expon 2011 - rand fishkin - the power of inbound marketing

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | July 2011

Download at http://bit.ly/mozsaopaulo

The Power of Inbound MarketingHow changes in human behavior and the web landscape have led to a

revolution in customer acquisition (and how marketers can take advantage!)

makes SOFTWARE!!We don’t offer any consulting.

How Things Used to Be Sold

1921

1955

1983

1998

Some Marketers Still Do It This Way

2011

2011

2011

The Process of Selling Hasn’t

Changed…

The Process of Buying Has…

How People Buy Today

Realize a Need

Investigate Options

Ask Our Friends

Seek Out Experts

Leverage Q+A Sites & Forums

Dig Into Every Detail Available

Convert

Rise of the Organic Web

Data via Google’s occasional public statements and some inference (for 2006 + 2009)

Search

Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day

on Google

Social Networks

Users: 10mm 750mm 200mm 120mm 10mm

Users: 14mm Millions 14mm 6.5mm

Local Portals

Blogs

Forums & Niche Communities

Social Discovery & Content Sharing

Video + MultiMedia Portals

The Problem with

Classic Web Marketing

An Unhealthy Focus on the Controllable,

Spend-Driven Channels

Paid Search

Banner Ads

Contextual Ads

Video AdsTelevision

RadioMagazines

Outdoor

Newspapers

An Unhealthy Focus on the Controllable,

Spend-Driven Channels

Paid Search

Banner Ads

Contextual Ads

Video AdsTelevision

RadioMagazines

Outdoor

Newspapers

Interruption-

Based

Messaging

Inbound Marketing is Under-Invested

Web Traffic is driven almost entirely by organic/inbound/earned media, yet nearly all of the investment in driving traffic to websites is through paid channels… This is an unsustainable dichotomy.

Unpaid drives 85%+ of traffic

(but garners only ~$5 billion of

investment in 2011)Paid drives

<15% of web traffic

(but wins a whopping $31+ Billion of

investment in 2011)

Percent of Web Traffic from Various Sources to the Average Website

Every Marketer Sees This:

But That’s Not Reality

Referring + Other = 50% of our traffic? But this chart is basically saying Twitter, Facebook, blogs, feed readers and every non-search site that sends traffic is exactly the same.

All the traffic we receive that isn’t the result of paid acquisition or advertising (in SEOmoz’s case – 95%+)

comes from Inbound Marketing!

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing

For more on Inbound Marketing, check out Brian + Dharmesh’s awesome book: http://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311

Inbound Marketing Outbound Marketing

Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter)

Blogs + News Sites

Links from Partners + Friends

Forums + Discussion Sites

Q+A Answers w/ a Link

User Profiles + Comments

Opt-In Email Newsletters

Organic Search Rankings

Inclusion in Universal Search Results

Viral Content

Viral Content

Display Advertising

Buying Email Lists

Site Sponsorships

Demographic Targeting

Affiliate Marketing

Video Ads

Paid Search Ads

Contextual Ad Networks (AdSense)

Facebook Ads

You Must Become a Hub for Great

Content in Your Niche

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlSometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.

Site that offers:• Unique Research

• Informed Opinions

• News/Trend Analysis

• Multimedia Content

• Authentic Expert Contributors

• Quality Discussion/Interaction

Referenced by industry

blogs

Mentioned in news

publications

Cited at conferences + events

Liked/Shared on Facebook

Links are Tweeted

Answers on Q+A sites reference its resources

Forum discussions link to its pages

People email links to each

other

“Good, Unique Content” is NOT ENOUGH

Tips, Strategies & Channels for

Powerful Inbound Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/great-content-for-seo-simpler-than-you-ever-imagined goes into detail about how to leverage this tactic to build great resources people will love.

Discover What People Want

Check out http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/merging-of-search-social-wappow for more on how search engines and social media are mixing together.

Grow Your Social Network to Reach Searchers

Geraldine’s blog is awesome, but it would never rank on page #1 for this query without

the power of the social connection.

Social Media

For some great Facebook-focused marketing tactics, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about

Facebook More fans = more people potentially exposed to

your content.

But… You also need to create posts that will

show up in “top news” on your fans’ walls. That’s

more challenging.

I highly recommend http://www.slideshare.net/danzarrella/the-science-of-re-tweets which helps show the correlation between activities on Twitter and your ability to have the message spread.

Twitter

It’s not just about the follower count. Your

tweets have to count for something and drive actions/awareness.

Good advice on LinkedIn profiles here - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/optimize-your-linkedin-profile-for-best-results-howto (also, don’t miss the comments which discuss how the links work).

LinkedIn

Like Facebook, LinkedIn now has a wall that drives “likes” and comments (as well as traffic).

LinkedIn’s “Groups” are a powerful way

to grow your network and spread

a message.

The travel subreddit has nearly 19K registered subscribers - http://www.reddit.com/r/travel - and thousands more browsing. Full list of subreddits, sorted by # of subs here: http://metareddit.com/

Reddit

Reddit’s grown to be in the top 100 most visited sites on the web, and even smaller subreddits can send remarkable traffic (and result in

tweets/FB shares/etc.)

Two great activities on http://www.stumbleupon.com for beginners: #1) Discover content that people share in your niche. #2) Find great stuff to share/tweet that will earn you more followers.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon reaches more than 15 million active monthly users, and drives massive amounts of outbound traffic.

Using http://www.google.com/reader, you can see how many GG Reader users subscribe + average # of posts/week. Those with fewer than 50 subscribers and 1 post/week often are too tiny to be worthwhile.

Participating in the Blogosphere

Content that Works

Data via http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx and http://www.slideshare.net/DianeRayfield/social-medias-shocking-statistics. See also Hubspot’s awesome slide deck: http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/how-to-be-the-awesomest-marketer-ever

Blog Readership is Up, But to Fewer Blogs

Research for this statement via PEW Internet & Captain Obvious

Great Blogs Rock.

Mediocre Blogs are Useless.

Every two years, we put out http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors but leave the URL the same, so it continues to accrue great link/social/sharing signals.

Evergreen Content

After producing what is, admittedly, an awesome graphic - http://www.paralegal.net/judge-judy/ -Paralegal.net rose to page one in Google (and got bjillions of drive-by visits, too).

Infographics

Fostering Community

These (http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/) emulate the success of places like LinkedIn, Quora, Stackoverflow and others. They’ve increased participation and traffic to the profiles dramatically.

User Profiles

Progress Bar

Highly customizable profile details

Custom Photo

Links to other web profiles

When users contribute content (as with http://artistmarketplace.moleskine.com/en) they’re invested in the promotion and success of their work, and thus, your site!

User-Generated Content

Because Yelp + Citysearch had taken the “badges” angle for local businesses, http://urbanspoon.com incented foodie bloggers to link to the site by featuring those bloggers’ posts + content on the site.

An Incentive to Share

These “spoonback” were key to Urbanspoon’s growth (now ahead of Citysearch in traffic!)

The genius game-like badges, points and progress at http://stackoverflow.com has helped make it one of the most successful sites in the Q+A world.

Gamification

RSS + XML Feeds

Feeds aren’t just useful for subscribers. They “ping” search engines, enable easy syndication and can be used by lots of content aggregators that send traffic, too.

Blog Content Feeds

On average, this many people actually read a

post via feed

I was actually tempted to subscribe. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ThisYearsGirl has some awesome stuff!

Anything with Regular Updates

Etsy makes it possible to subscribe to a feed of

anyone’s shop on the site!

I use email to subscribe to http://www.avc.com/ and am 1 of 100K+ who read Fred’s posts on a daily basis. That’s a powerful inbound channel!

Don’t Forget Email Subscriptions!

Presentations

I did a brief, 4-minute presentation at the Seattle 2.0 Awards - http://www.geekwire.com/2011/seomoz-ceo-rand-fishkin-googles-panda-update that promoted our hiring + growth (focused on that audience’s values rather than trying to sell to them)

Live Events

Our webinars http://www.seomoz.org/webinars attract 500-1,000 attendees and earn lots of tweets, blog posts and links. Hubspot’s get 10K+ attendees http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars/

Webinars

I put many of my presentation on http://slideshare.net where they earn thousands of additional views.

Online Presentations

Video

YouTube actually ranks as the second largest “search property” in the US, behind only Google: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/05/25/youtube-hits-3-billion-views-per-day-2-days-worth-of-video-uploaded-every-minute/

YouTube

Don’t be a honey badger. Care about

YouTube’s potential!

The “Long Tail” of Video Sites

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/08/long-tail-video-half-viewing-minutes/

Long tail of video sites get 50% of all

online video traffic/views!

At SEOmoz, we use http://www.wistia.com who submits our video XML sitemaps to Google for us - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

Self-Hosted Video Content

Local + Mobile

To register, go to http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness. Also check out http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml for great local ranking tips.

Google Local / Maps / Places

Fox Sports Grill? I’m sorry Google, but that

is not barbecue.

This blog post explains how: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-dead-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-google-local

Easiest Way to Win Google Maps

Public Relations, Guest Authoring

and Comment Marketing

Guest blogging (or contributing content to any type of publisher) is a great way to build your brand and earn links. Tools like http://myblogguest.com/ can help make the process easier.

Guest Blogging + Writing

HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/) is a popular service that lets you get contacted when relevant reporters/journalists need sources.

Direct Connections to Journalists

This post has a list of recommendations for blog commenting as a marketing tactic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy

Comment Marketing

Inbound Marketing is

Inbound Marketing is

All Connected

Original Audience: 250

Original Audience: 250

Total Reach: 10,000

Buh.. Zam.

The Inbound Marketing Process

Step #1: Discover

Step #2:Test

Step #3: Measure

Step #4: Repeat

Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.

Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.

Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact

Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

Q+A

Rand on the Web

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org

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