Hubspot Inbound Certification Study Guide – Flashcards
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What's the difference between traditonal marketing ; inbound marketing?
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Traditional: Finding Customers. Cold calling, cold emails (spam), interruptive ads, marketer-centric Inbound: Empowering Potential Customers. SEO, blogging, attraction, customer-centric.
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What is inbound?
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-marketing focused on getting found by customers -Inbound is about being a part of the conversation -creating marketing that people love
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What is the inbound methodology?
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It illustrates the four stages that make up the inbound marketing and sales process.
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What are the different phases that make up inbound methodology?
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1. attract strangers to your site ( blogging, optimizing your website, and social media) 2. convert into leads (forms, call to action, landing pages) 3. close (CRM, emails, workflow) 4. delight ( surveys, smart content, social monitoring)
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How does analyze fit into the inbound methodology?
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Analysis is part of every single thing you do with your inbound strategy. Anything you do -- any piece of content you create, any campaign you launch, or any marketing action you undertake -- should be analyzed.
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What are the best inbound practices?
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-using buyer personas -by using the buyer's journey - by creating remarkable content, and knowing how to leverage it
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What is a buyer persona?
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semi-fictional representations of an ideal customer, based on real data and some educated speculation about demographics, behaviors, motivations, and goals.
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How do you create a buyer persona?
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created through research, analysis, and taking a close look at who's already buying from you.
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How do you go about researching buy personas?
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Buyer personas must be based off of actual research, not assumptions. Ask questions like: What is your job role? Your title? What industry or industries does your company work/is your role in? What are you working to accomplish? What are your biggest challenges? How do you learn about new information for your role? Do you use the internet to research vendors or products? always focus on the 'Why' or the motives of your buyer personas, not their actions. Start by interviewing your current customers, former customers, prospects, and even your coworkers. Once you've spoken to a few people, it's time to start looking for trends.
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What are the components of a persona profile story?
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Background, demographics, identifiers, goals, challeges, how you solve the problem, common objectives, real quotes
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What is the buyer's journey?
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active research process someone goes through leading up to a purchase
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What are the stages that make up the buyers jouney? How are they defines?
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the awareness stage, when your prospect is experiencing and expressing symptoms of a problem or opportunity. They're doing education research to more clearly understand, frame, and give a name to their problem. the consideration stage, when a prospect has now clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity. They are committed to researching and understanding all of the available approaches and/or methods to solving the defined problem or opportunity. and the decision stage that portray the experiences your potential customers go through. when a prospect has now decided on their solution strategy, method, or approach. They are compiling a long list of all available vendors and products in their given solution strategy. They could also be researching to whittle the long list down to a short list and ultimately making a final purchase decision.
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What part does content play in inbnound makreting and sales?
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marketing toolkit
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In terms of inbound, what is context?
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who you're creating it for
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What are the different way to leverage content?
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website pages, business blog, social media, landing pages, call to actions, marketing emails
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What is considered a shift from traditional to inbound marketing?
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relied heavily on telemarketing and cold calling to generate leads for sales. Over time, they saw a decline and no longer had enough leads to support their new customer or partner channels.
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What makes up a good persona profile story?
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You can get in the mindset of your buyer and understand them that much more.
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What makes content the right fit for buyer personas?
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expanding the content offerings on their website by creating whitepapers, eBooks and blog posts sharing financial advice to small business owners who were looking to grow.
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What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
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the process of improving your website so that it attracts more visitors from search engines
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In what ways does SEO help your inbound marketing?
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It helps you attract strangers that are looking for content relevant to your business from search engines and turn them into new visitors on your website.
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How do search engines find, understand and rank pages to show in search results?
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To find them, they send what are known as spiders, or web crawlers, to crawl through all of the pages on the web, searching for that content. Those spiders try to figure out what each page is about. From that data, they create a list of results that are relevant and useful to the searcher. Then, they rank those results based on the popularity and authority of those websites. The more visits a website gets, the higher it will rank.
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What is the difference between paid results and organic results?
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To determine whether a listing is paid or not, look for the small yellow box with the word "ad" inside of it. These websites are paying to show up on Google's search engine results page. Below the paid ads, you're looking at the top 1-10 unpaid, or organic, search results that contain the most popular, relevant answers.
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In terms of SEO, how are keywords defined?
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Keywords are the words typed into search engines. Basically, they're the topics that searchers are trying to learn more about.
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How should you go about picking the right keywords for your business?
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In order to attract those interested strangers to your content, you need to do research to figure out which keywords relate to your business and your industry that this stranger might use.
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What are the different steps for doing keyword research?
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-Your research should always begin with your buyer personas. - make a list of keywords that they might search for -expand your keyword list by searching the web for alternatives - look for alternatives under the different search options in Google, like image search or video. - determine which keywords people are already using to find your site -decide which keywords you have the best opportunity to rank for
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How do your buyer personas and the buyer's journey factor into your keyword research?
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Your buyer personas represent the searchers who will become your visitors, leads, and ultimately, customers & promoters. You need to determine who they are, what their goals and intent are, and what problems they face, so you can begin to understand what they're searching for.
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In what ways can you expand your list of keywords?
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categorize the keywords by the stages of the buyer's journey. Industry problem-based keywords are part of the awareness stage. Keywords that your company provides solutions to are part of the consideration stage. And keywords around deciding to buy are part of the decision stage.
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How can you determine which keywords people are using to find your site?
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Some search engines, like Google, have encrypted their organic search data so that those keywords are hidden, which make this trickier to do. But you can use an analytics tool, like Google Analytics or HubSpot Sources, to get some insights.
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What is the difference between short and long-tail keywords?
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A keyword like "jackets" is referred to as a short or broad keyword, because that's exactly what it is - short and broad in scope. A long-tail keyword is a primary keyword--usually 2-3 words, such as "red sox jacket"--that's expanded upon with additional context, such as "men's wool red sox jacket size medium"
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In what ways and where should you optimize your pages for search engines?
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-First, optimize the page around a primary keyword -Add the keyword to the page title - add your primary keyword to the URL -In the event of broken links, you'll want to have a custom 404 error page - add the keyword to the page headers and content - add the keyword to the image alt-text -add the keyword to the meta description - include relevant links within the content -Link to relevant internal pages from your website, in order to drive traffic to them -Edit your page to promote a good user experience -Make sure your website is intuitive and easy to browse -optimize your website for mobile
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How should you properly optimize a website page?
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Optimize the page around a primary keyword. Be sure that the keyword fits as a description of what the page is all about. You're optimizing for the visitor first, but it's also how a search engine can understand the purpose of the page to know how to best index it.
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What types of links should you include in your content and why?
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Relevant sources- Linking to relevant, reliable sources helps build the trustworthiness of your site. Relevant internal pages- Link to relevant internal pages from your website, in order to drive traffic to them
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Why is promoting a good user experience important for SEO?
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Edit your page to promote a good user experience. Search engines are also looking at the experience that people have on your site when determining how to rank you.
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Why should you optimize for mobile?
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Over 80% of internet users own a smartphone and most are on it searching online more than their computer. And as more and more people use mobile devices to access the internet, search engines are trying to make it easier for people to find mobile-friendly websites. So whether you have a mobile optimized or responsively designed site, make sure that your website pages can be easily viewed on any screen size. If your page isn't mobile-friendly, you may be missing out on valuable search traffic.
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Why is promoting your content important for SEO?
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The more that people see, share and link to your content, the more popular your site will grow and the more trust you'll gain with search engines.
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What's the relationship between links and SEO?
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Search engines follow links between pages to see how they're related to each other. Links coming into your website are called inbound links. Search engines view inbound links as a vote of confidence. If a trusted site is linking to you, your website becomes more trustworthy.
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What are inbound links?
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Links coming into your website are called inbound links.
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What strategies can you implement to earn links?
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Use social media, send friendly emails or comment on blog posts. Or try good-old conversation: make connections at local meetups, conferences and in your day-to-day. Create content with input from those industry thought leaders. Not only will these thought leaders help you write your content, but they'll also share it, giving you new visitors and a new link. You could create a "best-of" list or a resources list, and give credit to the sources or authors. Conduct an interview with an industry thought leader and publish it as a blog post. Write crowdsourced content - solicit information, answers or opinions on a particular topic from industry thought leaders. Or ask an industry thought leader to write the foreword or give a quote for an ebook.
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What are online directories and why are they important for SEO?
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Directories are websites like Yelp, Yellow Pages, and local chambers of commerce.
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How can you optimize for getting found in local searches?
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create a Google+ Local Listing Page. This will help tie your website to a specific location, which Google will use in its search results. If your business is in a single location, link to your homepage. If your business has multiple locations, link to dedicated location page for each (ie - yourwebsite.com/boston)
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How can you tell if a business has picked the right primary keyword for a page?
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-They're addressing a common topic that their buyer personas might want to learn about: how their software integrates with live chat. They're directly speaking to the possible concerns of their personas. -they're mimicking the language that their buyer personas would actually use in their searches: "Customers appreciate the speed and convenience of self-service, but when they run into difficulty it's important to allow them to seamlessly connect to you for more personalized assisted-service." -they've created content that uses natural language and variations on the long-tail keyword, instead of using the same exact phrase over and over.
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How can you tell if they've optimized the page around the keyword?
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-You can see that they have their primary long-tail keyword in the page title, URL, and body, and though you can't see it, behind the image in the alt-text. -are they linking to other sources? They are- both internal and external sources, in fact. And their hyperlinked text that contains relevant keywords that they'd like to rank for. -are they offering a good user experience? Their website is intuitive and easy to browse - the navigation is clear. And they're providing clear next steps, providing visitors a free account, which will help to convert those visitors into leads, and logging in, which will help their customers get to where they need to be.
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How can you tell if they're linking to other sources?
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Next, are they linking to other sources? Again, they are- both internal and external sources, with keywords in the hyperlink.
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How can you tell if they're offering a good user experience?
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Next, have they optimized this page? Again, they have their primary long-tail keyword in the page title, URL, and body, and though you can't see it, behind the image in the alt-text.
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How can you tell if they're promoting their content?
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Next, are they promoting their content? We can see that they have prominent social sharing buttons, which means that visitors can share the article themselves. They've also promoted this content on their Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles.
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How can you tell if they're earning links?
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Look at related articles from outside sources in a Google search of company name. It looks like they've got CrunchBase and Geekwire writing about them. Looks like AnswerDash is doing pretty well for themselves and is on the right track to improve their rank for this keyword and get some quality visitors to their site.
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What is content?
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Content is the message your inbound strategy delivers. It's what you're trying to deliver to your visitors, leads, customers, and promoters. There are lots of different ways you can deliver that message: blogs, emails, landing pages, social media, and beyond. But without content, there's nothing to deliver.
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Where does content fit into the Inbound Methodology?
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Content has the very important job of pulling people from one stage of the inbound methodology to another. It plays an integral part in each and every stage. Your content attracts the right visitors to your site, converts them into leads, nurtures them and helps close them into customers. It's also a big part of what delights them into promoters. Content is the fuel that powers a successful inbound strategy.
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What are the different steps to the Content Process?
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plan-content is best defined by three things: its purpose, its format, and its topic. create- distribute- analyze-
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What are the three things that content can defined by?
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content is best defined by three things: its purpose, its format, and its topic.
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How do you determine the purpose of a piece of content?
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The purpose of a content offer is to convert visits to leads. Whereas your blog posts, videos and website pages are open access to anyone on the internet. The purpose of these pieces of content is to attract strangers to your website
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What are different formats of content? What's the difference between these formats?
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awareness-Analyst reports, research reports, ebooks, editorial content, expert content, whitepapers, and educational content are all great content formats for an awareness stage piece of content. consideration- Expert guides, live interactions, webcasts, podcasts, videos, and comparison whitepapers work well for this stage. desision- vendor or product comparisons, case studies, trial download, product literature, and live demos.
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How do you pick the best format for a piece of content?
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simply identifying what your buyer persona is looking for in each stage of the buyer's journey will help keep you aligned and consistent with your content creation.
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What two things should you always keep in mind when determining the topic for a piece of content?
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-your buyer personas (who you're trying to reach) -buyer's journey (what content will be most interesting or helpful for them).
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What are different ways to identify content topics that matter to your buyer personas?
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- keyword research : what you want to rank for, internet forums, popular industry news, sales and support frequently asked questions, your buyer personas' goals and your buyer personas' challenges.
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What's the buyer's journey? What are the three stages and how are they defined?
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The buyer's journey is the active research process that people go through leading up to making a purchase. It's like the buying process or marketing funnel you may be familiar with, but it's from the buyer's perspective. awareness- when a prospect is experiencing and expressing symptoms of a problem or opportunity, the content assets listed are appropriate for the awareness stage because this content helps educate your buyer persona -- not on your solution, but on your buyer persona's need or problem Consideration- the prospect has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity. decision- the prospect has decided on their solution strategy, method, or approach and is making a decision.
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What are the best practices for content creation?
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-Always focus on mapping content to your buyer personas AND where they are in the buyer's journey. - less is more: your buyer personas are probably just as busy as you are—make it easy for them to consume your content. -keep it educational, not promotional. - focus on the informational part of the content first, worry about design second
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How does distribution fit into the Content Process?
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Your content is only as good as your content delivery. Delivery makes content relevant. You can't just create content—you also need to be sure it gets out into the world.
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What are the different ways to leverage content with distribution?
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-Use your website pages and business blogs not only for content, but to also host the different content offers that you've created. Landing pages will act as that gatekeeper for your content offers. -Social media is a fantastic tool to use when promoting your content. There are many different social channels you can use, so keep your buyer persona in mind and think about where they might be spending their time. Use a social media scheduling tool to help you save time. -Calls-to-action can be placed on your website to entice your website visitors to download or request your different offers. -And use email to let your prospects know about the exciting new pieces of content you've created.
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Why is it important to analyze content?
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Just like every other aspect of an effective inbound strategy, you need to analyze your content's efficacy in order to get the most out of it. Are you creating content on the right topics? Is it in the correct formats? Is it being distributed in the right ways?
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What are the different metrics that can be used to measure content efficacy?
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• Number of visits - how many views did your content have • Leads generated - did your content offer convert leads? How many? Did it reach your goal? • Social proof, share-ability - did anyone share your content on social media? How many? Is it getting re-tweeted or re-posted? • Inbound links - are there any outside web sites linking to your content? This could help build authority to your website and your content. • Content performance by author - Is one content author performing better than another? Should they be creating the majority of content in the future? Or are there certain tips they follow that's worth sharing with your other content creators? • Content performance by topic - Do your buyer personas prefer a certain topic that you're covering? Continue writing about that content! • Content performance by format - Is there a certain format that is performing better than another? This can also give you insights on your buyer persona. If they don't seem to be coming to your webinars, maybe that's not the right content for your buyer persona and you should test something else out.
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What's the value in repeating the Content Process?
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Repeat what's working well for you and stop doing things that just don't seem to be clicking. One important thing to remember about inbound marketing is that it's all about testing things out and seeing what works well for you. Every industry is different! Take what you learned from each piece of content to help create more effective content down the road.
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How does blogging help to attract new visitors?
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If your blog posts provide those answers, those strangers will find your posts, and will want to click through and read them, turning them into visitors. This is the attract stage of the Inbound Methodology. In addition, every time you publish a blog post, you're creating a new, unique page online. This means that you're increasing your chances of ranking in search results, having other websites link to you, and being shared on social media. And all of this results in new traffic to your site.
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How does blogging help to convert new leads?
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-Once people visit your site, you've opened the door to them. Think about it -- if they're interested in your content, they're more likely to be interested in your offers and convert into leads. -Your blog can strategically promote offers from your business - anything from your latest ebook to a free consultation. If your visitor wants to learn more, you can provide them with that next step. -Finally, your blog can help you stand out as an expert in your industry. The more you blog, the more that people will start to look to you as a reliable, trustworthy source of information. And building that trust with your prospects will help them turn into customers down the line.
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How can your blog help you to build trust with your prospects? Why is this important?
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The more you blog, the more that people will start to look to you as a reliable, trustworthy source of information. And building that trust with your prospects will help them turn into customers down the line.
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What are the blogging best practices?
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-The first step is to pick a topic and a title. -At a high level, write educational content -Next, make sure to write about your industry, not yourself. -Next, brainstorm a list of specific topics that you could blog about. - picking a title.
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How do you pick an appropriate blog post topic?
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-If you're looking for a place to start, then ask your sales and marketing teams - what are the most frequently asked questions? What do your buyer personas need help with? What do you wish people knew about your industry? What are industry bloggers, social media, and even your competitors talking about? -When picking your topics, do keyword research. Keywords are the words and phrases typed into search engines.
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Why should you write about educational content rather than your business?
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Remember those people searching for information online? Well, in order to attract them to your blog, you need to answer the questions and problems that they're searching for answers to. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer personas. What are they going to be searching for?
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What are ways to brainstorm different topics to blog about?
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-If you're looking for a place to start, then ask your sales and marketing teams - what are the most frequently asked questions? What do your buyer personas need help with? What do you wish people knew about your industry? What are industry bloggers, social media, and even your competitors talking about? -When picking your topics, do keyword research. Keywords are the words and phrases typed into search engines.
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Why is it important to do keyword research around your blog topics?
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Keywords are the words and phrases typed into search engines. They're the topics that people are trying to learn more about. Which keywords do your buyer personas use? Which are associated with your industry? Write about those topics to get found and start ranking higher in search results.
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How many topics should you focus on per post, and why?
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pick one topic to focus on per post
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What is a working title and how is it different from your topic?
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A working title is something to "work" off of as you begin to write your post. Start here to narrow your topic down and focus on one single angle. A topic, like "choosing paint colors" could breed multiple different blog posts. A working title, like "The best colors to paint your kitchen" is specific to one single blog post.
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Why should you include a long-tail keyword in the blog post title?
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A long-tail keyword is a primary keyword--usually 2-3 words, like "Internet Radio Show"--that's expanded upon with additional context, like "How to Produce an Internet Radio Show". Be sure that the keyword fits as a description of what the page is all about.
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How long should your blog title be, on average?
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50-60 characters
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Why is it important to format your blog post properly?
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format and optimize the post so that both people and search engines can easily read and understand it.
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What is whitespace and how does it affect your blog post?
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Whitespace is the empty space on the page. It allows the visitor to focus on the content, not the clutter. Don't write long paragraphs that form into huge blocks of text - this will make your information look dense and hard to read.
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Why are images important to include in blog posts, and where should they be placed?
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Images grab attention and help your readers understand the post at a glance. Place one at the top of every blog post to entice your visitors to read further. Your photos don't need to directly illustrate what your post is about, but they should be loosely related to your content. While most people enjoy a great cat photo, it may not always be relevant to your content.
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Why is it important to optimize a blog post for search engines?
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When search engines crawl your blog, they don't read every word. Instead, they scan certain parts of your post to understand what you're writing about and how trustworthy the content is.
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Where should you place your long-tail keyword within your blog post?
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placing it in the page title and the blog post title, which are typically the same thing; in the URL, the image alt-text, the body and the headers.
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Where should you include links within the content of your blog post?
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- Link to related blog posts or your site pages when appropriate. - link to outside resources. Google Webmasters encourage this - it shows that you've done your research. - link to one or two sources per paragraph at the very most.
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How can you use your blog and blog posts to promote your other offers?
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CTA
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What are the different ways you could promote your blog posts?
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-You can use your blog sidebar to promote your recent or most popular posts, and add your blog to your primary website navigation - link internally to your blog posts for their promotion. -If you have blog posts that are about related topics, include a link to them within other posts -share those posts on social media.
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Which metrics should you analyze to track the performance of your blog? What does each metric tell you, and how can you use that knowledge to improve performance?
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-First, look at the number of views for each blog post. -Also filter your most popular posts by topic, author, or even the channel that you promoted it on. Learn what topics you should continue to write about, reward the popular authors, and determine the best way to promote your blog posts. - look at the number of clicks on the CTA at the end of an individual post. Are you converting any qualified leads? Are certain offers performing better than others? - write consistently and frequently -Commit yourself to a blogging schedule
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How can you tell if a business picked a good topic to blog about?
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-They have an educational subject- enhancing the art of retail site selection, which seems like it answers the question "how do I improve my retail site better?" -And they're writing about their industry, not their company - looking at the first few sentences, they're not mentioning Trade Area's solutions, just focusing on helping their reader learn more. -you can assume that this is a topic that their buyer personas wants to hear about. The second line speaks right to that persona, stating "people pick the best sites"
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How can you tell if they picked a compelling blog post title?
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-There is a long-tail keyword in the title- you can imagine a stranger searching for "retail site selection". -The value and structure of the blog post is clear - we're getting four steps which detail how to enhance your retail site selection. -The title pops too - the use of the word "enhancing" brings a growth-driven, exciting element to the post. -And it's short enough - the character count is 53 characters. If you want to preview what it will look like on a search engine results page, then try Moz's free title tag preview tool.
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How can you tell if the blog post has been formatted properly?
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-The post has good whitespace - there's enough room to digest all of the content easily. -They also use section headers to make it easy to scan, which is great. -And they have a nice image of some paint brushes, which is relevant to the title.
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How can you tell if the blog post has been optimized for search engines?
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They've got the long-tail keyword - which is most likely "retail site selection" - in the page title, URL, body, and though you can't see it, it's behind the image in the alt-text.
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How can you tell if the blog or blog post is promoting other offers, and if the calls-to-actions are appropriate?
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-They have a call-to-action that's relevant to the topic at the bottom of the post - Understanding the "art" of site selection and how it fails whitepaper. -And they're strategically leveraging their sidebar, calling out "subscribe to get email updates" as well as providing information on how to get in touch with them at an upcoming event.
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How can you tell if a business is promoting their blog posts?
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-They have social sharing buttons at the top of the post, meaning that the reader can share this post with their personal networks. -They also have links to popular posts in their sidebar, in case their readers want to browse.
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How does social media fit into inbound?
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Social media can be used at every stage of the inbound methodology.
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In which stages of the inbound methodology can social media be used?
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Social media can be used at every stage of the inbound methodology. Use it to attract visitors by sharing remarkable content across channels. Convert new visitors into leads by offering opportunities for visitors to subscribe and receive updates or special offers. Close by acting on insights that you gather through social monitoring and provide value to prospects online. Delight customers by being a warm personality and creating unique ways to engage with audience members.
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What are SMART goals?
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Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely.
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How do you set a SMART goal for social?
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-specificity -relevant -measurbale
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What is a social media content plan?
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- outlines the pieces of content you will promote and the social media channels you will promote them on - It also seeks to make a lasting impression on audience members to keep them engaged.
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What should a social media content plan include? What are the components?
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- will leverage content that clearly communicates your company's brand and values in efforts to connect with the audience and create an identity on that channel. -executes on delivering helpful content that adds value to audience members. -share various types of content that are relevant to each channel or platform
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What social media channels should brands be using?
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The best way to discover the social media platforms that your company should be active on is to identify the platforms that your personas are active on
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How do buyer personas fit into a social media strategy?
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The best way to discover the social media platforms that your company should be active on is to identify the platforms that your personas are active on
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How can you find the right social media platform for your business?
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- by surveying your audience members or doing research on how your industry is currently using a specific platform -Another way is to run an experiment by creating a profile on a network and testing how well your audience engages with your company through that channel
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What are the key ways to use optimization?
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-Most social media platforms have character limits, which push marketers to be creative and concise. With this in mind you'll want to be sure to create a clear message that may be witty, compelling, or even contain a strong call-to-action. This will help peak the interest of audience members and result in increased engagement. -Using visuals to capture the attention of audience members on social media has become increasingly important. In early 2016, it was reported that content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images. Additionally, social messages that contain video are shared 1200% more than text and links combined! This means that whether it's an image or a video, visuals drive audiences to act. When optimizing visuals for social media, pay close attention to the recommended dimensions for each platform. -Stay away from images that are pixelated or grainy and instead use clear photos that are easy to distinguish. -You can even get creative and make your own unique social images on platforms such as Canva or Pablo. Or if you're searching for beautiful and free stock images you can try sites such as PhoType or Kaboompics. -Lastly, you want to always optimize for results.
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How are visuals used in social media?
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Using visuals to capture the attention of audience members on social media has become increasingly important. In early 2016, it was reported that content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.
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How can you tie social media efforts back to ROI?
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- Reach is used to measure the size of your potential audience. This includes people who are directly and indirectly in your social network. -Engagement measures the number of interactions with your brand, such as likes and shares. -Audience growth refers to the number of new audience members you attract.
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How can you measure reach?
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- Reach is used to measure the size of your potential audience. This includes people who are directly and indirectly in your social network.
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How can you measure engagement?
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-Engagement measures the number of interactions with your brand, such as likes and shares.
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What is audience growth and how can it be measured?
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Audience growth refers to the number of new audience members you attract.
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What type of inbound challenges can social media help solve?
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- brand awareness - build a lead generation machine that would help convert these new visitors into qualified leads.
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How does consistently publishing to social media help with content strategies?
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By publishing frequently, YouEarnedIt has established a strong and active presence which makes it easy for audience members to engage with them
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How can you tell if a business has properly optimized their social posts for relevant content across platforms?
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Facebook and LinkedIn are not the only platforms they're on. They also leverage audiences on Twitter and Google Plus to share content and updates. This is excellent execution of how YouEarnedIt has met their audience where they're at. Rather than being on every social media platform, they maintain an active presence across the four channels their buyer personas engage in the most. They have also done a great job at optimizing each post by including links that direct audiences to blog posts and landing pages, which are proven ways to increase site traffic and generate new leads.
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What does it mean to 'meet your audience where they are'?
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Rather than being on every social media platform, they maintain an active presence across the four channels their buyer personas engage in the most.
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What is the conversion process?
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conversion process typically begins with a CTA. When a visitor clicks on it, they're brought to a landing page where they fill out a form with their contact information - turning them into a lead! After that, the lead is directed to a Thank-You page where they receive the offered content.
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What is a CTA?
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a button that promotes an offer and links to a landing page.
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How does a CTA help to convert visitors into leads?
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they're brought to a landing page where they fill out a form with their contact information - turning them into a lead!
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What role does a CTA play in a conversion process?
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a critical first step
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What are the CTA best practices?
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-should be action-oriented -Clear, direct action verbs make for a great call-to-action -remember to use keywords that are consistent with your offer and landing page - it's important to grab someone's attention - it needs to stand out so that visitors will know to click on it. Visitors recognize clickable elements like buttons and links. - use strong and appropriate on-page placement for your CTAs -
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What kind of words can you use on a CTA to get visitors to take action?
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Clear, direct action verbs make for a great call-to-action
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How do the keywords of your offer and landing page impact the CTA?
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Using the same keywords and phrasing for the entire conversion process helps your visitors understand what they are going to get as they navigate from CTA to landing page to thank you page.
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How can the visual aspects of a CTA, such as the size or color, help to grab your visitors' attention?
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However you choose to design your call-to-action, it needs to stand out so that visitors will know to click on it. Visitors recognize clickable elements like buttons and links. Consider your buyer persona's tastes when designing a call-to-action. Your buyer persona might prefer something flashy and bright or they might like a simple, minimal button.
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Where should you place a CTA in an email? In a blog? On a website page?
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- can be placed at the end of the email, paragraph, sentence, or really anywhere that grabs attention without being distracting. Remember, driving lead conversion is your goal, not our reader's goal, so make sure that -The sidebar is a good place to grab someone's attention and give someone an opportunity to take the next step, like joining our next live webinar in the example shown here.
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What is a good click-through rate goal to aim for with a CTA?
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1-to-2 %
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What is a good clicks-to-submissions goal to aim for with a CTA?
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10%
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How do you measure the effectiveness of a CTA?
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- the placement of the CTA -the visual aspects of the CTA -text is action-oriented
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What different ways can you test and analyze a CTA?
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don't forget to make these small changes one at a time and analyze if your change has improved the click through or submission rate
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What is a landing page?
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Landing pages are essentially website pages that are designed to convert visitors into leads.
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How does a landing page generate information about your website visitors?
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By definition, all landing pages use a form to gather information. Without a form, the process of converting a website visitor into lead simply can't happen. Using the information you gather from those forms, you'll be able to build and nurture relationships with your leads.
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Where does a landing page fit into a conversion process?
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at the heart of the convert stage of the inbound methodology
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What is a good conversion rate goal for a landing page?
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good goal to aim for is 20%
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What are the landing page best practices?
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-First write a clear, concise, action-oriented headline. - explain the value and importance of the offer to your personas, but don't tell them about your company just yet -In 1-3 sentences, explain what the offer is -write another 1-3 sentences that detail how someone would benefit from the offer - use numbers, bullets and bolding to create easily digestible bites of information - remove all of the website's navigation menu and links. - Make sure that the submit button is highly visible and easy to click. -The form on the landing page should mirror the value of the offer, both in the information that you ask for in the form fields and in the length of the form - include a relevant image, animation or short video.
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What kinds of words need to be included in a landing page headline?
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clear, concise, action-oriented
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What are some ways to place emphasis on the offer you're promoting with your landing page?
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Tell your visitors what they're getting and how they are going to access it
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How long should the form on the landing page be?
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above the fold
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What kinds of questions should you ask on a form?
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In other words, the more valuable the offer, the more information you can ask for
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What can you place on a landing page to visually communicate an offer?
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relevant image, animation or short video
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What is the benefit in including social sharing icons on a landing page?
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If the lead finds the content relevant and useful, chances are there's someone in their social network that would also be interested in the offer. Give the lead the ability to share the offer if they'd like.
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What is a blink test?
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Now let's take a look at an example see how many best practices you can identify. Grab a pen and write down the best practices you can see being used in this example landing page. You'll have a few seconds to jot these down.
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How do you measure the effectiveness of a landing page?
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20% conversion
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What is a thank you page?
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allows you to thank the new lead for signing up to get the offer, but also provides some additional direction on what the new lead might want to look at next. A thank you page is important because it gives the lead the information they hoped for.
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Where does a thank you page fit into a conversion process?
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end of the conversion process
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How does a thank you page differ from an inline thank you message?
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redirect your visitor to a thank you page instead, so that you can thank them while providing additional information
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What are the thank you page best practices?
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-Deliver the offer or set some expectations about when your lead will receive the offer. -If you can't deliver the promised offer right away, you'll need to let the lead know what to expect. The -your thank you page should display the site's navigation menu. -give your leads every opportunity to look around after they've converted and reached your thank you page -use the thank you page to provide additional next steps for your new lead -Use this opportunity to show them another offer that might be of interest and grab their attention with -include social options
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How do you set proper expectations of what happens next on a thank you page?
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Your Thank You page should either include a link for them to access the offer or, in some cases, set proper expectations on what happens next
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Why does displaying the site's navigation menu on a thank you page help your thank you page?
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you'll want to give your leads every opportunity to look around after they've converted and reached your thank you page
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Are you required to use a CTA on a thank you page?
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yes
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How can you move leads further into the buyer's journey using a thank you page?
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include social options Another call-to-action
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How can a thank you page extend your social media reach?
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You can allow the leads to connect with you on social media by linking to your company profiles, or allow them to share the original offer across their own networks.
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How can you examine a thank you page to make sure it directs a lead further into the buyer's journey?
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By applying some best practices to this thank you page, we've been able to give the lead opportunities to learn more about Fifth Season
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What are some reasons why email works?
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1) There are more than 4.3 billion email accounts today - that's a LOT of people using email. No other marketing channel has been adopted as universally. 2) 95% of online consumers use email, and 91% report that they check their email at least once a day. If people are checking their email every day, it's probably still a viable marketing channel, right? And since emails stay in your inbox unless you delete them, it has a longer lifespan than other marketing channels like social media. 3) Email is a channel that you own. While Google and Facebook can change the way they index search results and display content, you'll always have a 1:1 relationship with the people that open your emails. 4) 77% of consumers prefer email for marketing communications. Take advantage of that by connecting with people where they want to be reached 5) Email lets you be highly personal. You can create a highly targeted, contextual message that's unique to each person who receives it. 6) And lastly, we still use email because it has an ROI of 4300%. For every $1 you spend, you get $43 of returns. That's a pretty sweet deal.
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How can email help you close leads into customers?
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Send your leads content that helps them do their job better, and they'll be more open to speaking to your sales team down the road.
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How can marketers use email to delight customers?
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You can strengthen relationships, upsell new products, and reduce churn - meaning, customers are less likely to stop using your products or services.
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What does content and context mean to your inbound marketing strategy and how does this help email marketing?
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When you divide your contacts into smaller groups based on similarities, it lets you use context to make your content more relevant and engaging.
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Why are buyer personas and the buyer's journey important to sending great emails?
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-A clear definition of your Buyer Persona helps you define your audience. - Sending a great email to the right buyer persona at the WRONG time can be a HUGE problem.
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What different types of data can you use to segment your email sending recipients?
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-You can segment people by geography using criteria such as IP country, time zone, area code, and address. -You can use data about a person's company - such as its size, the nature of their business -- B2B, B2C, Non-profit, etc. -- and their industry - You can also segment your leads by their role, seniority, what department they belong to, or their specific function within a department. -If you use a CMS that has the ability to track a lead's behavior on your website, you can use that to gauge how interested leads are and what they're interested in. -If you have marketing intelligence software, you can go one step further and actually incorporate information about your lead and their company into your segments
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The average email list decays at 25% a year. What are some reasons that this happens?
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-spam filters -people move anc change jobs which means new emails
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How can you avoid having your emails marked as spam? What is the impact of your emails being marked as spam?
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- dont buying lists and emailing people who didn't opt in. -hurts your deliverability and credibility.
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What type of content is appropriate to email leads during the awareness stage of the buyer's journey? The consideration stage? The decision stage?
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-awareness: easily consumable, Videos, blog posts, slideshares, free tools, and high level guides - consideration: answering the unasked questions,webinars, case studies, FAQ sheets, product whitepapers, and third-party reviews. -decision:free trials, ROI reports, product demos, consultations, and estimates or quotes, depending on your industry
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How is the success of your email marketing tied to the rest of your inbound strategy?
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Inbound is all about lovable marketing strategy - leads engage with you because they want to. Sending content that is valuable to your intended recipient is going to make your company more valuable to them. A world-class email, above all, does not ask a lead for anything - it provides them with something of value
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What is lead nurturing?
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Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with prospects with the goal of earning their business when they're ready
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What different ways can you optimize your email for mobile?
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-use responsive templates -bigger is better -don't forget to use clear and concise messaging -avoid using tiny fonts. At a minimum, use a 12pt font.
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How does email personalization impact the success of your email sends?
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During several A/B tests we ran on over 50,000 recipients, we found that personalizing the sender's name and email address increased the open rate an average of 3%. Consider doing something like this: (show image) Leads who are nurtured with targeted content produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities. 40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels. Personalized emails improve click through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%.
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What are the different ways to add personalization to your emails?
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-consider sending your email from a real person, not the name of your company -personalize any contact property - first name, last name, email, company name
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What is actionable language, and where can it be used in your emails?
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email subject line -everywhere
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What components of your email can you make a CTA?
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all
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What does delivery rate measure? Open rate? Click rate?
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-Is your email even getting to your contacts? -tells you the effectiveness of your subject line, not your offer. -track people engaging with your emails
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Why is it important to A/B test your emails?
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Use it to learn more about your emails/audience. You can improve your total clicks, too, by testing the email and then sending the winning version.
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What is the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?
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-hard bounces means fake or out-of-service email addresses -soft bounces means your email is making it into the inbox but getting caught in a spam filter
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How can you optimize your emails to look good on mobile devices?
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-use responsive templates -bigger is better -don't forget to use clear and concise messaging -avoid using tiny fonts. At a minimum, use a 12pt font.
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Is it ever appropriate to have more than one CTA in an email?
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yes
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What are the components of a good email signature?
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personalized sender at the bottom also makes the interaction more human
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What is smarketing?
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how the marketing team and sales team can come together to be one team, known as smarketing Smarketing is the process of aligning the marketing and sales teams around common goals within a business or organization, with the goal of improving revenue.
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Where does smarketing fit into the Inbound Methodology?
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Smarketing is a key component of inbound success because of its location in the close stage of the methodology. Specifically, the point in the close phase where marketing can most effectively hand-off qualified leads to sales, so that they can be closed into customers. Without smarketing, a significant number of your leads will likely wither away and never become customers.
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How does smarketing increase bottom line revenue results for organizations?
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Realizing this will allow you to create a productive relationship between these two traditionally opposing teams, putting you in a better position to hit your organization's revenue goals.
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What are the smarketing best practices?
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-both teams must have the same organizational goals - the visitors and leads goals should be tied to the sales quotas -marketing and sales must have visibility into each other's goals and progress. -base compensation on shared marketing and sales goals -don't forget about your personas.
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Why is it important for both teams to have the same or interdependent goals?
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To get on the same team you must align bo th marketing and sales around the same goal. In a business setting this goal is typically focused on revenue.
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What are the benefits of tying the marketing pipeline to sales quotas?
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If Sales can't rely on marketing to deliver leads, the teams aren't working together and the level of success (or lack thereof) will show in the bottom line results.
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How does visibility into each other's goals create better alignment and bottom line revenue results?
answer
each team is clear about how everyone is doing and can make adjustments in real time accordingly
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How is compensation around goals related to smarketing alignment?
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Money can be a valuable lever for jumpstarting organizational alignment.
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Why are personas important for successful smarketing alignment?
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Your marketing and sales teams are communicating with your target customer on a regular basis, so expect details about your personas to be uncovered and discussed regularly. Be sure to keep everyone up to date on these developments at all times.
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At what size company does smarketing work best?
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Smarketing can happen at any scale
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What are the five steps to integrate smarketing?
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1. Speak the same language 2. Implement a service level agreement 3. Set up Closed loop reporting 4. Rely on Data 5. Maintain open communication
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What are the sixstagesin themarketing and sales funneland how are they defined?
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-prospect/visotor -lead -mql -sql -opportunity -customer
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What is the most generic term for anyone in a marketing and sales funnel?
answer
contact
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What constitutes a marketing qualified lead (MQL)?
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are contacts who have raised their hands (metaphorically speaking) and identified themselves as more deeply engaged, sales-ready leads. Ideally, you only allow specific forms or form fields, such as company size, to trigger the promotion of a lead to an MQL.
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What is a service level agreement (SLA) and why is it critical to integrating smarketing into your organization?
answer
defines what each team will commit to accomplishing in order to support the other in reaching the shared revenue goal it crystallizes that alignment around goals. Whether you're a one-person team that owns both marketing and sales or a ten thousand-person company, SLAs formalize the marketing and sales goals to ensure the company is set up to reach its revenue goal.
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What is closed-loop reporting?
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completes the feedback loop between marketing and sales. At its core closed-loop reporting allows you to pass more lead intelligence and data over to the sales team and get more feedback from sales to marketing about which marketing efforts are translating into customers.
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What are some questions to ask yourself to identify if your organizations needs closed-loop reporting?
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Do you send leads to sales and never hear about them again? Do you end up creating and trying to manage duplicate leads? Do you send leads to sales with the basic contact information, but without intelligence about what content those leads consumed? Or are you unsure of the impact your marketing efforts are having on revenue?
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What are some benefits of closed-loop reporting for marketing and for sales?
answer
Closed-loop reporting enables marketing and sales to improve conversion rates over time, between each stage in the funnel. The major benefits for marketing are: Getting up to date contact info and status updates, learning which marketing programs are working and which aren't, and gaining visibility into ways to increase Marketing ROI. The major benefits to sales are de-duplicated contacts, the prioritization of contacts, more educated contacts, and an increase in close rate and Sales ROI.
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Why are dashboards a great way to display data? What are the different types of dashboards?
answer
because they provide frequent, public, and transparent updates as to how marketing and sales are performing. This allows the team to quickly change course when problems arise, instead of waiting until the end of the month or quarter -key to communicate the progress towards your primary MQL goals on a daily, monthly, and quarterly basis. -You can also dive into the other key metrics for the marketing team. Perhaps the volume of visits, leads, customers, against a monthly goal or compared to a previous months so you can understand how your efforts are performing and quickly adjust if need be. -you can track your leads by their source. You might even want to set specific goals for each of your marketing sources, so that you can measure your progress for your email marketing contacts or your organic search contacts. -You can do this on a micro level as well. For each individual campaign you can analyze the results to understand which efforts are successfully driving visits, leads, and customers. -Track the volume of MQLs generated that marketing is passing off to sales on a daily basis -In addition to the daily reports, a monthly marketing report provides the necessary time to analyze why you did or did not hit your targets and what to improve on for next month. -'sales by day' dashboard, which allows you to measure progress towards your sales goals. -In addition to actual revenue, you can also look at sales activity reports.
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Why is it important to rely on data not emotions when integrating and running smarketing?
answer
rely on data to figure out where you can improve. Separate reality from perception.You put in all of the hard work to gather the data, now use it. Don't allow your emotions and ego get in the way of the facts the data provides.
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What are the different ways to maintain open communication within your company?
answer
-hold a weekly smarketing meeting -you can use emails to communicate important information across teams -provide them with good sound bites - product updates
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Why have buying habits changed?
answer
You no longer need to spend your days cold-calling everyone. These days, the buyer has the power to research, so acting as an information gatekeeper doesn't help you win more sales.
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What's the difference between the traditional and inbound way of selling?
answer
Instead of that static pitch, you can tailor one based upon the buyer's situation. The inbound approach is very buyer-centric. Often times, the more information you share, the more credibility you earn with your prospects.
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What is inbound sales?
answer
"Buyers have more information available to them and higher expectations for a relevant, personal experience when making a purchase. Giving them a relevant, personal, "delightful" experience, driven by their needs, on their timeline is what an inbound approach to sales is all about."
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What are the best practices for effectively transforming the way you sell
answer
-transform the way you taget clients -transform thw way you prosepct accounts -transfrm the way you connect with accounts -tranformt he way your prospcts receive you as a sales person
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How can you transform the way you target accounts?
answer
transforming the way prospects find out about your brand using buyer personas
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How can you transform the way you prospect accounts?
answer
In order to be effective at prospecting inbound leads, you need to understand more about who your prospects are.
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What things about your lead should you thoroughly research?
answer
-company information -Understand what's going on in the company from a news perspective -check social media -monitor the lead's engagement with your company
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How is the goal of a call determined?
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Based on the information you've gathered in your research: what is the goal of the call? Is it pretty introductory in nature? Are you trying to get an internal or external referral, or are you trying to sell something to a decision maker?
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What are the guidelines for transforming the way you connect?
answer
-build rapport with our leads -know your audience -speaking the prospect's language - be helpful
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How can you transform the way your prospects perceive you as a salesperson?
answer
- In order to put yourself in the position to educate your prospects, you need to become the ultimate listening machine and truly understand your prospect's pain points. -focus on making your sales organization human again
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If you needed to research a lead, where would you start
answer
company's website
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What is a positioning statement?
answer
It's an expression of how a given product, service, or brand fills a particular consumer need in a way that its competitors don't.
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What are the three parts to a positioning statement?
answer
(1) The root which must contain a reference to talking to a bunch of people just like them... this adds 'social proof' to the statement. (2) You need to separate 'positions' so that you have twice the chance that what you say will resonate with the prospect. You should pick to very widely appealing issues that your prospects have and that your company can help with. (3) A question that asks them to elaborate on their experience with step (2).
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In which stages of the Inbound Methodology can delight be used?
answer
you can build it at every phase of the Inbound Methodology
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What are the three pillars of delight?
answer
innovation, communication, and education
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Which interactions will build or destroy trust?
answer
Personal communication is critical in helping you build trust with people.. Think of yourself as a teacher, facilitator, and advisor. You play all of those roles and more when trying to help someone understand why they should buy your product or how to use your product.
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What are the components to the customer delight checklist?
answer
solve prolems, provide recommendations, be yourself
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What are the seven customer delight guidelines?
answer
-delighting your team members -educating team members. -empowering team members. -listening. -asking -serve them -businesses who are the best educators will be the most successful
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Who is responsible for delighting customers?
answer
everyone
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Why do you need to build a repeatable, consistent hiring process so you hire for character, train for skill?
answer
Your hiring methodology is going to help you create happy team members from the start and will develop them into even happier team members. Hiring could have severe negative effects for your organization if you're not focused on hiring the right people.
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Why do you need to make sure you properly train your team so they understand why developing trust is key to delighting people?
answer
It doesn't matter if you're in product, marketing, sales, or customer support. It's everyone's job to build trust with people. You need to make sure you properly train your team so they understand why trust is key. Remember, every small interaction can make a difference. Over time, all of the small interactions will create the larger experience for a customer, and every interaction can either build or destroy trust
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Why should you be measuring and tracking as many of your customer's interactions as you can?
answer
ou should be measuring and tracking as many of these interactions as you can. Collect qualitative and quantitative data, pre-and post-sale, using manual and automatic methods. Then, use that data to better understand how your organization can serve your customers through communication, education, or innovative product changes. There are many ways you can listen, but why listen and collect data? Data improves how you execute the pillars of delight and ensures you're always challenging the status quo
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How can you educate your team members?
answer
It's important to be sure that your organization focuses on resolving all of your customers' problems and supports the goals they're aiming to achieve. Also, be sure that your team understands why it's so important to follow- up and how they can use the second pillar of delight, communication, to ensure the person leaves each interaction with the right expectations.
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Why is following-up so important to delight?
answer
It's important to be sure that your organization focuses on resolving all of your customers' problems and supports the goals they're aiming to achieve. Also, be sure that your team understands why it's so important to follow- up and how they can use the second pillar of delight, communication, to ensure the person leaves each interaction with the right expectations.
