Inbound Marketing Secrets from our B2B Tech Marketing Agency
So, you found this blog post. Welcome, {{contact.firstname}}, to this piece of content that feels like a tiny snippet among 1.3 million search results when you search for “b2b inbound marketing.” That’s great for you (and us)!
It wasn’t happenstance that you found this article. (Maybe a little luck for us both, but certainly not happenstance.) As a matter of fact, happenstance is the very opposite of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is strategic, thoughtful, and intentional. Every blog post we write has a purpose: to serve and educate you. We care about you and your business. We want you to win. We want to get to know you better. Therefore, we have researched the questions you ask, the keywords you use to answer those questions, the search engines and devices you search from, and the social media networks where you spend your time.
All that considered, as a B2B tech marketing agency, we thought it would be fun and insightful to share exactly what goes into what we do to connect our content and inbound strategies to attract and convert website visitors. Just like you, {{contact.firstname}}.
How You Found Us
Are you ever on your phone or laptop (or maybe both, simultaneously) and you catch yourself smack dab in the middle of an endless scrolling and clicking cycle, where you say — wait, where am I?
The same thing happens to us.
So, let’s jog your memory. You most likely found this post via one of five avenues:
- Direct Traffic: You directly visited our website and/or blog because you are familiar with Golden Spiral and trust our brand, guidance, and strategies. Thanks for that; we appreciate you, too.
- Organic Search: If you were searching for best practices for B2B inbound and content marketing, you most likely stumbled upon this post by searching on Google (or Bing or Yahoo!). This is called an “unbranded” search. Unbranded searches comprise the majority of search results — which can be best represented in Google’s Keyword Planner. For example, in the keyword planner, search for something {{contact.company}} sells, such as a commercial security system, and compare it to the number of searches for your company’s actual name. In almost all cases, the “unbranded” search will have thousands more queries than your brand/company. This means knowing the right keywords that people are searching for is imperative to the success of your content and inbound campaigns.
- Paid Search: Whether you did a branded or unbranded search, we got your attention by being at the top of page one—which is where almost all searchers click. We’re completely aware that earning a place on page one isn’t always easy, so we’re smart about our ad dollars and spend them wisely. Paid search helps earn a space in the searches that matter. Sometimes our paid searches are broadcast over monster-sized speakers because we want everyone to hear. Other times, we target those searches carefully so we can get the opportunity to have a cozy cup of coffee with someone just like you. Employing paid search doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing organically. Paid and organic search work in concert with each other.
- Social Media: Whether it was a paid ad or our organic efforts that resulted in your click, it may have been your time spent on social media that led you right here. Like most brands on social media, we’re fighting algorithms and thousands of pieces of content every second of every day — meaning we invest in social media ads intelligently. By carefully selecting our top-performing pieces of content across email and social, we can easily make decisions about where our ad dollars go.
- Referral Traffic: As Golden Spiral is a trusted agency throughout the U.S., you may have ended up here based on our presence elsewhere. You may have clicked on a link on another blog or website. You may have been forwarded a Golden Spiral email from someone on our mailing list. We are grateful for these friends and colleagues that help us grow our brand today’s competitive digital space.
For each of the avenues listed above, there was a specific strategy that went along with it.
- Organic and paid search: We focused on keywords, backlinks, and building authority.
- Social Media: We focused on posting on the right network, at the right time, and lightly seasoning our content with hand-picked hashtags.
- Direct and referral traffic: We focused on building and humanizing our brand and relationships digitally and personally.
No matter how you got to our website, we’re glad you’re here. But that’s not our ultimate goal. We want to engage with you. (The inbound marketing lexicon calls it conversion.) And the same is true for your marketing strategy, I’m sure. That’s why you’re here. So, now that you’ve found this blog post, here’s what we’re going to do next—within GDPR guidelines, of course.
What We’re Going to Do Next
We’re a B2B tech marketing agency. So of course, we’re here to help you: the B2B tech marketer. And what better way to help you than to tell you exactly what we do to integrate our content marketing and inbound marketing efforts.
Here’s our secret recipe for successful integration of the two:
We won’t bore you
Boring blogs are the worst, and unfortunately, all-too-common in a digital space where pretty much anyone can say that they’re an Internet marketer and provide their two cents on marketing best practices. Instead of boring you, we’re going to provide you with real insights that help you craft better content and a more pragmatic inbound marketing strategy, and we’ll answer the question(s) that led you here in the first place.
We’re going to try to get a conversion
This conversion comes when you request a helpful and related piece of content that dives deeper into the subject. Every blog post we write offers two options to download content. The first appears ⅓ of the way down, and the second appears in the footer at the very end of the blog. The two opportunities appeal to different types of website visitors. The content call-to-action that appears ⅓ of the way down is meant to appeal to the type of person who scans content, and is looking to find some answers quickly and might bookmark the post for later. The content call-to-action at the bottom is meant to appeal to the person who read the post. If readers get to the bottom and want to learn more, they can do so without having to scroll back to the top.
We’ll thank you
If you download the piece of content in the blog, we’ll send you to a “thank you” page. On this page, we have the opportunity to provide you with more engaging content that helps answer more of your questions, while also easing you into a second, lighter conversion, such as subscribing to our weekly blog digest.
You’ll get enrolled into a nurture campaign
When you download a piece of content, we’ll ask you for a few pieces of information about you. We want to get to know you and your company better. We ask for your name, your company email address, and your marketing budget. This information allows us to personalize our communications with you and provide content that best suits your needs.
Your engagement with us will determine our engagement with you
Employing branching “if/then” logic using HubSpot workflows, we’ll automate a series of content for you to receive. And, based on your engagement with us, you’ll go down a path that is specific to you. This is called marketing automation — and it’s imperative to the success of your content and inbound marketing strategies. It saves time and provides a personalized experience that puts you and your needs at the center, rather than ours.
You’ll be remarketed to
Don’t worry — we won’t be creepy about it. We, too, think it’s creepy to search for “how to water houseplants” and then have the entire Facebook experience covered in ads for fertilizer and watering cans. Okay Google, you can stop listening now. Rather, our goal is to simply stay top-of-mind as you continue to improve your website, search presence, and inbound marketing initiatives.
Key Takeaway
At every stage, our goal is to be helpful. We are here to answer your questions and help you do your job better. When we do this, no matter how you ended up here, you’re reading our content and engaging with our brand. That’s a win for both of us. It means that the immense amount of planning and effort that went into creating this piece of content worked for both of us. And that’s the magic of inbound and content marketing, if you ask us.
Do you want more people to find your blog post? We can help!
