Gated Content: A Bane or a Boon for B2B Marketers?

Inbound Marketing is all about creating and publishing high-quality content, so it’s no surprise that it has been the rage for many years. Gating content is an effective and standard way adopted by marketers to generate leads. However, some B2B marketers prefer not to gate their content for easy access to the users. This gives rise to an unresolved question:

Whether content should be gated or not? 

 

Before you decide and choose a particular content marketing strategy, here are some benefits of both gated and ungated content:

Benefits of Gated Content

• Generation of High Quality Leads: Generating superior leads is the biggest benefit that gated content offers to businesses. It helps you to collect specific information about leads which can be further used to nurture them into a sale.
• Advanced Control: It helps prevent your content piece from being read and used by anonymous users or competitors. You can also seek more information about users through progressive profiling.
• More Valuable Content: By gating information, it adds more value to your content rather than keeping it form-free and assists many companies in establishing high revenue streams too.

Benefits of Ungated Content         

• Heavy Site Traffic and Large Opportunities: By making your content public/ungated, it helps attract more traffic to your site. With better SEO and more content sharing, it supports you in building a loyal audience.
• Increased View of Content: Ungated content receives 10 times more views than gated content as there aren’t any opt-in forms that people need to fill with their personal details.
• Enhanced SEO: As a B2B marketer, using ungated content can provide you keyword-optimized indexed pages to help you attain your goal of visitor-to-lead conversion

So, the debate between gated and ungated content remains unsolved as both tactics provide favourable results either way. The answer to the question, whether to gate your content or not varies depending upon the value of the content piece.

According to Mike Volpe, CEO of Hubspot, “gating your content helps you identify qualified leads who want to be nurtured.” On the other hand, Neil Patel, co-founder of KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg says, “From my experience, gating content creates a lot of backlash. Opt-in forms give me 3x the leads of any other method, but they tick people off... by a lot.”

Maintaining balance between Gated and Ungated content

 

So, it concludes that there is no as such perfect answer to this question. Ideally, a blend of gated and ungated content can drive revenue for your business. By adopting a content-pillar approach, you can maintain a healthy balance between gated and ungated content strategies for achieving your objective.

Under this approach, a central piece of content is termed as “pillar” which is gated whereas it is surrounded by several ungated pieces. This approach helps B2B marketers with better lead generation as the ungated content drives traffic to the pillar (gated) which further transforms the traffic into leads.

So, you need to test whether gated or ungated content will work well for your business! Also, you need to be careful while taking the decision as it can affect your entire business.

3 Simple Ways to Increase Your Social Media Engagement

One of the most disheartening moments in social media marketing is when no engagement seems to happen. You post with an intention to get traction on social media, but most of the time don’t get the desired results. It not only leaves you frustrated but also cost you dearly. It’s not difficult to make people like your posts, but it is a little trickier to make them share and comment on your posts, i.e. increase your social media engagement.

So, how can you engage your audience on social media? Check out the following tips:

Grab their attention: The best way you can engage your audience with your brand is by posting something relevant for them, something they want to see. If you are successful in stopping them from scrolling down the news feed, you’ve got their attention. To do that, you need to:

• Find out why your audience is on social media. For example, if someone is using Facebook to read news stories, you can share newsworthy content.
• Entertain your audience while sharing your brand’s message with them. That’s what social media is for. 

Make them react: The other best thing is to inspire different reactions for your posts to engage people. Moving away from a simple “like” button, Facebook has now included five emojis to react to posts, expressing love, laughter, wonder, sadness, and anger. You can:

• Make use of emojis in your post to trigger an emotion in your audience. If your post is humorous, you can include a laughing emoji in the post to make your audience feel that what you are sharing is amusing.
• Share any blog post showcasing your business offerings and ask people to share their reaction using reactions on Facebook.

Intrigue them: Apart from likes and comments on social media, there is another way to engage people, i.e. to use social media to intrigue your audience. You can:

• Share some compelling data so that people want to click and go to your website to learn more about your services.
• Reveal a new product or some exciting updates by sharing it on social media. You must have seen those product “leaks” on social media. This is what they do. Initially, provide a few details, then compel them to visit your website by clicking on your website link to know more.

To get the most of b2b social media marketing, start following these sneaky ways and make your audience comment, like, share, and click on your posts.

3 Reasons Inbound Marketing Beats the Traditional Forms of Marketing

All those companies that still rely on the traditional forms of marketing or believe that inbound marketing is just a passing craze are wrong in their perception. They’ll soon be looking for inbound marketing experts as they’ll realize that inbound marketing is the most effective form of marketing that makes your potential customers reach your business.

 

Image credit: flickr.com

You don’t need to be convinced so easily. Take a look at the following three facts that show why inbound marketing outperforms traditional marketing:

Improved Customer Relations: With inbound marketing, you deliver valuable content to your potential customers that helps them through their purchase journey and provides better insight into your product or services. Beyond providing valuable content to your customers, the implication of improved customer relationship through quality content can benefit your business in many ways such as increase leads and recurring sales, improve branding, create advocates, and much more.

Cost Effective: Inbound marketing gets you real and measurable return on investment as compared to the traditional marketing in which return on investment is difficult to measure. According to Hubspot, inbound marketing, per lead, costs 62 percent less than that of traditional marketing. The reason inbound marketing campaigns are more cost effective is that you send your message to a targeted audience instead of spreading it blindly to everyone.

Quality Traffic & Leads: Inbound marketing is all about producing the right content at the right time. With inbound marketing, it’s not you who’s running after prospects. It’s the other way round; you’re helping your target audience reach out to you. That helps you generate high-quality leads. So, when you produce frequent content, prospects are most likely to visit your website. All you need to do is nurture and convert them.

The list is not exhaustive but sufficient to prove that inbound marketing is more effective than outbound marketing. If you are not using it, you are most likely to miss the opportunity to develop a good and long-lasting relationship with your prospects.

Become a Customer-Centric Company Leveraging Social Media

With increasing social media usage around the globe, businesses are using b2b social media marketing platforms to approach and engage with potential customers/clients, answer their queries, reinforce brand messaging and provide targeted offers. So, if you want to build a customer-focussed business that is approachable and values its loyal customers, leverage social media platforms and stay connected.

Let’s know how to refocus attention on customer experience leveraging social media strategy:

Develop a Learner’s Mindset: Nowadays, all social media platforms run on social media algorithms that are consistently changing the environment of social networks. So with the changing scenario, it is important to develop a learner’s mindset and understand the algorithms in depth. The more you learn, the more you will be able to develop a better social media strategy.

Engage More with Customers: Businesses are clamouring everywhere to provide the best experience to their customers. As emotions can drive one’s decision, it is important to create an emotional bonding with your customers. Businesses that use this strategy are set to outperform their competitors.

Welcome Customers Feedback on Regular Intervals: Are you sure that you are delivering the best services to your customers? Feedback from customers is what influences your product or service roadmap. There is no better way to know how your customers’ experience has been throughout other than capturing their feedback in real time. To do this, you can make outbound calls to your customers, deliver post-interaction surveys via emails and calls, listen through social media etc.

As customer expectations keep on increasing, businesses need to start improving their customer experience by implementing the right social media strategy that aligns with organizational goals and objectives.

Why We Love Content Marketing (And You Should, Too!)

What is content marketing? What role does it play in running a business? How can marketers sell smarter by leveraging content marketing? These are just some of the questions that play through the minds of business owners. In order to run your business efficiently, you need to understand content marketing and its nuances.

What is content marketing?     

Content marketing is used by marketers to attract new customers by creating and publishing useful content. It is the fuel that ignites the entire sales process with the help of blogs, eBooks, case studies, social media, white papers, videos, etc.

Role of content marketing  

Creating valuable content can set you apart from others and help you resonate with your target audience. Let us take a look at the roles that content marketing play in running a business successfully: 

• User Engagement: Content marketing aims at strengthening your relationship with people reading and sharing your content (usually your fans and advocates) and drives high user engagement.
• Brand Establishment: Content marketing is a great way to establish your brand in the competitive market. With value added content, you can win the trust of your users and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
• Traffic Increase: With effective content, marketers can drive traffic to their website from different sources. Moreover, publishing content on social media platforms can help generate more followers, convert them into leads, and further into customers and active promoters of your company.     

How to implement a successful content marketing strategy?   

Implementing a content marketing strategy can be challenging. Here are a few steps involved in building an effective strategy:

• Specify the key challenges that your content strategy will solve and their relationship with business metrics 
• Include targeted buyer personas and understand the content gaps
• Determine your plan for publishing and maintaining the quality of your content

Considering the above-mentioned steps, you can create an effective content marketing strategy to enhance your business reach.  

The Evolution of Web Application Development

The web development world is constantly evolving. From basic, single page websites, it has grown to complex, responsive, and interactive websites and web applications. As the look and feel of web applications have changed over the years, entrepreneurs are making the best use of web applications to get a better online visibility and target their customers and prospects.

Apart from advanced features, ability to customize their own web application and complete transparency of the development process is what businesses are demanding. Earlier, people enjoying a few pages with basic fonts and simple graphical features, now want graphically rich websites that are well categorized and easily navigable across various devices. 

 

Image Credit: qwaygroups.com

Let’s look at what major factors are driving the change in the current web applications:

1. Security Takes Centre Stage: Earlier, security issues were usually neglected, as emphasis was laid more on the productivity of the web application. However, now new web applications are designed with inbuilt security features. Also, with custom web app development, companies are able to get security features added as per their requirements during the development phase.

2. A Variety in Tech Devices: As web applications in the past were built for personal computers, developers never had to face any real challenge with designing the interface. But, nowadays, with the availability of multiple tech devices such as tablets, smartphones, etc. developing a website application has become a little complicated. This is compelling web design professionals to transform their development approach.

3. Demand for Single Page App Usage: Earlier, a website consisted of multiple pages linked together that lead to slow page loading and frustrated users navigating on mobile devices. However, nowadays, web application development methods have been completely transformed, as web apps are now developed on a single page with infinite scroll. Developers are following this approach with an aim to provide fluid experience to users.

The pace at which the number of smart devices and features these devices have are increasing, web application development methods are expected to evolve even more rapidly. 

3 Mistakes to Avoid When Deploying BI Tools

Business Intelligence is gaining tremendous popularity among organizations. It simply describes a set of methodologies that businesses use in order to convert raw data into useful information for better decision making. However, with a rise in the number of BI solutions, the probability of companies choosing wrong BI software for their business problems has also grown. So, in order to make the most of their BI investment, companies should avoid making mistakes while investing in BI software.

Here are a few mistakes to avoid when deploying BI tools:

1. Having a Lack of Business Knowledge: Projects that completely rely on a single BI tool are doomed to fail. No single tool is bound to solve all business problems. So, when selecting a BI tool, companies should first understand

• Business problems that they are trying to solve
• Goals they are trying to attain
• BI tool they should use

2. Failing to Bring Everyone On Board: BI tools tend to fail most of the time because employees are completely clueless on how to use these tools. So, before buying any business intelligence tool, organizations should take each employee on board and

• Address their concerns and queries about the BI tool
• Show them how it will benefit the company and employees

3. Providing Insufficient Training: BI software is a complex structure that has lots of functionality in it. However, many businesses exhaust their entire BI budgets on either a few weeks’ training or software licenses. They fail to understand that it requires a lot of training to understand, how the software works. To avoid such mistakes, businesses should look for new ideas such as

• Providing expert training in a slow and systematic way
• Looking for someone technically trained who can explain software’s usage clearly
• Scheduling training sessions in small units for better understanding

A reliable business intelligence consultant can help businesses avoid these mistakes, set up new BI software, ameliorate existing systems, and make strategic decisions.

How Can Responsive Website Design Be a Big Win for Business Websites?

Responsive web design continues to surge in popularity, as the usage of the internet on mobile devices is steadily increasing. So, nowadays, to have a mobile-ready website is not an option, but a necessity. A responsive website not only helps businesses to reach a large audience but also provides its users with improved visibility on search engines, greater ROI, better user experience and much more. Hence, organizations need to ensure that they have a responsive website that can be easily accessed from all major mobile platforms, be it a smartphone, a tablet, or a smartwatch.

Let’s see why it is important for business websites to have a responsive design:

1. Search Engine Ranking: A mobile-friendly website design can have a significant impact on the website’s search engine ranking. A responsive design contains one URL and the same HTML that allows search engines like Google to crawl, index and organize website content. On the other hand, having a separate mobile site can only prolong Google’s process.

2. Audience Engagement: Responsive design allows businesses to reach potential audiences via mobile devices by providing fast navigation, easy-to-read features and dynamically altering its format depending on the device used to access it.

3. Traffic Conversion: With responsive design, users can access the website faster and easily on mobile devices. To do that, Google’s Page Speed developers suggest that website content load limit should not exceed 1 second and the entire page should load within 2 seconds. While a desktop version website takes more time to load, responsive design allows users to access website content in a short time by providing fast navigation with minimum scrolling and resizing that leads to more traffic flow.

4. Google Recommendation: Google recommends all website owners who aren’t taking advantage of responsive design to use it for their websites, as it is soon going to demote websites that are not mobile-friendly. Having a mobile readily design can help businesses sell more of their products and/or services, get better SEO results, and enhance user experience.

5. Time & Cost: A mobile-friendly website is always faster, keeps development cost down, and saves money & time, as compared to a stand-alone website created for mobile viewing that consumes a lot of time and money.

Nowadays, to run a successful business, it is essential to show your competitive presence. So, having a mobile-friendly website is all that businesses can do to stay ahead of their competitors and improve their website performance. 

The Ultimate Cheat-Sheet On Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing, since its emergence has proven to be the most effective marketing method. Marketers no longer rely on the traditional aka outbound marketing, instead, use new marketing technique to attract new customers, influence future purchases, increase brand awareness and much more.

Image Credits:towriteastory.com

Before you leap into the concept of inbound marketing, first consider asking a few questions to yourself:

• Which business are you running, B2B or B2C?
• Which industry are you working in?
• Whom are you targeting?

Why does your business need it?

Inbound marketing has a number of benefits as it:

• Leverages permission-based marketing approach to engage and attract customers through social media, SEO, blogs, etc.
• Provides useful information in the form of blogs, social posts, landing pages, etc.
• Uses captivating content to solve potential customers’ problems. 

Want inbound marketing to work wonders for your business?

Here are a few things you need to ensure to make permission-based marketing work wonders for your business:

1. Developing Content Tactics: Provide useful information to your audience in the form of blogs, social media posts, landing pages, etc. Before that, chalk out comprehensive personas your ideal customers, gather information on their requirements and interests, and then create content that can drive the right traffic to your website.
2. Build a Social Media Following: After creating informative content, it is very important to share it in an interesting way. Creating a quality social media following is the best way to spread your content and engage your audience.
3. Capture Prospects: Once you start getting consistent views from your audience, it becomes easy to generate leads and fuel sales through resources and form submissions. At this stage, you can use gated content to capture more information about your leads.
4. Nurture Leads into Customers: It’s not always necessary that every prospect may become your customer after viewing your informative content. Email marketing is the best way to continue educating your prospects and encourage them to buy your product in the future.

Inbound marketing, if done well, is definitely a great way to reach your target audience and generate qualified leads. Hiring an inbound marketing consultant can help you develop an effective inbound marketing strategy and achieve your business goals.

Top 5 Tools to Fulfil Your Inbound Marketing Needs in 2016

Inbound marketing continues to flow into popularity. There are a lot of moving parts in it such as writing blogs, sending emails, building landing pages & websites, etc. and to keep them aligned is an altogether big challenge. Platforms such as Hubspot can help marketers manage a variety of such pieces. Alternatively, they can look for several inbound marketing tools that can help them run their inbound marketing efforts smoothly.
 

Image Credits:blog.marketingv2.com

Have a look at the top 5 inbound marketing tools that are essential to every marketer:

1. Mailchimp: For marketers just starting out with an inbound marketing strategy, Mailchimp makes the perfect platform. It enables them to send emails to up to two thousand subscribers free of cost. Moreover, they can create and schedule automated emails, recommend products to customers, and nurture leads.

2. WordPress: One of the top marketing tools, WordPress is a software known for creating beautiful and appealing websites. The websites such as TechCrunch, BBC America, etc. run on this content management system. Without having prior knowledge of blogging, one can set up a free website and share content in no time. The automatic filter feature allows to format and style the text in content.

3. Hootsuite: Hootsuite, the leading social media dashboard, connects with more than 35 social media platforms. One can share social media content easily, manage and schedule posts from different social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. 

4. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is one of the largest website analytics platforms in the world. Leveraging this tool, marketers can track sales activity & performance, create custom dashboards, measure advertising ROI, etc. to maximize their marketing campaigns.

5. Leadin: Known to be Hubspot’s free contact management tool, Leadin improves marketing and helps convert more leads. A free and simple app allows users to analyze marketing efforts, capture leads on their website, etc. One can automatically track publically available information about each contact.

A reliable inbound marketing consultant can help marketers take advantage of these tools to perform a better inbound marketing plan and get their job done easily.

Top 5 SEO Principles That Will Help You Drive On-Page SEO Success!

Gone are the days when search engine optimization was as simple as checking things off a list. Nowadays, a lot of new things have come into existence. For example, mobile search has surpassed desktop search, call-only ads, the rise of voice search, and social media SEO change are transforming the shape of the future SEO services. So in 2016, businesses need to think differently and follow a different approach to drive On-Page search engine optimization success.

We have compiled a few on-page SEO principles for moving your on-page SEO success forward:

1. Satisfy your searcher’s goal: Whenever a searcher browses the internet, there is always an intent behind the search that may be purchasing or gaining information. Also, their initial intent of purchasing may differ from the final intent. For example, a searcher wants to purchase a watch but you can’t guess their intent is of purchasing a men’s watch, a women’s watch, or a kids’ watch. So, in that case, you need to try and serve both the intents of a searcher.

2. Engage users and build trust among them: UI/UX and branding play an important role in giving users a profound experience. This not only improves your brand recognition but leaves a great impact on ranking. So, it is advisable to use UI/UX and branding in order to engage users and build trust among them.

3. Avoid using distractive elements: A few distractive elements such as pop-ups are many times annoying to users and force them to move to your competitor’s site. So it is always advisable to unplug dissuading elements so that users can have a friendly experience when they visit your website.

4. Keep keyword targeting on top of the list: When doing Search Engine Optimization, keyword targeting is always considered on the top. Understand user intent and balance keyword targeting with other aspects such as title element, page content, URL, image file names, etc. to drive relevant traffic to your website.

5. Work on website page snippets: Website page snippets are helpful in driving more clicks and improve ranking. So you can work on your website page by including a unique meta description, title, URL format, etc. that can help you fetch more clicks.