The Pillars of Successful Inbound Marketing

1. The Pillars of Successful Inbound Marketing Analytics, SEO, & Social Media Done Right Kyle James @KyleJames CEO @nuCloud

2. What is thepurpose of our website?

3. Marketing Has Changed1950 - 2000 2000 - 2050

4. Outbound Marketing

5. Outbound Marketing is Broken 800-555-1234 Annoying Salesperson

6. Inbound MarketingBlog SEO Social Media

7. Inbound MarketingBlog SEO Social Media Analytics

8. Marketing Process

9. STRATEGIZEDevise a strategy or strategies

10. What are our goals?

11. What isImportant?

12. Follow the money!

13. • Give Us Money!• But How? • Alumni Donations• Applicants• Schedule a Visit• Download Catalog• Get on Mailing List

14. Business FunnelsMarketing Funnel Sales Funnel

15. At most schools 50%+ of annual revenue comes through tuition

16. Recruitment Funnel Awareness Visit Website Learn about School Convert/Engage Request Info Visit Campus Commit Apply Attend

17. ROI AnalysisBuild a Business Case

18. Establishing ROI If we can work backwards from thevalue of a student we can establish the value of an Interactive Campus Map. *All numbers are created as examples

19. Let’s Do Some Math• Average Years = 3• Cost Per Year = $20,000• Average Yearly Discount = $10,000• Student Value = 3 * ($20,000 - $10,000)• So a Student is worth $30,000!

20. Let’s Do Some Math• Student Value = $30,000• Conversion Rate in Applicant = 20%• App Value = $30,000 * .2• So an Applicant is worth $6,000!

21. Value Of Campus Tour?

22. Let’s Do Some Math• Application Value = $6,000• Conversion Rate of Visits to Applicant = 20%• Value of Visit = $6,000 * .2• So Each Student Visit is Worth $1,200!

23. Let’s Do Some Math• Visit Value = $1,200• Conversion of Map to Visit = 5%• Value of a Map View = $1,200 * .05• So Each Map View is Worth $60!

24. Do You Think 1,000 People Would ViewYour Map In A Month?

25. Then Having A Map Is Worth $60,000! Per Month!

26. You can now justify this project

27. ROI Spreadsheet http://bit.ly/map-roi

28. You can use this same process to decide the value of doing any web project

29. Possible Important ItemsAdmission Specific General Goals• Apply to College • Sign up for eConnect• Schedule a Campus updates Visit • Watch Videos• Request Info • Subscribe to RSS• Download the • Become Facebook Viewbook Fan, Member of a• Take a Virtual Tour Group • Join Linked In • Read Blogs29

30. EXECUTETo carry out; accomplish

31. Be Social Content Strategy Blogging Article Writing Calls to Action On-Page SEO Landing Pages Keyword ResearchSite Architecture MeasurementAbility to Edit Site Analytics Installed

33. The Foundation

35. The Conversion Process • If we aren’t getting people to convert on our traffic then what does a thousand or a million visitors to our site matter?35

36. How Do You Convert?• Conversions require Landing Pages• A Landing Page is a Page with a Form on it.

37. Three Steps of a Conversion Process 1. The Call to Action 2. The Landing Page 3. The Follow-Up

38. The Call to Action• Are your offers compelling?• Call to action best practices – Create urgency – Include an image – Contrasting colors – Be specific/inspirational

39. The Landing Page

40. The Landing Page• Keep it simple – Little to no navigation or other links• People scan, don’t read – Bullet points – Pictures – Bold copy – Five second rule• Make it instantly obvious what they will get• Shorter the form the higher the conversion rate• Possible alternative call to actions

41. The Follow-Up• Thank you page• Auto response email• Additional channels to connect• Opportunities for further engagement – Lead Nurturing – Email Marketing – Phone Calls

42. Thank You Page Examples

44. If people can’t find it, does it matter?

45. Search Engine Optimization Over 3 billion searches per day • Publish more content • Optimize your content • Promote your content

46. What SEO is NOT

47. SEO is Usability and Accessibility

48. Search Engine Crawlers are Blind Yahoo Microsoft Google

49. By the Numbers (on one site)• 30% of traffic is delivered by Search Engines• 82% of that traffic is delivered by Google• On a large college website w/ 1,000,000 visits per month that is 300,000 visitors

50. It All Starts With Keywords• “It’s NOT about what you want or what you call it, it is about what people are actually looking for.”• “Nobody cares about your products (except you)” – David Meerman Scott

51. Long Tail Keywords• Computer Science Degree South Carolina• Computer Science Program South Carolina• Computer Science Degree• Computer Science Major• Computer Science

52. Two Parts of SEO On-Page Off-Page

53. On-Page Optimization Page Title URL Meta Description Meta Headers Keywords

54. Page Title Page• Describe The Page Title• Include Keywords• 70 Character Limit

55. The URL• Describe The Page URL• Include Keywords• A Dynamic URL is hard to understand• What are the following two pages about?• http://tomahawktake.com/2009/04/11/game-no-5-recap-braves-5- nationals-3/• http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090411&content_id=422 5972&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

56. Headers• Semantic Markup Headers• Include Keywords• Describe sections of the Page

57. Semantic Markup is Like A Word Doc

58. Meta Description & Keywords Meta• Unique for Each Page Keywords• Only Viewable in Source• Meta Description limit 150 characters• Meta Keyword limit 10 keywords max Meta Description

59. Off-Page Optimization We’ve all heard Content is King, so Links must be the Queen?

60. Your Site Is Trusted!

61. Remember it’s Not About Us What are those buildings called?

62. What are people looking for?

63. Getting Ranked

64. Search Call To ActionsPage Title Meta Description Page Title and Meta Description are all you get in search results. Make sure that they count.

66. Publish Content Worth Sharing

67. Blogging Best Practices• Tell your story• Educational and informative not sales focused• Personal and stories from people in the field• So much more than just text (videos, pictures, etc)

68. Student Blogshttp://www3.imperial.ac.uk/campus_life/studentblogs

69. Faculty Blogshttp://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/

70. Staff Blogshttp://fuse.ithaca.edu/staffblogs/

71. Alumni Blogshttp://alumni.blogs.wvu.edu/

72. President’s Blogshttp://www.usm.edu/president/blog/

73. Don’t Forget To Convert

75. Always Share Your Content

76. Always Be Ready To Give

77. Make Your Content Easy To Share

78. Don’t Forget Your Purpose Tie Social Media To ROI

79. AnalyzeDiscover or reveal (something) through examination

80. If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?

81. Avoid Paralysis by Analysis• Are we accomplishing our goals?• Don’t try and measure everything• Focus on a few (3-5) metrics instead of everything

82. Does More Visitors Matter?

83. Does More Time On Site Matter?

84. Is More Pages/Visit A Good Thing?

85. Traffic Increase Without Increasing Conversions Is Wasted Work

86. Conversions Matter! It doesn’t matter if you get a thousand visitors a month or a million if none of them are actually converting into applicants/students or donors!

88. Inbound Marketing is NOTA Sprint…

89. Questions?Converge Consulting Kyle James@ConvergeOrg @KyleJamesann@convergeconsulting.com kyle@nucloud.com