most out of your marketing expense requires a fully integrated digital to real world strategy. Luckily for you, it is still very uncommon to find exhibitors or attendees who have an effective strategy to maximize their efforts.

Put down your business cards and swag bags, because we are about to leave them in the dust...

 


email_marketing_inbound

Email Marketing Refined

Despite all of the junk mail we receive and delete on a daily basis, email marketing still carries significant ROI. According to an Econsultancy study, two-thirds of marketers rate the ROI from email marketing as ‘excellent’ or ‘good”.  Harvard Business Review did an analysis with one retailer and discovered that the dollars earned per email sent was around $15.79 for sales generated both in-store and online.  It is somewhat difficult to believe that email works with all of the SPAM out there, but the numbers do not lie.  So in order to gain the most benefit from this low-cost medium, we have created a few tips to refine your email marketing:

Send emails to the right users - (and customer/prospect segments) at just the right time in the purchase cycle. It’s a sophisticated way to scale personal attention.  The key to successful marketing automation is technology. Rely on tools and data (rather than a spreadsheet) to reach your email list successfully. The biggest players in the space include MailChimp, InfusionSoft, Marketo, and Hubspot.

Understand Customer Needs - Customers have more tools than ever to filter out unwanted messaging with priority inboxes. Implement an opt-in process — a series of steps that subscribers can take to ensure that they’re receiving your emails.  Perhaps include a freebie, piece of content, or promotion/deal that they’ll receive in exchange.

Using a 2-step opt-in means that you will get less bargain hunters merely looking for the freebie and more qualified leads that are interested enough to go through the steps to receive your content.

Complete the Customer Experience - Always create a plan or outline for your email marketing campaigns — make sure that your messages follow a strategic approach.  You need to specify a clear conversion goal from your email marketing automation. You also need to ensure that your landing pages are fully optimized for the actions you want users to take.

Here are some tips to help you:

  • Don’t use misleading subject lines - make sure they are short, sweet, and a little enchanting
  • Avoid overusing capital letters within your email and in the subject lines
  • Be smart about symbols - if you use too many, your emails will look totally spammy
  • Use clear, concise messaging with a single call-to-action
  • Include unsubscribe links - this, as well as a physical address is mandatory per regulations

Metrics

Total Open Rate

This is calculated by taking the total number of email opens and dividing them by the number of delivered emails.

Total Clicks

These measure clicks generated from each campaign. Following up on these within 48 hours is critical for top-of-mind conversions

Total Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Divide the total number of clicks by the number of delivered emails

Conversions, Conversion Rates, and Revenue

These are metrics that you should be tracking across your marketing channels - these can be measured by using a tracking pixel and UTM links in your campaigns

Email, like any marketing medium, must be used as a tool in part of a larger campaign in order to achieve real results.  At HARNESS, we create the strategy and implement an omnichannel integrated campaign with full marketing automation to schedule, track, and deliver qualified leads from first engagement to after-sale service.