Angelfish Marketing Blog

At the Inbound 2018 conference earlier this year, Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot, announced that the inbound marketing methodology is changing. As marketers, we have become very accustomed to using the marketing ‘funnel’ model when devising and managing our marketing strategies. We know how it works; the process is simple: attract, convert, close, delight. The focus in recent years has been on the attract stage; creating valuable content to pull customers in has been the best way to generate new leads and grow your business. But now, 'cracks' are starting to appear in this funnel.

What are chatbots?

Imagine a world where we could communicate with robots to help us solve problems. Sound crazy? Well, this is actually becoming a reality with the increased use of ‘chatbots’ on websites. Chatbots are computer programmes that conduct conversations, designed to simulate how a human would respond to particular problems or issues a customer raises. Clever, right?

Digital marketing services are now branching out and beginning to implement artificial intelligence in their marketing strategies to increase value and save time. These days, how often do you pick up the phone and ring someone, compared to sending a quick text or WhatsApp message? Messaging networks such as Facebook Messenger are hugely popular as you can contact anyone, anywhere, and get an almost instant reply. Consequently, people are now expecting instantaneous responses from the companies they contact, too.

That’s where chatbots come in; their quick answers and friendly messages meet customers’ needs and are therefore becoming a popular method of communication.

Google’s latest algorithm update rolled out on 1st August 2018 and many businesses are concerned how this may affect their search engine rankings.

The details from Google were rather scant. The search giant called the update “a broad algorithm update” and referenced an older tweet, which said: “Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year....”

Subsequent tweets from Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan revealed this was a “global” update, which means it impacts all Google search results across all regions and languages. However, Google would not tell us what percentage of search queries were impacted by the update.

Inbound marketing uses a subtler set of strategies compared to traditional outbound marketing techniques. It’s also a necessity for businesses that want to build a successful brand and stand apart from the competition.

Inbound marketing draws your customers to your products and services through the creation of content and campaigns that delight your target audience and transform them into brand advocates. For example, social media campaigns, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and content marketing are all core strategies under the inbound marketing umbrella.

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, tends to use more direct tools such as direct mail, telemarketing and events. However, research reveals one-third of marketers think outbound marketing tactics such as paid advertising are a waste of time and resources.

We get asked this question a lot when we’re talking with clients and new prospects. Businesses are either new and considering how to get the most bang for their buck or they’re established and want control but are concerned about escalating marketing costs. Either way, choosing between insourced and outsourced marketing is a tough decision for any business owner or marketing team.

What should you keep in and what goes out the door? It’s a hard question to answer. We’ll confess we’re slightly biased on this one, but the reality is as with most things there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model. To decide what’s right for you, you need to consider what your internal skill set is like as well as other factors such as culture before making any big decisions.

If you have a business full of individuals with a very specific industry skill but with no marketing or sales experience, then outsourcing could make the most sense. However, if you or other people in your company have strong sales experience or a leaning towards digital marketing services, then you might consider getting them involved with your new marketing division.

And by the way, not having a marketing provision isn’t an option anymore!

How important are your search engine rankings?

Well, 71% of search traffic clicks come from the first page on Google. Second-page results only get 6% of clicks.

The top listing in Google’s organic search results receives 33% of traffic, with the second spot getting 18%.

In other words, your company’s visibility in the search engine rankings is vital to its online success.

So, what can you do to make sure your site rises up the search engine rankings?

This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in. It’s a series of methods you can use to optimise your website, so it appears higher in the search engine results, compared to your competitors’ sites.

It’s a complex undertaking and one that relies on you implementing an effective range of internet SEO solutions to drive more organic traffic to your website. It’s also an important undertaking as a recent study reveals more than half of online traffic for B2B and B2C sites comes from organic searches.  

But every website is different. So, an SEO audit provides a comprehensive website analysis to help you identify areas of improvement to further optimise your site. It evaluates how search engines view your website and its performance in the search engine results.

In a world of increasingly stretched budgets and advancing marketing methods, you may not know which strategies to use to boost your business’s brand and reputation.

However, inbound marketing could help you to reach your target audience and get more customers in a highly cost-effective manner.

Inbound marketing is simply a marketing method based on attracting customers through content and interactions. The key to a successful inbound marketing strategy is that this content and these interactions are relevant and helpful to your customers, which builds your brand, creates true customer loyalty and transforms your customers into brand advocates.

But how much of your inbound marketing budget will have an impact on your marketing strategies cost?

It’s a fair question and one that many businesses are keen to answer.

Inbound marketing is a highly effective marketing solution. On average, businesses spend significantly less on their inbound marketing compared to traditional outbound techniques. However, over 50% more leads come from inbound marketing services.

Inbound marketing is also a long-term and ongoing solution. There are a range of inbound marketing services and strategies available to your business. For example, you may decide to invest in a blog or create a series of targeted landing pages. As a result, its cost can vary greatly depending on the extent and range of strategies you decide to adopt.

Inbound marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. While some inbound marketing services can manifest quickly into tangible business benefits, others can take time to plant the right seeds, build your brand reputation and get more users to your website.

It all depends on your approach. It may take just a few months for your initial inbound marketing strategies to kick in and for your website to start rising up the search engine rankings. And you may not reap the initial rewards of creating great content for many months as you build your long term digital assets.

However, in our experience, it is possible to accelerate your inbound marketing efforts so you can start to realise real results faster. Here are a handful of inbound marketing services that could help you to see such results more quickly:

When it comes to how to measure marketing performance, you may not know where to start. There are a vast range of marketing metrics and it can, sometimes, be difficult to understand which one you should use for specific scenarios and campaigns.

But we all know how valuable data is - just look at the hundreds of data and marketing analytics tools that have emerged over the last few years - and yet marketers can struggle with measuring performance and ROI.

Link building is a vital weapon in your SEO digital solutions arsenal. In basic terms, link building is where you get other websites to link back to your website. If a lot (more than your competitors) of high authority websites link direct users to a specific page, then that page will rank highly for related keywords.. This drives traffic to your site and its content, helping you to increase your website domain authority, which is a prediction of your website’s performance in Google Search. If your website is linked to by powerful sites, then this is like a positive vote for your site. It increases your kudos with the likes of Google search.

In other words, getting other sites to link back to your website will boost your SEO. The power of link building is well established with Google announcing backlinks as one of its top three ranking signals in 2016. What’s more, SEMRush added five more backlink-related factors to its second Ranking Factors Study 2017.