inbound marketing report for anchor computer systems · we help businesses harness inbound...
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Inbound Marketing Report for Anchor Computer Systems
September 2015
Introduction
First of all, thank you very much for your time on the phone last week. The
information we were able to gather will prove invaluable to our own marketing
efforts, and I hope you found some value in the call too.
I have benchmarked your current marketing against our inbound best practice
model and in this report have summarised what I see as the key issues you need
to address to improve your marketing effectiveness and made some high level
recommendations to address them.
Should you have any questions about the content in this report, or wish to take
the conversation further, feel free to give me a call on 020 8527 3592 or email me
[email protected] 257 3592
About Us
Formed in 2002 and operating out of the “Silicon Roundabout” at the heart of
London’s media and tech startup scene, we are a small but highly skilled team of
business strategy consultants and certified inbound marketers with a strategy
before tactics philosophy, an analytical approach grounded in constant testing
and optimisation and a determination to turn every single company we work with
into raving fans.
We help businesses harness inbound marketing to generate more high converting
leads at a fraction of the cost of traditional outbound methods and our mission is
to help turn 100 7-figure businesses into 8-figure businesses by 2020.
If you’re tired of dealing with agencies who want to push rehashed, off-the-shelf
solutions, creative types who are more interested in winning design awards than
making your phone ring and business consultants and coaches who add
zero value to your business we may be just your kind of agency because those
are all the things we’re not!
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Transformational marketingMost businesses that make the shift from traditional to inbound marketing, never
see the full benefits. That’s because deploying a series of stand-alone tactics will
only ever deliver limited results.
We ensure our clients are well prepared before embarking on inbound marketing
by addressing all of the key elements required for maximum ROI in an integrated
way:
• a detailed and well researched strategy (your flight plan);
• an automated system that uses content to attract, nurture and convert ideal prospects (your engine and fuel);
• closed loop metrics so you can see what’s working and what isn’t (your cockpit instruments);
• an integrated approach to building the capacity, skills and culture required for successful execution (flight school).
We call it transformational marketing because it’s an approach that has been
proven to build sustainable long term competitive advantage and deliver
exceptional growth and profitability for the businesses we work with.
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So what is Inbound Marketing?Inbound Marketing, put simply, is marketing for the 21st century. Gone are the
days of relying on costly and increasingly ineffective cold-calling and direct
marketing.
The inbound methodology facilitates the buyer’s journey through the sales funnel
from strangers to advocates of your brand using a variety of channels such as
social media, blogging, SEO, landing pages, forms, and email.
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Inbound Marketing gets your prospects coming to you, and when implemented
properly allows you to track your leads every step of the way, making the job of
both sales and marketing easier than ever.
Challenge 1: Company Blog
The first marketing challenge we have identified for Anchor is the fact that you
don’t currently have a company blog. A blog is not only a great way to interact
with prospects and customers and position you as a thought leader in your
industry, but regularly creating and sharing high-quality blog content is the single
most effective tactic for generating organic website traffic.
• B2B companies that blog average 67% more leads than those who don’t
• These companies are also 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI
• Finally, they also enjoy on average 97% more links to their website
[All statistics courtesy of HubSpot]
Regular blogging also gives you a ready supply of great content to share across
social media along with a bank of useful content you can use to move prospects
down your marketing funnel and support your sales efforts once they are ready to buy.
[email protected] 257 3592
Challenge 2: Social Media Presence
Social media is one of the key ways of increasing brand exposure and ensuring
your content is shared as widely as possible, thus generating traffic to your
website. It also plays a crucial role in engaging your prospects and customers
and putting a human face to your brand.
• 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form.
• 92% of marketers agreed that social media is important for their business
• 80% of marketers indicated that their social media efforts increased traffic.
• Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.
On our call, one of the issues we discussed was the need to develop a more
active social media presence in order to remain ahead of your competitors. At
present you are doing very little on any platform, apart from individual
prospecting on LinkedIn.
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Challenge 3: Lead Capture
Offering your website visitors useful and engaging content in the form of
guides, whitepapers, videos and infographics in exchange for their contact
details is a key component of the inbound marketing methodology. Currently
this is not something you are doing and as a result you are almost certainly
wasting a lot of your website traffic.
Lead capture is important for 2 reasons:
1. Without a lead capture mechanism you have no way of following up with
visitors after they leave your site and nurturing them until they are ready to
buy from you. This is crucial since most of your website visitors will not be
sales-ready.
2. By capturing leads and tracking every interaction with them in a
centralized marketing database you will be able to focus your sales efforts
on warm leads which will be much easier to close, reducing your cost of
customer acquisition and your sales cycle.
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Challenge 4: Marketing Metrics
You mentioned that you experience
a high volume of traffic to your
website, but that you are not
monitoring or tracking where your
visitors are coming from, or how
many of them are converting.
Integrating your marketing tools and
CRM to produce closed loop metrics
provides you with a wealth of
information about which marketing
efforts are bringing in the best leads
and whether your sales team is
focused on the most qualified leads.
In other words, you’ll know which bits
of your marketing are working and
which aren’t so you are in complete
control.
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Challenge 5: Website Strategy
A clear and coherent website strategy is crucial if your inbound marketing efforts
are going to give you the results you want. We have identified 2 key issues with
your website:
1. Your site is not particularly interactive or engaging. This not only impacts on
the quality of the overall user experience but also means that your visitors are
probably not spending much time on your site, which in turn is making it
harder for you to get found in the search engines.
2. Your content is noticeably “you” focused (your company, your team, your
solutions), rather than speaking to the needs and pain-points of your
prospects. The purpose of your content should be to educate, to emphasise
the benefits of your services, overcome objections and highlight your
competitive superiority.
See Nortridge for an example of a competitor who have a much more problem
centred approach.
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Recommendations
1. Strategy - Take the time to put together a strategy that tackles the key challenges you have identified in a holistic way and develop the business
case for integrating inbound into your current marketing so that you can
make an informed decision about whether this is a worthwhile investment.
2. Targeting - Develop personas for each of your ideal prospects that identify their needs, major challenges, pain points, buying objections, the types of
content they consume and how they use social media.
3. Content Strategy - Map out the information needs of your prospects at each stage of the buyers journey, then review your website content to identify any
gaps. Remember, the purpose of your content should be to educate, to
emphasise the benefits of your services, overcome objections and highlight
your competitive superiority so when brainstorming content ideas make sure
you can check all of the boxes.
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Recommendations
4. Traffic Generation – Once you have a clear content strategy, set up a company blog and start posting on a regular basis. Use social media to share
your content as widely as possible and build your audience.
5. Lead Capture and Nurturing - Add landing pages to your website where you can capture your visitors’ contact details in exchange for premium content.
Then use automated email follow up sequences to nurture your leads until
they are sales ready.
6. Metrics – Implement closed loop metrics and regular reporting so that you can measure and track all of your traffic, leads and conversions and see what
is working and what isn’t in your marketing.
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Are you ready for transformation?With a high average sale value, a defined buying process and a long and complex
sales cycle, we believe that Anchor would be an excellent fit for inbound
marketing.
With this in mind, we would be happy to work with you on a free of charge basis to put together a high level inbound marketing plan and business case so that you
can make an informed decision about whether this would be a worthwhile
investment, based on a clear and detailed understanding of what’s involved, how it
can be integrated with your existing outbound marketing, the financial
commitment and resources required for implementation and the results and ROI
you can expect.
In return we would want your permission to use you as a case study (assuming you
are happy with our work of course).
I will follow up with another short phone call in the next week to get your feedback
and discuss whether there is indeed an opportunity for us to work together to
develop an inbound strategy for Anchor. If you have any questions in the
meantime, please feel free to give me a call on 020 8527 3592 or email me at
[email protected]@wowconsulting.co.uk0208 257 3592
www.wowconsulting.co.uk
020 8527 3592