Inbound Marketing For Australian SMBs

The term “leads” in the title means “qualified leads” – read this article to learn how to attract qualified leads into your marketing funnel with an effective blog.

In my recent articles on blogging I write about how to use your blog platform to educate your audience. It may seem like you’re giving a lot of expertise and knowledge away to your competition but he truth is the benefit far outweighs the risk and here’s why.

Firstly, by sharing valuable content your audience is interested in and will share, helps to keep you top of mind, establishes you as an authority, builds credibility, educates prospects on your product and gives people a reason to share your product.

Secondly, if you focus on pushing out valuable content your audience will come to enjoy your articles, look forward to reading them – building rapport and trust. Once you have rapport and trust with your prospects they are more likely to convert to a lead and customer.

So now you have...
Awareness, expertise, credibility and trust.

The next step is lead generation!

To increase leads, make sure you have an offer on the side of your blog, just like I have the ebook and coaching series offers on this blog.  Personally, I hate being “sold to” or “pushed” and what I love about this approach to lead generation is that the education has been done on your prospects’ time and on their terms – without a pushy sales process to scare them away.

The art of lead generation and nurturing is to continue this added value as they move their way through the lead – buy process. Always giving the lead an opportunity to convert into a customer when they are ready.

A lead generation offer is an offer of information that the prospects want, in return for their contact information. What contact information you ask for needs to reflect the value of your free offer. Eg: A detailed research report is more valuable than a 2-page how to guide, so for the report you could ask for more than just the email, company name and contact name. You could ask for phone, company size or type or any other information that is valuable to you.

I’ve included links below for blogging and lead generation.

If you have any questions at all please use the comment section below. Happy blogging and lead generating.

Check out these blogging and lead generation resources:

9 Tips To Increase Leads From Your Landing Pages
Improve Lead Generation:  How To Understand Your Prospects Needs
Blogging Made Simple: Learn How To Write About What You Know

Blogging is a communication tool that provides small business marketers with the unique opportunity to achieve a range of marketing strategies and tactics that were once left up to professionals, or only those with deep pockets. The internet and social media have leveled the marketing playing field and small businesses should take advantage of this opportunity.

We keep hearing it from the "experts" blog, blog, blog. But why? When I talk to business owners this seems to be the hardest task for many. But why?

As a marketer or business owner if you knew that blogging would help you grow your business would you find the time?

If one of your problems with blog writing is the planning and scheduling, you're not alone! I see questions on forums and LinkedIn groups around these topics all the time.

Blogging is one of the best inbound marketing tactics. It helps with search marketing – helping you get found, and it helps with lead generation – helping you get leads and customers. But for many, knowing what to write or how to write is just a task that seems overwhelming. The truth is you know your product (or service) and customers better than anyone. You have the knowledge, it’s just a matter of learning how to turn a phone conversation, email or networking discussion into a blog article.

The purpose of this article is to show you how to turn what you already know into effective blog articles.

Once a month or quarter set aside 1-2 hours and sit down with your sales and/or management team (or yourself if you are the management team) and write down the answers to the following questions:

• Why do people need your product or service?
• What is their problem, need or pain point?
• Why should they buy from you?
• What are the problems if they buy the wrong product or service?
• What should they know before making a purchasing decision?
• What questions do customers ask before buying?
• What questions or reservations do people who don’t buy ask?
• Why don’t people buy from you?
• What do people want to know about your company before buying?

Answers to these questions are all blog topics or even a series of blogs.

As you start a new year full of motivation and drive determined to achieve your revenue targets 2012, the key to success is to break it down into achievable tasks with an actionable timeline.

The purpose of this blog is to help you determine your goals and tasks for Q1 2012 and get organized with a plan and timeline.

As you begin the second half of year, it’s a good time to review your inbound marketing plan for the year to see how you’re tracking on results compared to goals.

I often get asked how to blog and what to write. It seems many people are so scared to do it wrong – they get paralyzed. Others still don't know why they should be blogging and how it can significantly help their Inbound Marketing efforts.

Research shows that blogging helps boost your organic search rank and website visitors. But how do you do it properly?