Track 2CONTENT TARGETING and LEAD NURTURINGIn this three part eBook series, you will learn the step by step process of making a strategic inbound website.

In part two, we examine content targeting, lead nurturing, and making and sustaining a positive impression with your leads.

How to Build an

Inbound Website

WEBSITESWebsites have evolved from being

simply informative to be a significant contributor, perhaps even the primary one, in helping

your organization achieve its business goals.

A website is the

center of customer engagement – and therefore, drives all

levels of growth.

Inbound WebsiteOverview

RESULTS, REVENUE, AND LEADS

INBOUND LEADS VS OUTBOUND LEADS

WHAT IS AN INBOUND WEBSITE

CONTENT TARGETING AND LEAD NURTURING

CREATE A RELEVANT, PERSONALIzED ExPERIENCE

BOOST RELEVANCY

USING SITE SEARCH

LEAD NURTURING

OPTIMIzING THE WEBSITE ExPERIENCE

CONTENT PLANNING WORKSHEET

PART ONE - SNACKABLE CONTENT

PART TWO - PREMIUM CONTENT

CALLS TO ACTION

EMAIL NURTURING CAMPAIGNS

click for stop

RESULTS

REVENUES

LEADS

It’s all about delivering the results that matter most to your organization. That may be revenue, membership, acquisition or other key metrics. Everything needs to be tested and analyzed, revised, and polished.

Inbound WebsiteOverview

RESULTS, REVENUE + LEADSare now the focus of websites and digital strategies, shifting away from historic metrics like Social Shares, Visitors,

Search Engine Results, and Page Views.

Marketers must actively engage and

build relationships with prospects via targeted content marketing on

their website, blog, and social channels.

SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS

SOCIAL SHARES

VISITORS

PAGE VIEWS

$

$

$ $$ OUTBOUNDLEADS

INBOUNDLEADS

¢

¢¢

61%INBOUND

LEADS COST

less thanoutbound leads

Inbound WebsiteOverview

The more leads, the happier your organization becomes – and it’s a proven fact that having an inbound website provides more qualified leads than outbound marketing alone.

So then, you might ask - how do I build an inbound website? Follow the simple steps and hands on activities in this eBook series and, in no time, you will increase qualified leads, boost visitor engagement, produce more brand advocates, and generate more revenue than ever. #inboundwebsite

EBOOKS

WEBINARS

PREMIUM CONTENT

LANDIN

G

PAGES

FORM

S

CHEC

K OUT

PRESS

BLOGS

SOCIAL

WEB ADS

INBOUNDWEBSITE

The website is thehub of your inbound

marketing strategy. C O N T E N T TA R G E T I N G

CONTROL You can control the message potential customers receive as they move through the buying process - Visitor, Engaged Visitor, Prospect, Customer, Advocate. Having control of your message and your story is paramount. The mountain of content that is needed to be successful to execute an inbound strategy can appear to be a major roadblock, but doesn’t have to be.

ENGAGEMENT A good inbound website can help you effectively engage your visitors. It can help you route them to premium content (content that usually is behind a login page) so that you can capture leads and turn anonymous visitors into known ones. An inbound website will help you increase the connection visitors have with your organization, and help convert them to customers or members.

CONVERSION Today’s inbound websites serve as a gathering place for your customers where they soak in your marketing messages, respond to your calls-to-action, and convert to qualified leads. An inbound website will help you understand what activities are most effective in converting visitors into customers and make it easy to emphasize those activities for future visitors.

Inbound WebsiteWhat is an Inbound Website?

Easily create and manage content

Boost your social presence

Build conversion paths

Increase visitor engagement

An inbound website extends an inbound digital strategy from SEO, social, and blogs to your entire website. It will help you:

An inbound website helps you make your visitor’s journey and experience as rewarding as possible. The benefits from a well-designed inbound website are priceless:

Improve your SEO rankings

Be found byyour prospects

You have between three

and eight seconds to engage

a visitor.

Inbound WebsiteContent Targeting and Lead Nurturing

Once you attract a visitor to your site, the journey has just begun. The real trick is getting that visitor to stay, look around, and engage with your content. The more targeted you can make your content, even for anonymous visitors, the greater the likelihood that they become a customer and help you achieve your digital business goals.

When it comes to developing an effective website, you need to provide not only information that is relevant and easily accessible, but content specifically targeted to their needs. The goal of any website is to engage visitors, convert prospects to customers, and retain customers.

Your website has been found...now what? Part 2: Making A Great First Impression & Building Trust In Your Prospect

What this means for a website that wants to make a business impact is CONTENT is KING. Content has to be designed in a way that attracts the attention of search engines. It’s the heart and soul of the user experience. It determines whether a visitor stays or leaves. Knowing the context by which that person visited your site lets you construct a message that converts efficiently.

If content is in fact King, then having

context for the user is God.

-Gary Vaynerchuk, The Art of Marketing

Content Targeting Deliver the right message at the right time to the user

WAYS TO TARGET CONTENT:

Content Targeting: Using data about your visitors to provide relevant, contextual content to move them along the buyer’s journey.

Inbound WebsiteCreate a Relevant, Personalized Experience

First impressions count. Visitors decide within a few seconds of visiting your landing page whether this relationship is worth pursuing. All it takes is one back button click or a distraction to another site and your visitor is gone. A landing page or your home page is what entices visitors to stick around and see if your product or

service is worth their interest.

Many marketers believe that design and interactivity are the key factors in what makes a home page or landing page successful. However, have you looked at the majority of websites? Take a look at two websites side by side, go ahead, we’ll wait. Ok, did they look somewhat similar? Websites today, for the most part,

all look the same.

It’s content that truly sets your site apart and it is the content within the right context that will engage a visitor.The first step in building a relationship with your website visitor is relevancy. Whatever the question, problem, or task that brings a person to your site needs to be answered within those first few seconds.

KNOWN VISITOR ANONYMOUS VISITORTitle, Role, Customer Status, Social Graph, Behavioral Attributes, Previously Consumed Content

Geolocation, Search Term, Industry, Company, Time, and Device Type

Visitor to Prospect to Customer Your website and digital business strategy starts with anonymous visitors coming to your site to help answer a question they have or learn more about your organization. To connect your inbound strategy to your website, one of your primary goals should be gaining more insight from these visitors – who they are, what they are looking for, and how you can help.

Inbound WebsiteHow to Boost Relevancy

Make sure you have buyer personas defined for your organization.

Look at the search keywords that visitors used to get to your site and try to infer which relevant message should be applied to the buyer persona

searching for those keywords.

Put yourself in the shoes of this buyer persona, and explore what will grab their attention if they had searched for one of those keywords on your

landing page.

Remember, your content on any site – whether main site, landing page, or microsite- is all about your visitors. Don’t waste time right now telling them how great you are. Provide relevant information that will grab their attention (e.g. Calls to Action based on search terms)

and entice them to stick around.

To determine what might be relevant, know what paths are most popular, and what offers work best by using the data from your analytics, CRM, and marketing automation systems.

That initial visitor may or may not take any further action on the first visit. But if you’ve done your job successfully by creating engaging content, you’ve planted a seed of interest in their mind. Now it’s up to you to stay in touch, encourage the relationship, and bring them back time after time, eventually converting them into a customer.

How do I convert anonymous visitors into known prospects?

If the journey is going to be successful, you need a roadmap of where you want your visitors to go. If they have come searching for something specific, help them quickly find what they are looking for so they don’t have to do the work themselves. Most online marketers recognize that visitors will only click three to six times within a website to find the desired information.

Categorizing content properly enables you to quickly deliver more effective search results that will make sense to your website visitors. At the same time, it is essential for delivering the right content at the right time.

Inbound WebsiteUsing Site Search

INDExING OF BOTH TExT ON WEB PAGES AND MULTIMEDIA CONTENT

While you should aspire to present what your visitors

need when they arrive, frequently site search is the best

way to help them find what they are looking for. Users

that conduct a site search view many more pages on

your site than those that don’t, and stay on your site

longer. Since your search function plays a vital role

in website navigation it must be fast and accurate.

ELEMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL SEARCH INCLUDE:

DELIVERING RESULTS IN MILLISECONDS

AUTOMATED qUERY SUGGESTIONS

VISUAL CUES TO HELP USERS qUICKLY RECOGNIzE INFORMATION

PEOPLE SEARCH TO LOCATE ExPERTISE

PROVIDING FILTERS (AKA FACETED SEARCH) TO ALLOW VISITORS TO NARROW DOWN SEARCH RESULT BY ATTRIBUTES LIKE CONTENT TYPE, AUTHOR, TIMEFRAME, PRODUCT OR SERVICE, OR PRICE.

97%bounce rate

200%site views

increase

350%visit duration

Sitesearch boosts engagement – it’s that simple.

increase

decrease

You ask them out on a date... a visitor signs up for a blog or email list

You go out on many dates based on your interests...you nurture your lead through email to serve relevant content

You propose to them...you engage in the sales process with them

You get married...they buy your product or service

Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships and focusing on leads that are not yet ready to buy, with the goal of successfully earning their business over time.

You can nurture a lead through many channels; two of the most effective methods are content targeting and email. Lead nurturing educates your visitor through disciplined content specific to that lead – either based on buyer persona, lead scoring, or your specific nurture tracks.

Key lead nurturing tactics include sending personalized, triggered emails and personalized landing pages to your leads. Additionally, make sure you are defining the content you provide by prospect stage (e.g. a visitor who has yet to fill out a form).

Inbound WebsiteLead Nurturing

Successful lead nurturing delivers content that is valuable, timely, relevant, and responsive to that prospect’s situation - so that he or she remains engaged and progresses down the sales funnel. The easiest way to think about the nurturing process is to compare it to dating:

You go out to a bar...find out where your audience is on the internet

You make eye contact and strike up a random conversation...a visitor goes to your website

You find commonalities... a visitor consumes a piece of content

CONTENT TARGETING CHANNEL

EMAILCHANNELS

Setting up nurturing strategies for these different personas or nurture tracks is imperative to success in moving the lead through the buying process. Some relevant questions to ask when setting up your nurture strategies are:

The most common way to score leads is based on buying behavior. You should rank the pieces of content or even actions that denote value, but are not a buying signal, as low. These pieces of content or actions, such a blogs or social sharing, might show a visitor’s perspective on how they value your company, but aren’t necessarily a buying signal.

Premium content, like white papers and eBooks, have higher values and as such have longer forms to capture lead information. The act of downloading premium content often shows a strong buying signal. If a visitor is willing to provide you with more information, they are most likely further along in the buying process, and white papers and eBooks are pieces of content that classically show evaluation or comparison of another product or service. However, it all depends on an analysis of visitor behavior and their buying processes.

Inbound WebsiteLead Nurturing

How many interactions do I want the lead to have prior to being handed over to sales? How many do I expect them to have?

For leads with a lower lead score, do I increase the time between touches?

How will I direct content to the prospect and drive them back to my website?

How to Score ( with leads ) Lead scoring plays a vital role in the identification of where visitors are in your sales process. There is a whole science behind being able to score the consumption of content based on buyer behavior. There are many different ways to do this including frequency, time frame, and other characteristics.

?

?

?

Maximizing the website experience itself requires marketing optimization. Your content does not exist in a vacuum. With all of the information that site visitors have access to, what you provide must be able to stand out and grab their attention. This is where context comes into play –

Inbound WebsiteOptimizing the Website Experience

A marketer needs to constantly analyze and assess what compels visitors to take action, and continue to optimize the site experience to achieve the desired outcomes. You may need to experiment with content, copy, and lay-out to achieve maximum results. With A/B or multivariate testing and content targeting, you have all the tools you need to test and figure out what works.

SITE BEHAVIOR

MO

BILE DEVICE USESEARCH KEYW

ORDS

LOCATIO

N

Provides useful insights into your users’ unique wants and needs.

CONTEXT

CONTE

NT

A/B TE

STIN

G

CONTE

NT TARG

ETIN

G

The best way to do this is via useful content that will help

your visitors solve the problems they came to your website for in the

first place.

CONTENT PLANNING

CONTINUE >CONTENT PLANNING WORKSHEET

A/B

Inbound WebsiteContent Planning Worksheet

What Snackable Content Is: This includes blogs, infographics, or videos. It’s free content for visitors and does not require filling out a form to access it.

Why You Should Develop Snackable Content: This type of content is great for answering a lot of the most prevalent questions about your company and industry. Developing videos or infographics help you solve your site visitors’ issues and challenges and provide deeper insight into your organization and your products or services. Blogs help communicate news or viewpoints that can then be readily shared across your industry. Overall, this content category is important for sharing information and generating interest in your brand and what you do.

When developing an inbound strategy, it is important to have both premium and non-premium or snackable content on your website. Great content makes great websites, and great websites make profitable companies. Included in this worksheet are two content plans –

PREMIUM CONTENT

PLAN

part

2

SNACKABLECONTENT

PLAN

part

1

Snackable content sparks discussion, is the number one tool in getting found via SEO, and helps turn customers into advocates and champions.

The Content: Decide what your organization wants to discuss in your blogs and videos and then create a content plan to do that. Decide who has the most knowledge about a subject and can write about it. It’s key to have management support for this strategy to ensure that those with expertise can contribute content. Here are some things to do when strategizing how to develop content:

Create a content calendar that keeps all future pieces of content and their creators on a schedule. A great example can be found here.

Develop author cards that identify the name of the content creator, their position, and expertise level. (see tab three labeled author card template in the content calendar template you just downloaded)

Send editorial briefs to writers explaining the subject and who will be reading it (e.g. buyer persona the content is geared towards), along with deadline, length, and possible examples or suggested resources.

part

1

What Premium Content Is: These pieces of content can be white papers, eBooks or webinars. Premium content should have higher value for your visitor, and usually is longer than a blog or video.

Compelling CTAs (Calls to Action) that you can sur face as links, buttons or images are critical in bringing interested customers to your content. Once a visitor clicks on a CTA, this brings them to a landing page that requires the visitor to submit information about who they are.

questions to address at this stage: What will your CTA look like? Where will it be on the site? What information should you collect on the landing page?

?

?

?

WHO ARE YOUR COMPETITORS AND WHAT ARE THEY KNOWN FOR?

Inbound WebsiteContent Planning Worksheet

Analyze: Once all of the content has been reviewed and posted, start to analyze who is actually reading it. Use Google Analytics or other analytics tools to track the information of the site visitors.

SOME KEY METRICS TO LOOK AT ARE:

TIME SPENT ON THE PAGE

ORGANIC SEARCH

PAGE VIEWS

MARKETING qUALIFIED LEADS FROM BLOG VIEWS

REFERRALS

SOCIAL MEDIA SHARES

Take this information and use it to fine tune future content for the people visiting your site.

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST FLAW ABOUT YOUR INDUSTRY?

WHAT IS THE NUMBER 1 qUESTION YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE ALWAYS ASKING YOU?

Review Process: Assign one person to manage and oversee the content. This person can review, edit, and ensure that the content is posted on time. Have a review process in place that will ensure every piece of content follows your message and has a clear purpose.

POTENTIAL CONTENT TOPICSCAN INCLUDE:

part

2

?

Inbound WebsiteContent Planning Worksheet

Why Premium Content Is Important: Potential buyers are reading the content provided here to figure out how they can do their jobs better or improve their lives. Offering information that can help with problems that customers have is an essential part of developing this type of content. Targeting buyers where they are in the sales cycle determines whether they are offered a webinar, eBook, or other type of information.

questions to ask at this stage: Where in the buyer cycle are your customers? What information will be most beneficial to them? What type of content should be offered?

The Content: Determine what part of the sales cycle your potential customers are at and what information will help them the most at this stage. Then determine what format to display this information in that will be most beneficial.

Create A/B Tests or Variances: With the right digital marketing tools you can test variations in text, button design, or different images. Create a few variances for offers and test them, so you can apply the science of marketing to your efforts and remove the guesswork. After you test variances, you can implement the test with the best results.

questions to ask at this stage: What will you test? What do the different variances look like? Which ones should be used to target specific customers?

HERE ARE SOME THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN DEVELOPING A PREMIUM CONTENT STRATEGY:

Buyers are busy people and may not read all of the content

Make content that is easy to read and can be skimmed through

Develop content from a buyer’s perspective Offer actionable items that will help with problems

questions to ask at this stage: Who will create the content? When will it be published? Who is in charge of publishing it?

See the premium content template tab on the Content Calendar template you recently downloaded, or download it here.

?

?

?

Inbound WebsiteContent Planning Worksheet

Promote: Use your CTA or premium content as a supplemental incentive in your outbound as well as social campaigns. Make your CTA’s and premium content easily shareable over social networks. This will help drive visitors to your landing page to create new prospects on their way to becoming marketing qualified leads.

questions to ask at this stage: What social networks work best for this particular piece of content? What websites or communities will find this piece of content useful? What’s the best way to share this content in your targeted sites or communities?

Analyze:Much like the previously discussed snackable content - whitepapers, eBooks and similar forms of content come with metrics that you can analyze to better understand who is reading and interacting with it. In the case of premium content, you have additional insight stemming from the landing page form including their names, titles, industry, or products and services they are interested in. The more you explore who is engaging with your content, the better you can create content for the future.

?

questions to ask at this stage: What is the conversion rate on your CTA’s? (Total number of visitors to the page divided by number of visitors who fill out the form) How many visitors does the landing page get? Is the premium content shared over social networks? What timeframe produces the most effective results? This is especially easy to explore when sharing content via email campaigns, or social networks, but can also be useful when looking at analytics on your website. You may learn over time that sharing content at a set hour of day for example, delivers the best results.

?

Inbound WebsiteCalls To Action

CTAs or Calls to Action are links, buttons, or images on your site that tell the user to do something. A landing page is the next step after these CTA’s. When a visitor fi l ls out a form on a landing page, they then access the premium content from a thank you page or follow up email.

Once the visitor is engaged on your website, and has found content that helps them address the reason they came to your site in the first place, it is now appropriate to ask for information about that visitor - an email address, a phone number, and the

opportunity to establish a social relationship.

These Calls to Action (CTAs) are a critical step in the process that moves your visitor from anonymous to known. Once you’ve captured a prospect’s information, have a plan in place to use channels like email and social media to connect so you can start or continue the conversation. Yet, how do you trigger offers if they abandon the visit partway through your site?

How to create a

great CTA

DETERMINE WHICH, WHERE, HOW AND WHAT• Determine which premium content pieces will have a CTA

• Determine where to put these CTAs on your site

• Design is important - determine how these CTAs will look

• Engage right away - determine what the CTA will say

TARGET YOUR CTAS TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCES• Determine which CTAs are shown to specific visitors based on content targeting – we recommend using the Ektron content targeting widget

• Send targeted CTAs with applicable premium content to leads after they attend a webinar or other top of funnel activity – make sure your marketing efforts are a closed loop process

• Utilize key website behavior, like site search to determine the best location on your site for CTAs

TEST AND OPTIMIZE• Use A/B testing or multivariate testing on your CTAs to determine which are performing best

• Without actionable insight, you are just looking at numbers – analyze your CTAs and test CTRs and conversion rates

• Use an analytical package, like Google Analytics, to look at conversion success and make adjustments based on the data, this will lead to increased ROI and increased conversion rates

step

1

step

3

step

2

Create 2-6 buyer personas with full details. ( Here are some great links to learn more about buyer personas, if you do not already have them for your organization. Here, here, and here. )

Inbound WebsiteEmail Nurturing Worksheet

Email Nurturing Campaigns Identify your buyer personas. Buyer personas are real life representations of types of buyers that visit your website.They include demographic and firmographic information, as well as qualitative details about their current challenges and pain points.

There are a number of ways to create personas, but if you start small and focus on just a few personas, you can use data you most likely already have, and perhaps augment that with survey data or input from individual interviews.

TO DO:

Age

Gender

DemographicInformation

Wants / Needs

Likes / Dislikes

Specific Problems

Biggest Objection

Day to DayResponsibilities

Positions / Titles

Name

1 2BUYER PERSONABUYER PERSONA

Best Practice:Tie your email nurturing campaigns to your website and keep them in sync. So when a persona comes to your website, they see the same offer that was just included in your last email. Or, if they acted on your offer, and consumed that content, they see the next one.

1http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31555/Inbound-Leads-Cost-61-Less-Than-Outbound-New-Data.aspx

Map out a 3-8 step email nurturing campaign for each buyer persona you have identified based on either the content you currently have or the content you are going to create. Structure offers in email based on buying patterns of that persona for your organization. For example, touch 1 focuses on blog material, whereas touch 3 or 4 provides premium content, and touch 6 provides a case study on your product.

TOUCH 1, etc: BLOG CONTENT CTA MESSAGE

IMPLEMENT YOUR NEW EMAIL NURTURING TRACKS

SEND EMAIL CAMPAIGNS TO SPECIFIC SMART LISTS BASED ON BUYER PERSONAS

TRACK THEIR SUCCESS WITHIN YOUR MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM WITH:

OPEN RATE CLICK RATE DOWNLOAD RATE OPT OUT RATE

Inbound WebsiteEmail Nurturing Worksheet