How Inbound Marketing Benefits a Business

Curious how inbound marketing can benefit a business? Here are my thoughts:

Inbound Marketing Definition: Build Trust, Generate Leads

Thanks for reading!

Best,

C.B.

Sandy Carter Gets Bold at MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2011

I do enjoy listening to Sandy Carter, author of Get Bold: Using Social Media to Create a New Type of Social Business. She spoke to us at MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2011 and definitely hads us thinking about new trends in business, and particularly social business.

[See my previous post titled Sandy Carter Integrates Social Media into the Marketing Mix.]

These new trends are IT driven. Think of the evolution from mainframes, to PCs, the Internet and now Social, the fifth IT era, which by 2015 will represent a $100K market. Organizations  that embrace social and become social businesses will leverage all processes to be more engaging, transparent and nimble, using insights to make decisions faster. Outperformers are also 57% more likely to be profitable because of social.

Social media used to be primarily for marketing and PR. Social businesses apply social media to all internal business processes.

Sandy used the acrostic AGENDA to communicate what makes makes social businesses unique.

• Align organizational goals and culture
• Gain 'friends' through social trust
• Engage through experiences
• Network your business processes 
• Design for reputation and risk management
• Analyze your data

Points that resonated with me:

Align organizational goals and culture
Culture eats strategy for lunch [example: BASF].

Gain 'friends' through social trust
It's critical to have a "trust plan" so you can pro-grammatically gain social trust from friends, followers and tippers [who impact 15% of friends and followers]. You need to identify trippers and influence them:

1. need to be responsive and consistent
2. be very transperant and open
3. need to have subject mattter expertise

Example: cars.com - dealers were tippers who didn't originally like the concept. Dealers were drawn into the plan.

Engage through experiences
You need a strategy to deliver exceptional experiences:

1. integrated across channels on/offline
2. interactive [need to engage and participate vs. observe]
3. identifying/personalized experieces

Example: LotusSphere 2011 included a social media aggregator that captured everything related to the event and significantly increased the satisfaction of participants.

IBM has created open source gaming engines that are easy to customize. This is where Gaming, Mobile, Virtual gifting, Video [the #1 medium for trust!] and location based services play a major role in created engaging experiences. I think we'll see much more happening here.

You can also engage through identifying and being personal, something that B2C companies do well. Example: Faberge will pick the right set of collectibles to show a potential customer based on responses to qualifying questions and online behaviors.

Network Your Business Processes
This means ensuring that all business processes - from marketing, customer service, product/service innovation, operations, human resources, etc. - are connected and communicating, and embrace social.

Example: Watson on Jeopardy - Reached tippers to talk about it. Those who developed Watson were available for questions; Watson had its own Facebook page and Twitter profile; customers and fans created their own  ebook.

Example: social product development - Coach: changed product development cycle and crowd sourced products. This generates word-of-mouth, engagement and leads - as IBM has noticed.

The value of social business is significant with

• 15% more revenue
• 20% increased time to market and more success
• 30% increased HR and talent management and increased speed to knowledge and expertise.

Design for Reputation and Risk Management
1. Have a plan and a team. Develop a disaster recovery plan.
2. Be proactive and fast.
3. Be transparent with 2 way dialog. Don't try to manipulate.

Example: Domino's Pizza

Analyze Your Data
1. Comprehensive analysis of words important to you.
2. Monitor sentiment about those words.
3. Monitor for Affinity
4. Predictive

Example: Gatorade command center. Listened online. Thought that only athletes drank Gatorade, but learned that gamers did, too. Picked up quickly from listening that Michele Obama had observed a linkage between Gatorade and obesity. Allowed company to react proactively.

Sandy definitely showed us the potential behind 'Get Bold'!

What's your reaction to 'social business'? Have you come across any? How do you see transforming your business into a social business? Let me know in the comments.

Generate More Leads With Social Media: MarketingProfs B2B Forum Presentation Offers Advice

For Immediate Release: May 24, 2011

Curious About Generating More Leads With Social Media?

MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2011 Presentation Offers Advice

Kinnelon, NJ – At the upcoming MarketingProfs 2011 B2B Forum – the premiere event for B2B marketers – on June 13-15 in Boston, Christine B. Whittemore, chief simplifier of Simple Marketing Now LLC, and Kipp Bodnar, inbound marketing manager for Hubspot, will present “Generating Lower Cost Leads With Social Media”. The presentation takes place June 14, 2011 from 1:45pm to 3pm EST.

“Generating Lower Cost Leads With Social Media” will offer advice on how B2B businesses can integrate social media as a lead generation tool into their business model. The session offers best practices for generating leads through social media and examines case study examples of how B2B marketers are using social media to generate leads.

“Social media tools are valuable for building brand awareness and demonstrating thought leadership,” says Whittemore. “They can also help B2B businesses generate high quality leads. This session will not only explore how, but also explain how to do so effectively.”

Whittemore has been immersed in social media since 2006 – personally, for a brand and for her business. She is the author of Flooring The Consumer – a highly acclaimed weblog about the customer retail experience and marketing to women and an AdAge Power 150 Marketing Blog. She also writes the Simple Marketing Blog, a Junta42 Top 42 Content Marketing Blog and contributes to MarketingProfs.

Bodnar is Inbound Marketing Manager at HubSpot, a leader in marketing software for small and medium-sized businesses. He leads HubSpot's content marketing team—the group of marketers that uses social media, content and search engine optimization to get HubSpot found by prospective customers.

To learn more about MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2011 and register for the event, visit http://www.marketingprofs.com/events/business-to-business-forum-2011/conference. Use speaker discount code SPEAK100 to save $100 on the registration fee.

For information about Simple Marketing Now, visit http://SimpleMarketingNow.com. Or, simply contact Whittemore at cbwhittemore@SimpleMarketingNow.com.

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About Simple Marketing Now LLC

Simple Marketing Now, a marketing communications consultancy, helps organizations integrate social media and content marketing with traditional marketing to better connect with customers and improve business profitability.

Simple Marketing Now issues the Social Flooring Index which monitors the social state of the Flooring Industry and Flooring The Consumer about marketing to women and the retail experience.

About MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs is a rich and trusted resource that offers actionable know-how to help you market your products and services both smarter and better. Entrepreneurs, small-business owners and marketers in the world’s largest corporations make up its 383,000 subscribers, making it the largest in its category. Through the MarketingProfs Web site, newsletters, conferences, seminars, forums and so on… we help you navigate your way to market your business and keep you informed of the newest and best tools. Think of us as a beacon of light illuminating the path through the clutter.

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