Often, the best way to learn is by asking others who have gone before you. This is why I find it incredibly valuable to ask other inbound marketers, including our own clients, what they’ve learned in the process of launching an inbound marketing strategy; it helps me help you with yours. This collection of insights comes from those within the media and advertising industry (ranging from digital marketing, to radio and television, and beyond.)
I asked these marketers about their experience in regards to three questions. Here is a compilation of their responses for your own learning pleasure!
“Look at inbound as a marathon, not a sprint. Give yourself time to plan, launch, and build out your inbound marketing plan.”
-Mark Keaney, Greater Media Boston
“As far as getting content topics, have brainstorming sessions once a month with your sales team. Throw out a handful of main topics and let the team develop creative content from there. Get their buy-in. Get them to give you quotes you can use in the blogs, since it’s like pulling teeth to get them to write their own blogs. Everyone’s a critic, don’t take it personally.”
-Suzie Schafer, Gannett Norfolk / WVEC ABC13
“Get organized. The more organized you are, the less chaotic everything will feel. There are so many moving parts to set up and manage with the launch of a blog that it can be really overwhelming. Set up a content calendar; get in the habit of planning blog topics at least a month out; and use a project management program to organize and prioritize all of the things you need to accomplish. Choose whatever system works best for you, but organization is definitely key.”
-Alyson Phillips, CMG Local Solutions
“Make sure that you’re speaking to your target persona. Who are you writing for? What are they interested in? What keeps them up at night? The more you know about them, the better your content will be.”
-Karyn Bak, Inside Radio
“When it comes to content, focus on quality over quantity.”
-Paul Walsh, The Weather Company
“Take the SEO tips seriously (Hubspot makes it so easy!). It’s one thing to produce great content, it’s another thing to maximize its outreach impact. The more of the SEO advice you take, the more likely people will see your content!”
-Stephanie Flax, Federal News Radio and WTOP
“Newsjacking paired with relevant context is a great way to generate useful content.”
-Paul Walsh, The Weather Company
“As you continue to build content, you’ll often find that you’ve already written an article that is of specific interest to a prospect. I often find, in the course of speaking with a client or prospect, that a topic will come up and I’ll have an article at my fingertips that may help them.”
Karyn Bak, Inside Radio
“My inbound marketing tip is related to content sharing via social media channels. This tip may seem small, but I believe it has big impact. These days it’s great to be able to easily share blog posts via social media in large quantities and in bulk. It’s important, though, to take the extra step and revise all of the text so that the same message isn’t displayed in an automatic fashion. By simply changing the text associated with each post, it dissipates the sense that all you did was just attach a blog post to social media accounts and hit “publish.” It also gives the opportunity to include keywords and to repurpose content across multiple channels.”
-Stephanie Flax, Federal News Radio and WTOP
“Begin with a small group of stakeholders and build out. Inbound will be a collaborative team effort, but if your work group is too large out of the gate, you'll lose focus. Start with an A-Team of key cross-functional players and then add more as you go.”
-Mark Keaney, Greater Media Boston
“Just because you ‘build it’ does not mean ‘they will come.’ Real life is not quite the same as Field of Dreams. Inbound marketing takes a lot of patience and persistence. Salespeople will have 101 excuses why they haven’t or won’t use the content, yet they are the first to complain about the lack of lead flow.
You need to make it really clear and set goals from the beginning on how many subscribers you want, etc. How many is ‘good?’ Good after 30 days and good after 90 days should look totally different. If we know from day 1 that our goal is to gain 100 subscribers by the 30-day mark, let’s post our performance against those goals every week and show the team where we are. Companies have contests around gaining a high volume of likes to gain a loyal following; we should take the same approach.”
-Suzie Schafer, Gannett Norfolk / WVEC ABC13
“We began featuring local marketing execs/leaders who have solid clout in the business community. Not only do we get to massage some egos by giving these notable individuals a high-five, but we also gain additional traffic and recognition as a legitimate resource for marketing insights. (One such blog we ran generated over 200 Facebook “likes” in a week.)”
-Anne Marie Benard, Cox Media Group Houston
“The content that seems to perform best for us is timely content. Articles on something new that’s happening in the industry, trends that have occurred or we expect to occur in the weeks to come, something everyone in the industry is talking about at the moment—stuff like that. We tend to get the most engagement from those articles, which makes sense because interest in those topics is typically higher at the time. Capitalizing on timely opportunities has become a big focus of our inbound strategy.”
-Alyson Phillips, CMG Local Solutions
“You can’t bank on leads coming to you in the beginning. I knew I wanted to do something inbound-related in addition to the site, so I started to put on marketing seminars. I get at least one sales-qualified lead out of each of them, and that lead tends to be about 70% closed because they are already knowledgeable on the topic we’ve just discussed for an hour.”
-Suzie Schafer, Gannett Norfolk / WVEC ABC13
“Creating original content via video. Definitely!”
-Stephanie Flax, Federal News Radio and WTOP
“One thing that is working well is having our sales team repurpose content as a VBR (valid business reason) or conversation point with target prospects and key customers. The response is great!”
-Mark Keaney, Greater Media Boston
“Real-life examples scale up. Small business stories apply to large businesses, and they are easier to source. Also, they add value back to the businesses mentioned so there is a collective win-win."
-Paul Walsh, The Weather Company
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I have the pleasure of working with this group of innovative folks every day. Some manage entire sales teams for top performing media outlets while others provide some of the most cutting-edge and insightful research to their advertisers. One thing they all have in common is that they “get it.” They understand that the advertiser’s journey has changed, and in order to succeed, they have to change, too.
Check out another post I wrote, 3 Things Every Media Company Needs to Do in 2015, to learn more about how inbound marketing can help you attract more and better leads, while also ensuring you’re properly facilitating the sales process according to the buyer’s needs.