5 Questions Credit Unions Should Ask to Improve their Marketing

Clarity is the key to efficient, productive marketing. Unfocused efforts keep your team busy, but they're not going to get you the new membership or product enrollment numbers your credit union is looking for.

Your team works hard. Ask yourself these five questions to ensure they're also working smart and targeting their efforts on activities that can get more from your most fertile opportunities with both your prospects and current member communities.

1) What's My Definition of a Lead?

Many people visit your website for a lot of reasons. Some of them may even be interested in your services and products. That still doesn't mean they're a good lead for your credit union. Maybe they don't live within your target area or don't meet a minimum income amount.

A "good" lead is someone who meets your persona criteria, and who's also shown readiness to move into the decision phase. In other words, they're getting ready to put their money down somewhere. Once ready, it's time to pass the lead on to business development. 

But your business dev team doesn't have the resources to invest its efforts on prospects who aren't yet leads. For the sake of interdepartmental harmony, team up and define what behaviors and criteria tell you both when someone is ready and able to be a good fit for your credit union.

2) Where are the Conversion Points on my Website that Gather Information? 

Conversion points on your website are opportunities for you to gather intel so you can market to prospects and leads more effectively. 

Visitors are in all different stages of their buyer journey Some want to learn more, but aren't yet ready to join. (And every visitor may not be your target persona.) You can't just give them one option such as the "Join Now" button. That's because not all of them are ready to sign up for your services. 

Have some premium content offers — such as a selection guide on how to clarify what credit card perks will give them the best return based on their habits and financial needs. The forms used for premium offers can ask for a more "personal" information — e.g. how many years away from retirement they are, or how many credit cards they currently hold. We call this progressive profiling and it will let you collect an on-going stream of valuable intel without scaring away your prospects.

You can also collect phone numbers with a "request a call" form for prospects ready to become leads. 

If you don't have multiple conversion points where visitors with different needs and in different stages can provide you with information, you're not learning nearly enough about your prospects.

3) Do I Have an Email Program for Prospects that Offers More than Just Financial Services?

If all you're doing with your email marketing is selling, you're ignoring what makes inbound marketing so effective. Educate. Entertain. Use your content to create a relationship and position your credit union as a trusted authority.

When you build that foundation, the selling part comes much easier. Send emails sharing blog posts or reports that answer important financial questions. Send emails that update people on relevant, important news that impacts them. First instance, perhaps there's been recent data breach at another financial institution in the news. You could use that as an opportunity to send contacts and leads in your database an email with five tips on protecting their identity and reassure them of the tight security practices in your own organization.

A good baseline ratio is 4:1. For every five emails you send, only one should be about selling.

4) Do I Have a Retention Plan that Offers More than Just Product/service Updates?

An inbound marketer's work isn't done once someone becomes a member. Your credit union has lifetime value goals for its members. After all, you want to keep churn rates as low as you can. Getting new members is more expensive than growing the value of a current member. 

This is the "Delight phase" of  the inbound methodology. Just as you want to educate and entertain your prospects and leads far more often than you sell to them, take the same approach with your current members.

Continue to educate current members about relevant financial concerns, independent of promoting any product or service. You can blur the lines a bit here by sending content that helps them better use the product or service they already have with you. You're not upselling here. You're educating active and dormant members to make sure they're getting the most from what they already have.

You can also offer members other opportunities to benefit from their membership that don't involve buying a new product or service. Do you have member events? Send a survey asking for their feedback on the credit union or about their current concerns and priorities in their financial planning. Run a promotion to get them to share their story of how they're using their membership and get some great user-generated content.

5) Do I have a System to Measure Prospect Generation and Prospect to Lead Rates?

The beauty of digital marketing is all the actionable data you can use to refine your efforts and improve your marketing ROI. The basic metrics you need to know for each campaign are how many prospects were generated and what percentage of these prospects became leads and how many of those because members. If you can't quantify where you're generating quality leads and how many you're generating, you can't set targets to direct your efforts productively. 

To know where your prospects and leads are coming from, you need a back-end attribution system. If you run a Facebook and Instagram campaign promoting your premium offer, your system should be able to tell you who downloaded the report after being directed from Facebook and who downloaded it via organic traffic to your website. That's valuable intel on how (or whether) to use Facebook and/or Instagram. This is the prospect part.

You still want to know how many of the prospects who downloaded this report continued to take action that reflected growing interest and demographics that qualified them as a lead.  When you have a back-end system that tracks this information, you might find out that your Facebook and Instagram ads produced comparable numbers of prospects, but the Facebook prospects converted to leads at a much higher rate.

You need this kind of intel so your team isn't relegated to operating under the outdated cliché of not knowing which half of your marketing works and which half doesn't. 

Start with these five questions to make sure your team operates under a better cliché: working smarter, not harder. Keep their energies focused on the activities that provide bottom line return. And watch the results roll in!

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2fFEVqV

The Top 10 Conversion Lessons One Agency Learned After Critiquing 100+ Websites

When it comes to website design, creating a page that is visually appealing, aligned with your brand, and optimized for lead generation is no easy task. After all, there are a lot of mistakes you can make in the process.

That's why -- for almost two years now -- my team here at IMPACT Branding & Design has been hosting a monthly live website critique called Website Throwdown. Our goal is to help people recognize and correct some of those mistakes, while educating other viewers in the process.

The best part? We critics happen to learn a thing or two about marketing, UX design, and conversion rate optimization (CRO) in the process, too. It's a win-win. So in the spirit of education for all, I've recapped the top 10 CRO lessons IMPACT has learned after critiquing over 100+ websites below.

P.S. - Want your website critiqued in person at INBOUND 2016? We're hosting a live throwdown in Club INBOUND with the help of special guest like HubSpot’s Luke Summerfield and The Sales Lion’s Marcus Sheridan and George B. Register for INBOUND and then reserve your throwdown slot here.

The Top 10 CRO Lessons One Agency Learned After Critiquing 100+ Websites

Lesson #1: Too many brands are hiding social proof.

So you’ve worked with some highly respected brands and they couldn’t love you more -- why aren’t you screaming about it from the rooftops?

After critiquing over 100 websites, we found that a surprising majority of brands hide their social proof far down on their homepage or worse -- isolate it to a never-seen page in their navigation.

Bring industry proof to the forefront. That helps build trust and credibility instantly. #WebsiteThrowdown

— IMPACT (@Impactbnd) September 29, 2015

Nothing speaks more highly of your work than word-of-mouth and by hiding this powerful information where visitors are unlikely to look, you can risk it going completely unnoticed.

To get the most out of social proof, incorporate elements of it into your homepage design where your visitor’s attention is at its highest. (A heatmap from Hotjar can help you determine where this is exactly.) Doing this will help you make a strong impression and immediately establish credibility in the eye of the reader.

Take a look at Contently, for example. On its homepage, the content company shows off who has used its platform before even asking you to watch a demo or learn more. Leading with this social proof builds trust and makes the visitor think, “if it worked for them, it’ll work for me.”

Elements of social proof you can consider incorporating into your homepage include:

• Partner/Client logos
• Testimonials
• Awards
• Certifications
• Reviews
• Affiliations
• Social Followings

Lesson #2: Real photography is underappreciated.

"Stock photos of people should never be used to represent your customers or your employees. Lose them,” commented David Meerman Scott during one of our live critiques. (He'll be critiquing websites with us live at INBOUND, too.)

Now, you're probably saying, "but, but sometimes I need to use stock photos." And I get that -- especially when you don't have the budget for a photographer, or you're in a time crunch. But with so many organizations using generic stock photos prominently on their websites, investing in real photography or custom graphics is an easy way for your company to establish credibility and stand out.

Using authentic, real photos of your team or office can help frame your business in a more genuine, relatable light. This can make visitors feel like they actually know you, and in turn, make them more comfortable doing business with you. 

HubSpot does a great job with this, capitalizing on their real employees, rather than stock models on every page of their site.

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Moral of the story? If you have to use stock photos, choose them wisely -- avoid results on the first page, look for unique shots, and steer clear of anything overly cheesy. (If you need help, here's a list of quality stock photo sites to get you started.)

Lesson #3: Bring differentiation to the forefront.

If people can’t identify your company’s unique value within a few seconds of being on your homepage, chances are you’ve already lost their business.

Attention spans today are low. When visitors first arrive on your site, you need to tell them exactly what makes you different and why they should stick around to learn more.

One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is with a well-thought out and prominently placed value proposition that explains:

• What you do
• Who you do it for
• How you do it differently from your competition

In this article, I discussed how Slack nailed its value prop on its homepage. Just look at this breakdown:

• What does it do? It's a messaging app.
• Who is it for? Teams.
• How does it do it differently from the competition? It makes working lives "simpler, more pleasant, and more productive." (Plus, the team behind the Mars Curiosity Rover uses it ... and that's just awesome.)

Lesson #4: Imagery and messaging need to align.

Your imagery and text should send the same message to -- and elicit the same emotions from -- your visitors. For example, if your value proposition positions your company as the ideal solution for metropolitan corporations, don’t use photos of small business owners or a local business plaza.

Always connect your value proposition with your hero image. The message should be consistent. #WebsiteThrowdown #design #marketing

— IMPACT (@Impactbnd) December 15, 2015

Using misaligned imagery like this can be confusing and send your visitors mixed messages -- and nothing manages to cause conversion friction quite like confusion.

Tortuga Backpacks does a commendable job with this, showing a customer wearing its product in a colorful market. The image evokes thoughts of travel, while the copy addresses a common travel pain point: checking a bag.

Lesson #5: Conversion paths must be clear and direct.

As obvious as it sounds, another lesson we learned on Website Throwdown is that one of the best ways to increase conversions is by making your path to conversion as clear and direct as possible.

Visitors can make the decision to convert or purchase at any time, and when they do, brands like yours need to make sure that the ability to do so is easily accessible.

One company that’s truly mastered this is Dropbox. With a “Try Dropbox Business” call-to-action in its sticky hello bar, the cloud storage company ensures that no matter how far you scroll down the homepage, you have a conversion point within reach when you need it.

Lesson #6: Avoid carousels and sliders.

If you're considering a slide or website carousel, click here.

No but seriously, whether it’s HubSpot’s Austin Knight, CMO Kipp Bodnar, or Copyhackers Joanna Wiebe, the sentiments have been the same on Website Throwdown: carousels aka “sliders” have got to go.

Not only do these once-popular homepage features hide messages and take control away from the user, but they can also overwhelm the user, bombarding them with too many options at one time. 

When it comes to your website, each page should have one main message and one main goal for the visitor. And pulling them in different directions with multiple propositions and CTAs in a carousel will only lead to analysis paralysis -- and ultimately even fewer conversions.

Lesson #7: Video is a huge advantage.

In Crayon's 2015 State of Video report, the company found that video appears in 70% of the top 100 search results, while websites that incorporate it tend to see two more minutes of on-screen time than those that don’t.

Simply put, this means that video is powerful.

It grabs your visitor’s attention in a way that text alone cannot and adds more dimension to your brand. Video allows you to put a face and voice to your brand, making it more human. It also allows you to communicate more information about your product, brand, or culture in a shorter amount of time.

The quicker you engage and explain your value to website visitors, the more likely they are to stick around and take action. 

Need inspiration? Check out this roundup of fabulous explainer videos.

Lesson #8: Don’t force visitors to think.

Like I mentioned in lesson #6, giving your visitors too much information can lead to inaction -- that’s because you’re forcing them to think.

As Hotjar's Tara Robertson said on last month’s Website Throwdown, “the last thing you want someone to do when they land on your homepage is think.” People don’t like to think unnecessarily and quite frankly, it can only lead to over-thinking.

As a brand, you don’t want to burden people with the task of interpreting multiple messages or options to determine their next step. Rather, you want to focus on one action that you want taken and tell them exactly how to do it with clear copy and calls-to-action.

Streamlining your messaging and telling visitors what they should be doing next reduces confusion and friction, making it more likely that people will convert. 

Lesson #9: Clear goes further than clever.

Now, I love cheeky copy as much as the next girl, but when it comes to conversion rate optimization, clarity takes precedence.

"When it comes to your navigation, focus less on clever phrases and be clear." - @taraerobertson #WebsiteThrowdown #UX #CRO

— IMPACT (@Impactbnd) October 12, 2016

Whether it’s in your headlines, navigation, or button text, always strive to be clear and concise with your copy to avoid misunderstandings and lost opportunities.

Any language you use on your website must resonate with and speak directly to your buyer persona in order to be effective and drive action. For instance, while labeling your product page “our masterpieces” may seem fun and quirky, if this is not a phrase that will be immediately understood by your persona and drive them to clickthrough, it shouldn’t be used.

Need help saying more with less? Try these six creative exercises for writing more concisely.

Lesson #10: Be human.

At the end of the day, even in a cold, cyber world, people want to interact with other human beings. They want to do business with those they can relate to -- individuals who understand their pain points and concerns and will advocate for them.

In this effort, use your website to humanize your brand.

I can’t tell you how many companies we’ve encountered that talk about team members and collaboration on their websites, but never show a single face or name. This doesn’t do much for their credibility.

To avoid coming off cold, share real photos of your team members and show some personality. Include bios of your key team members, or even shoot a short video introducing them to your website visitors. Showing an authentic, personable side to your company can make visitors feel more comfortable doing business with you and yes, you guessed it, converting.

Is your website falling victim to any of the issues I pointed out above? Don't forget to come meet the rest of the IMPACT crew at INBOUND 2016 for a live website critique. See you there!

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/conversion-lessons-critiquing-100-websites

Why Organizational Design is the Key to Authentic Client Branding

Ding, Ding, Ding. The bell rings and the fighters come out of their corners.

Out the blue corner, with a market cap of $100 billion, steps forward the Fortune 50. Fortune’s been around for a decade, and while they aren’t the fastest puncher, they’ve weathered many a tough round and have learned how to last.

Out of the red corner charges the lighter, faster startup. Startup’s new, but they attack forward, confident that their approach will throw Fortune completely out of rhythm. And it just might. That or the disruptor’s meaningless blows will bounce right off Fortune, and the behemoth will pivot slightly and with one punch leave the startup laying on the mat.

While it obviously isn’t that simple, this is commonly how agencies seem to frame the battle between disruptors and incumbents. Whoever’s corner you are in, you completely change your approach.

And there is admittedly a good reason for this, particularly when it comes to branding projects. Startups speed through product and innovation cycles, hell bent on failing early and often so they can get a product in front of users. Maybe, just maybe, they create a minimum viable brand. But what constitutes viable? How often does a MVB truly represent the essence of a brand, what it believes in, and what distinguishes it from the competitors?

For Fortune 50s, their leaders know digital disruptors are the cool kids on the block, but in many cases their product innovation remains bogged down, forcing them to acquire the startups that succeed (See Unilever and Walmart). Internal brand change happens at the same lagging pace -- organizational politics and clashing stakeholders keep brand development from moving fast enough to keep up with today’s evolving digital-first consumer.

But I want to posit that there lies a middle ground that agency partners must focus on instead of the nature of their competition.

Startups must learn to be more thorough in their branding, but large, mature organizations must learn to be agile (with a lowercase a). We must combine the best of both ways of working and redefine what it means to be a minimum viable brand if we want to meet the expectations of consumers that now care less about logos, and more about what a brand represents.

We must consider an approach that forces the disruptor to discover what they stand for, and that gives the incumbent a rally cry to unify stakeholders and accelerate their brand development.

We must design organizations of all sizes from the inside out to brand in the "post-digital age."

Agencies Can't Overlook Organizational Design

When you experience a brand, you see it, touch it, hear it, and ultimately feel it -- all the stories, touchpoints, and communications add up to one comprehensive experience. Fundamentally, branding is about differentiating yourself from the competition with this singular experience.

If a product is intended to make consumers feel like they go faster, how does everything in the copy communicate speed? What are the top 50 adjectives that people are currently using to communicate the word "faster"? How do people interact with their digital platforms when they are trying to accomplish tasks quickly?

It is more important than ever that this articulated point of view dictate every action that an organization takes, internally and externally. A brand is really just a collection of values. Consumers purchase, interact, and evangelize brands whose values intersect with their own. They are proud to wear a shirt with their favorite brand displayed across the front because they want others to know who they are and what they believe in.

Insights and market factors certainly shape how a brand strategy comes to life, but organizational design must be the foundation from which a brand is built. If the values of an organization don't square with the values of their market-facing messages, consumers will tune out. Your client will be labeled "inauthentic" and your agency’s marketing efforts will feel fraudulent.

To design the future of your client’s business, start with their organization. What does it stand for? It's not just their product. It's not just their service. It's not just their experience. It's everything.

In his book, Primal Branding, Patrick Hanlon, CEO and Founder of Thinktopia, explored what separates popular brands from the rest and discovered what he calls the "primal code” -- seven assets that construct the belief systems behind the world’s most beloved brands.

The first part of the code is the creation story, which I believe to be integral for articulating the true purpose behind any organization. Every brand or business started because the founder or founders wanted to bring a vision to life. Codify this vision and let it define how you articulate your client’s brand.

Align Internal Culture with External Branding

The customer service at Disney Parks is legendary. The experience that "cast members" provide sends children and adults (bigger children) back year after year. A big reason for this is that every single Disney employee starts their on-the-job training with a study of Walt Disney’s original vision to create the “happiest place on earth.” Job responsibilities and day-to-day minutiae take a backseat to the creation story that will inform an employee’s every on-the-job action.

LEGO lost $300 Million in 2003, the year before Jorgen Vig Knudstorp took over as CEO. Ancillary businesses had taken the toy company far from its brick roots but the company’s fortunes quickly turned when Knutstorp embraced its simple founding vision: to create building educational toys.

He often quotes a T.S. Eliot poem throughout the company, "We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." In the decade since, Lego has posted sales growth each year, including a double-digit growth in 2015.

By aligning your client’s people, processes, and platforms with its original purpose, you are able to give their employees and partners commander’s intent -- a military term that describes what the commander sees as the end state of a successful mission. By showing what success looks like, subordinates can improvise under duress, as long as the end result is in line with the commander’s intent.

Meaning, a Disney employee or vendor can ask themselves, "Am I making someone happy?" A LEGO product or experience designer is empowered to ensure their work is true to the brand’s brick beginnings.

One might say, "well that would never scale. I could never do that at Walmart." But you know what? Consumers prove time and time again that they are willing to spend more on a product for a better experience.

Better brand experiences start with better organizations. Organizations with internal cultures and external market-facing brands aligned to their creation story. Organizations that understand the singular reason they exist, and how that purpose can drive every single interaction that consumers have with a company, whether they are using a product or service, interacting with digital content, or messaging customer service.

Whether your client is a startup, or a Fortune 50, their organization must be designed from the inside out if it wants to stand a chance in the ring. Consumers don’t care whether a brand is the incumbent or a disruptor, they care about whether a brand provides a cohesive experience that aligns with the values they expect.

How Design From the Inside-Out for Your Clients

Great brands are built on great stories, so start by uncovering a compelling, sticky creation story. Finding a compelling brand story to extend throughout your client's organizational design doesn't have to be a start-from-scratch process. Interview your client early on in the relationship about their origin story, their values, and what they like about their current branding. 

As Simon Sinek says, "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." Our minds think in stories and narratives, and so should your branding. Sculpting a sticky brand story begins with uncovering why your client does what they do, and how their unique why sets them apart from their competition.

Next, define the outcomes that drive success for your client. Not just for marketing engagement, but for their company as a whole. Anything your agency delivers must help the client reach that broader outcome. Design artifacts that articulate this vision so your client can share it with every employee, partner, or vendor. They'll thank you when quality of work improves across the board. The last thing you want is your client getting buyer’s remorse.

Once your agency finds the through-line that starts with the why and extends to the customer, you'll be able to design a brand story that defines your client's internal organization and public-facing branding.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2eNmFhC

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7 Tried-and-True Strategies SaaS Businesses Are Using to Grow

Back in 2011, Marc Andreessen announced in a seminal WSJ essay that "software is eating the world." Five years later, his thesis was right -- software as a service (SaaS) companies have and will continue to takeover or disrupt large parts of the economy.

This change has been fueled by technology: It's now easier and cheaper than ever before to develop software, and with 3.5 billion people having access to the internet, the potential customer base for SaaS companies is vast. This perfect storm of rapidly lowering barriers to entry, plus access to more customers, has seen software take precedence over hardware.

While technological advances have spurred software development, it’s the subscription model favoured by many SaaS businesses, which has transformed it into a thriving industry. SaaS companies typically charge a subscription for their product, which is delivered and stored within the cloud. The subscription business model means companies reach profitability over time and must continually provide value, otherwise their clients will become at risk of churning.

Clients often prefer being able to make smaller, monthly payments, while investors like businesses that generate predictable recurring revenue, which makes it easier to forecast and understand the business’ health.

And when it comes to business health, growth is critical to success. That's why we've put together a roundup of strategies SaaS businesses can use to ramp up their lead generation efforts. Need inspiration for your own strategy? Check out the ideas below.  

7 Strategies SaaS Businesses Are Using to Grow

1) Content Marketing

Businesses around the globe are leveraging content marketing to build their brand, attract visitors to their website and generate leads. A key advantage of content marketing is that it has a compounding return, meaning that just like a smart investment, it increases in value over time.

Importantly, content continues to drive leads, whereas other forms of marketing, like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will only do so for as long as you continue spending. It’s for this reason we think of content as an asset that businesses own, whereas online advertising is rented. This distinction is important for SaaS marketers to consider.

Looking for content marketing inspiration? Here are three SaaS businesses that use content to generate leads:

Dropbox

The file sharing and storage service has many types of potential customers and attracts them with targeted content at the Dropbox, Dropbox Business, Dropbox Tech, and Dropbox Developer blogs. They also host a number of webinars to communicate their credentials to prospective clients

Intercom

Intercom’s content marketing strategy focuses on product management, design, startups, and marketing. The customer communication platform is fast becoming known for the quality of the Inside Intercom blog, podcast, and books, all of which help build their brand and drive qualified leads.

Moz

Moz has developed a reputation for its thought leadership content. They publish a blog post each day, as well as create authoritative guides, and of course, release their Whiteboard Friday videos, all of which generate leads.

While content should be a key part of your strategy it’s important not to overlook content distribution. In short, it’s no use investing in content creation if you neglect distribution. Want to learn more? Check out this post by HubSpot's VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, on why you should spend 50% of your time on distribution.

2) Product Trials

The product trial is fast becoming an important source of lead generation for the SaaS industry. Nothing beats “test driving” a product and your business should consider making a trial available via your website if you don’t already.

Trials are a particularly effective lead generation tool if you’re selling to a tech-savvy audience that want to experience the product, rather than speak with a sales rep. Product trials are typically self-serve, so you can continue to generate leads with little ongoing marketing investment.

However, it’s important to mention a few guardrails. You need to ensure people have a positive experience when trialing your product, so you should consider providing some onboarding or support, depending on the complexity of your product and your unit economics. This could be either through one-to-one calls, group webinars, automated emails, or a combination of all three.

The value of product trials is that they are a strong indicator of buyer intent. A prospect is investing their time getting to get to know your product. At HubSpot, we know that people running a trial have a higher propensity to buy -- we call these folks product qualified leads (PQLs) and we track them very carefully.

The key is to strike a balance between demonstrating value without overwhelming the prospect and doing it in a light-touch and cost effective way. This requires some trial (pun intended) and error, but with ongoing optimisation, product trials can become a stream of highly qualified leads.

3) Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO works hand in glove with content marketing by making your content discoverable on search engines like Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. You should think of SEO in two separate, yet complementary categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. 

On-Page SEO

The good news about on-page SEO is that it’s entirely within your control. You need to create content that people want to read, link to, and share, but there’s also other factors to consider. These include keyword strategy, internal linking, use of titles and descriptions, as well as page load time and UI. For a detailed look at what makes a well optimised website, check out this on-page SEO guide.

Off-Page SEO

People frequently think off-page SEO refers solely to link building, but there’s more to it than that. While links are important, it’s the quality of those links that matters. High quality links from trusted and authoritative sites trumps quantity every time. Social media is also important, as shares and links from influential social accounts are another quality indicator.

The best way to gain links and shares is by creating a distribution strategy. HubSpot’s Global Head of SEO & Growth, Matthew Barby, recently gave a talk at SearchLeeds called 'There's more to life than "great content" which explores this in more detail.

4) Referral Marketing

There’s a growing body of research that shows referrals are one of the most effective types of leads. Although referrals are typically low cost and close relatively quickly, there’s a referrals mismatch among sales and marketing, with 56% of sales reps calling referrals “very important’, yet only one-third of businesses having a program in place.

There’s a lot of debate on whether or not companies should incentivise referrals. One school of thought is that you won’t generate many referrals without an incentive, while the opposing view is that if you incent too heavily, you may get low value quality referrals. The best advice is to test which works for your SaaS business and then optimise for that.

Before focusing on optimisation, the most important part is launching your referral program. There’s software available which can power your referral program from start to finish, but at minimum we suggest you create a landing page on your website where people can make referrals. To ensure you get quality referrals explain what makes a good referral. This could the person’s job title, industry, or size of the company they would for. You should also clearly say if, how, and when people will get incentivised.

Marketing teams can make it easy for sales, customer success, and support teams to ask for referrals by drafting templates they can use. The most important part here is making it easy for sales reps to make the ask, and empowering them to do so.

5) Google AdWords

While inbound marketing can greatly reduce your AdWords spend, millions of people still click on search engine ads each day. If you don’t want to miss out on a portion of potential leads you should still continue to invest in PPC, especially with ads becoming more prominent in Google search results.

PPC remains popular for several reasons. It delivers targeted traffic to your website and is highly scalable, meaning you can increase or reduce spend based on the needs of the business on any given day. It also has a lot of inherent predictability -- both in terms of cost and results -- which appeals to CFOs or those that have traditionally controlled marketing budget. 

The best advice is to run a series of tests and see what activity generates the best ROI for your business. There’s a great variation in competition between industries, but the fact remains you can generate significant levels of traffic and leads from PPC if you’re willing to pay for it. HubSpot has launched the Ads Add-On so our customers can run inbound and paid campaigns from within the software.

6) Co-marketing

Many SaaS businesses decide to collaborate by running a co-marketing campaign with other companies that either complement their product offering, or share a similar point of view or approach to business.

There’s no hard and fast rules about co-marketing, but typically the companies involved create a piece of content, such as an ebook, host a webinar, or publish some research. The leads generated and the costs incurred are also shared by the companies participating.

Both companies have the opportunity to leverage each other’s following, and potentially reach a different audience. If both teams are aligned, co-marketing can be very effective. However, it’s important to ensure both teams are in agreement and understand expectations from the start.

By joining forces with other prominent companies you can create a highly desirable piece of content and generate leads. Co-marketing, when executed effectively is a cost effective approach to generate leads, increase the reach of your brand, and demonstrate thought leadership. HubSpot frequently partners with other companies in co-marketing campaigns, such as this example of HubSpot and LinkedIn:

7) Retargeting

Regardless of whether your key conversion metric is an ebook download, online purchase, or free trial, the fact remains that most website visitors never take the action you want them to. Using retargeting (also known as remarketing) you can dramatically increase conversions by re-engaging people that left your website.

Retargeting tracks your website visitors and then displays online adverts as they visit other sites around the web. Many ecommerce sites lead the way with retargeting by offering contextual offers to lure back website visitors. Just think of the time you were looking at an item of clothing online, left the website, and then saw adverts (often with a discount) promoting that pair of jeans on your favourite websites or social media. That’s retargeting in action.

Regardless of industry you can (and should) utilise retargeting to turn hard earned website visitors into customers. And most retargeting software now enables marketers to target people beyond website visits. For example, you can launch a campaign based on events -- such as opening an email or attending a webinar -- while some tools let marketers target people with similar characteristics that haven’t visited your website yet.

Retargeting is a valuable tool for marketers as it gives your brand another chance to establish trust, credibility, and familiarity with website visitors. (HubSpot customers: You can leverage retargeting within the HubSpot Marketing Platform by using the AdRoll integration.)

These are tried and tested strategies to help SaaS businesses grow, but as always, we recommend you test, analyse, and optimise them to see what drives the best results for your business.

What lead generation strategies does your SaaS business use? Share your best strategies below.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2eNsdbR

'YouTube Spaces' launches first-ever creator studio pop-up in Australia

How to Use Twitter Polls to Engage Your Audience: 13 Examples From Real Brands

It’s been a year since Twitter polls became an option for users to engage, entertain, and survey their social media audience. And just recently we’ve found ourselves asking, “Are there any brands out there that are really using Twitter Polls well?”

In the not-so ancient past, Twitter users used to tweet out makeshift polls and use likes, retweets, or replies to get their “results.” It was a way of engaging with followers over timely events, random questions, and product promotions.

Yet, without real-time voting options and results, these makeshift polls weren’t all that valuable. In fact, they were just like any other tweet meant to drive engagement.

Thanks to the introduction of Twitter polls, all that's changed. We'll walk you through how to set up a poll below, and provide some inspiring examples to help you plan one of your own.

How to Create a Twitter Poll

1) Click the 'Compose a Tweet' button in the top right-hand corner of your homepage.

2) Click the “Add Poll” option in the dialogue box that pops up and write copy for your polling question.

Include relevant hashtags, @mentions, and links. Polls are just like any other tweet, just with the added polling feature. Keep it short, clear, and engaging.

3) Add at least two choices (up to four) on your poll.

Dress your options up with emojis or witty options to show off some personality and catch the attention of folks scrolling by.

4) Set the length of your poll.

5) Click “Tweet” and watch your poll results come in during the set time period.

When the time period you set ends, you’ll see a “Final Results” display in the Tweet, like this:

Couldn’t be easier, right? So now that you know how to actually use Twitter polls, it’s time to dig into how you should use them to engage your audience, gain insights into your follower base, and provide context around your marketing campaigns and efforts.

Luckily, we’ve curated examples from 13 brands to give you ideas for how to use Twitter polls to engage, delight, and entertain your followers.

13 Examples of Clever Twitter Polls From Real Brands

Generate Follower Insights

While Twitter polls aren’t really a reliable way to find sophisticated market data, they can be used to engage your audience by asking for follower insights.

1) The Muse

The Muse is a career advice and job searching site focused on providing job-related content to people looking for it. This particular poll serves as a stand out piece of social content that’s not only relevant to the audience, but also aims to generate engagement through votes, retweets, and likes. What's more, the results of the poll should offer interesting insights to inform future content.

For example, if the #1 answer ends up being “fewer emails," The Muse could write a blog post around helping people clear out their inbox.

2) Eventbrite

Similarly, Eventbrite's poll also aims to collect follower insights related to holiday seasonal habits.

Given that Eventbrite posted this poll in October, it’s probable that this poll was in part a strategic tweet aimed at getting its target audience thinking about holiday event planning. Yet, the results can also be used to help frame content or generate new holiday campaign ideas.

Engage Your Followers' Interests

Ideally, your Twitter followers fit your general buyer persona, which means you should have a strong grasp on the content they like to consume, as well as their interests. You probably already use this information to create your social media strategy, so why not tie polls into that strategy, too?

3) Product Hunt

Product Hunt is a content curator that collects and reviews the latest apps, tools, technology, and more. As a hub of tech-information, it curates and posts content for people interested in the tech industry, hence the following tech television-inspired poll:

While this kind of poll may seem silly and goalless (especially compared to some of your other tweets that may help you drive leads and blog views), it ultimately helps Product Hunt create a positive brand perception and generate audience engagement.

4) Urban Outfitters

Urban Outfitters also played off their audience's interests with this fun, seasonal poll:

These types of polls might just be for humorous purposes, but again we can see here how Urban Outfitters might be pairing their tweet messaging with seasonal, autumn promotions. But rather than just Tweet Fall content, they’ve created a Tweet that more effectively encourages engagements.

When thinking up copy for your own Twitter polls, don’t forget to think about timing when it comes to surveying your followers. If you’re tweeting a poll to business professionals at midnight, you’re unlikely to get nearly as much engagement as you might if you were Tweeting the poll during commuting hours. This kind of mindset is helpful when it comes to planning when to schedule your Twitter poll.

Want help choosing the best times to post on social media? Check out this infographic.

5) Evernote

In this next example, Evernote used timing as a part of its poll by asking what agenda item they tend to tackle first at the very beginning of the week:

This tweet is a great example of using timing to engage your audience, but it’s also an example of a way Evernote suddenly encourages users to use its product. If a business professional is scrolling through Twitter and decides to create their to-do list for the week because they see this poll, they might decide to open up Evernote to do just that. It’s a great way to keep your products at the top of your followers’ minds.

Take Advantage of Timely Events

One of the best ways to take advantage of polls is by using timely events -- holidays, sports events, news stories, viral hashtags, and so on -- to engage your audience.

Because Twitter users are already tweeting about these types of events organically, using polls to entertain them or add to the conversation is a strong strategy.

Want to see it in action? Here are a few examples of brands that newsjack events by using polls.

6) Domino's

As you've likely already noticed, there has been no shortage of political tweets being exchanged lately. During one of the presidential debates, Domino's decided to tap into the conversation by posting the following poll:

By using a timely event, Domino’s effectively tied the conversation around the debate back to the brand to entertain its followers (and hopefully encouraged a few of those voters to order pizza during the debate).

7) Refinery29

Refinery29 -- a women’s news and entertainment media source -- posted the following poll during Breast Cancer Awareness Month to ignite a conversation amongst its followers:

This kind of poll is great because it’s relevant to the brand, sparks interesting conversation, and engages with the overall Breast Cancer Awareness Month conversation.

8) Dunkin Donuts

Another great strategy? Pay attention to timely events that are relevant to your brand. Check out how Dunkin Donuts used a holiday-inspired poll to engage its audience on #NationalCoffeeDay:

Pretty clever, wouldn't you agree?

Encourage Predictions

Using timely events is one way to generate engagement, but you can also ask for relevant predictions through polls based on those timely events. Think about sports events or any other competition that might be relevant to your brand. Are your followers and target audience engaged and watching to see who wins something? Is it relevant for your brand? Use polls to ask for predictions and drive engagement before and after the event.

9) NFL

In this example, the NFL asked users for their predictions on who would win the game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants:

Considering the National Football League was asking for predictions on a professional football game, it makes sense why this prediction is relevant to their brand.

The lesson? Look for ways to poll for predictions that make sense for your brand, and always keep in mind the goal of engaging your audience based on what they’re interested in.

Let People Choose Products, Features, etc.

Twitter polls offer a great way to drive engagement and buzz around an upcoming product or offer launch by giving your followers a choice in the matter.

10) eBay

Here, eBay asked its followers what they were more excited about: 50% off an Apple Watch deal or 40% off Fitbit Charge HR:

Keep this poll idea in mind the next time you launch a new product, event, deal, offer, etc. By letting your followers have a say in your launches, you’ll get them more excited and bring generate positive associations toward your brand.

Promote Offers, Live Events, etc.

Here's another helpful idea: You can also use polls to set context for your marketing campaigns, content, and offers.

11) HubSpot Academy

In this example, HubSpot Academy used a pop quiz-style poll to set context for the Inbound Sales Certification:

Whether you’re promoting a blog post, an ebook, or some other offer, try asking engaging questions that set the user up to click the link and find the answer.

Aim for Delightful Brand Relevancy

Believe it or not, using polls to delight your audience with branded questions goes a long way when it comes to entertaining and engaging your audience.

12) COVERGIRL

COVERGIRL -- a makeup and beauty brand -- used this clever poll to get its audience thinking about its products:

When trying to delight your audience, don't be afraid to have fun with it. As shown by COVERGIRL, not every tweet needs to be about generating leads or page visits -- in some cases, polls are simply a great way to encourage brand awareness.

13) Cheesecake Factory

Here’s another great example of a brand-relevant poll by Cheesecake Factory:

Simple, yet delightful polls (like this one) are a great way to create positive brand perception and awareness. And the more fun and engaging the poll is, the more opportunity to have to effectively expand your audience reach on Twitter.

Best Practices for Creating Twitter Polls

You now know how to use Twitter polls in practice, and you’ve seen some great examples of brands that are using polls to engage and delight their audiences. At this point, it’s time to take this information and create relevant, timely polls for your own audience.

Still need a few last minute tips? Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

• Don’t be too serious. Twitter polls aren’t meant for mass market research. They’re meant to be fun pieces of engaging social content, so use them as such. Ask questions that your followers want to answer, not just questions you want to know.
• Use hashtags. Want to use polls as a part of your marketing efforts around an event or launch? Don’t forget to include hashtags and links in your tweet copy.
• Keep timing in mind. Just like any other social post, you should be posting your polls when followers are going to see it. Check out this blog post on the best time to post on social media -- but don’t forget to dig into the data on when your followers are using Twitter.
• Set context for your marketing campaigns. Polls are a great way to set context for your other content marketing efforts, events, or product/campaign launches. Ask your audience questions that set context for your campaigns and generate buzz for your content or launches.

What's the best Twitter poll you've ever seen? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-polls-brand-examples

The Right SEM Strategy for Schools

Getting your school found online is an ongoing battle that requires different strategies for different goals. Search engine marketing (SEM) is comprised of both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. You can use both these strategies to direct traffic to your school's website, blog, or other digital assets you have, e.g. a landing page/microsite promoting a new school program. 

While both strategies can drive traffic, they have different virtues. To maximize your spend and get the best return, you want to use the right strategy for the right reasons.

Where SEO and PPC Differ

SEO is about building a strong content foundation that earns you more attention as time goes on. It's a long-term investment that has a lower cost with slower rate of return. Yet there comes a tipping point at which your SEO-optimized digital assets provide exponential returns. Its value doesn't reside in only a few specific high performing pages — the collective value starts boosting newer content as well. The more authority your site builds over time, that authority applies to other content you post on your site. Your SEO-optimized pages create a perpetual flow of traffic.

Infusing all your digital assets with SEO best practices should be part of your standard practice for every piece of digital content your school publishes.

You can download our full ebook on SEO for schools here >>

In contrast, a PPC campaign is fixed-time campaign that will have high upfront costs, but can get you quick, valuable returns. Your PPC campaign will be designed around a keyword strategy, just like your SEO. Unlike SEO, the PPC campaign only brings in returns for the time you're paying for the ad space. There's no long term benefit or exponential growth. That doesn't mean PPC doesn't have its role to play in getting your school found. It just means you want to pick your spots.

How and When to Use SEO

Really, the answer to "when" is "always." As mentioned earlier, SEO is the foundation that will push your website and blog higher and higher in the search engine results page (SERP). Virtually all searchers click on a first page link in their search results rather than a PPC ad.

Of course, getting ranked for "culinary school" isn't going to be easy (it's a very competitive term). And the truth is, you don't want to. That's far too broad a keyword. Your SEO strategy will return the most relevant visitors to you if work with long tail keywords (LTKs) that are queries containing the language your ideal students use to search for what they want. So if you're a school with a culinary management program that offers an online learning component, you might find "online culinary management degree program" more effective.

The more relevant your long tail keywords are to your personas, the more interested and qualified an audience you'll attract. 

After researching and identifying the most relevant collection of long tail keywords, you need to execute your SEO strategy through on-page and off-page optimization.

On-page SEO

This where you have the most control. On-page SEO uses all the smart ways to embed a page's keyword throughout the page. This doesn't mean repeating the keyword over and over in your text. Those days are long gone. Instead, you'll use the keyword a few times in your text. You'll write naturally as Google also looks for the phrases it expects to see if your program page is truly about an "online culinary management program." So Google might also expect to see other culinary related phrases such "back of the house" or "restaurant operations." 

You also have a variety of tags (i.e. title tags, meta tags, heading tags, and descriptions), where you can use your selected keywords. Some of these tags (e.g. your URL, title tag, and meta description) appear in the search results, so are critical to getting the click. Other tags, (e.g. alt-text tags — used to optimize images), don't always get seen by visitors. But the search engine bots deciding where to rank your page see and use them. Your title tag is probably the most important tag in terms of SEO, but don't overlook any of them.

Google has recently changed a number of its properties for on-page tags, such as giving you more room in titles and descriptions. When these changes happen, it's a good time to give your pages an SEO refresh.

Other on-page tactics to remember are: give the page a quick loading time and incorporate your social sharing buttons so visitors can spread your awesome content.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is when high authority sites link back to your awesome content. You have no control over this, because it requires external sites to like your content and link to it. However, you can encourage this process by sending a lot of social sharing signals in your content.

You want social sharing icons on all your pages, posts, and emails. And you can do more. You can craft copy to encourage people to share by reminding them to do so. You can also create pre-fabbed Tweets and Shares in your content for them to use.

Let's say you have a blog post of interviews with well-known restaurateurs sharing what personal and technical skills they look for when hiring a restaurant manager. Using the "birds of a feather" principle, you might add some copy to above your social sharing icons that says, "Know someone who's wondering if they have what it takes? Help them find out. Share this article." Or "Tweet this:  Graduate as a #Chef from this #Top-Ranked #CulinaryProgram @[YourSchoolTwitterHandle] [url]."

The more your blogs posts and web pages get out there, the more likely people will start to link back to them. 

How and When to Use PPC

While SEO is strategic and on-going, PPC is more tactical. PPC ads are those ads you see at the top of your search results. Since a PPC campaign only runs as long as you're willing to pay for it, you want to reserve for when you have something very specific you want to promote. 

Sticking with our culinary management program example, if this is a new program and you want to drive awareness as well as attract immediate potential students, a PPC program could be a good choice here. 

Another good use case for PPC is to support a specific enrollment priority. Perhaps your school wants to attract students with high musical ability to improve your band and orchestra. Your team has invested a lot of resources creating a report on how music education improves overall learning, which can help students in their future college admissions. You set up a detailed workflow, filled with smart lists and triggered email series to nurture the leads who download this report. Building a PPC campaign around promoting this report could be a valid expense to make this a wide funnel entrance point into your database.

A third place for a PPC campaign may be in growing your funnel numbers for the upcoming year when they're a bit low. If you need a boost in prospects to get the right number of school applicants, a PPC campaign may help. Keep in mind that in this case, you're not looking for people in the attraction stage (top-of-the-funnel). They will more likely already be in their consideration stage (middle-of-the-funnel). So select your promoted keywords and content appropriately.

Use this PPC ad calculator to find out if using a PPC campaign makes economic sense for a specific campaign.

In short: think of SEO as your "always-on" SEM, while PPC is your "special occasion" SEM. You need both, but in the right proportion and places.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-right-sem-strategy-for-schools

How to Run Successful LinkedIn Ads [Free Two-Week Planner]

LinkedIn is the #1 social media platform for B2B content distribution. That makes it a key platform to generate leads, build professional relationships, and drive leads.

But it’s not enough to use LinkedIn just to build an organic following. If you want to effectively expand your content's reach and get it in front of the right eyes, you should be using LinkedIn's Sponsored Content feature.

Even if you’ve used Sponsored Content before, you may not have mastered all of the steps it takes to make sure you’re getting the most ROI from your campaigns. Luckily, HubSpot teamed up with LinkedIn to bring you How to Run Successful LinkedIn Ads -- a two-week guide on running successful LinkedIn Sponsored Content campaigns.

More specifically, you’ll learn how to:

• Build an organic audience on LinkedIn.
• Select the right pieces of content.
• Identify the best target audience.
• Build an effective editorial calendar.
• Implement conversion tracking to prove ROI.
• Develop an effective targeting and A/B testing strategy.
• Monitor, report on, and optimize your sponsored content campaigns over time.

Download your copy of How to Run Successful LinkedIn Ads here.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-run-successful-linkedin-ads