Knowing what an inbound campaign looks like

Inbound marketing campaigns have very specific components that serve to pave the path to frictionless purchasing experiences. Knowing these components and learning how to populate each step with relevant, timely, and contextual content helps you build the framework for achieving online success.

Think of each component in your inbound marketing campaign as an input. Each input is an influential factor in your Customer Conversion Chain. Each input affects the other inputs in the chain. Each input has a different level of influence on the outcome. So, though each input is a factor contributing to your successful outcome, every input should not be treated equally. Consider an attraction campaign that drives thousands of visitors to a broken website page that says “Under Construction.” No matter how much traffic you drive to that site, you’ll never create a conversion. So, if the sole focus of that campaign was attracting traffic, the initiative will fail. This example may seem extreme, but similar mishaps — in which marketers drive traffic to websites that aren’t designed to convert — occur all the time.

Every inbound marketing campaign consists of inputs that affect the successful outcome. Let’s take a look at these inputs:

• Attraction inputs, which include:
  • A website built on conversion architecture (if you don’t have this, you can do a workaround by creating a microsite that acts as a robust inbound marketing campaign)
  • Organic search from SEO
  • Social media sources
  • Paid search advertising
  • External links
  • Referrals
  • Traditional media advertising
  • Lists cultivated from events (such as, for example, from tradeshows)
  • Database marketing via email
• Engagement inputs, which include:
  • Middle-of-the-funnel engagement piece (an e-book, tutorial, or whitepaper)
  • Further engagement content for the first and subsequent conversions
  • Onsite engagement tools
  • A website chat box
  • Contact Us forms
• Reengagement inputs, which include:
  • Email workflows
  • Invitations
  • Webinars
  • Online training
  • A website chat box
• Action inputs, which include:
  • Product trials
  • Product/software demonstration
  • Consultation
  • The purchase of a product
  • A subscription
  • A donation
• Reaction inputs, which include:
  • Reviews/referrals
  • Customer service connection
  • Product return shipping
  • Private events
  • Suggestive selling at online shopping cart checkout
  • Rewards programs
  • Email campaigns

Establishing campaign objectives

When designing your inbound campaigns, start with your business objectives. What is your measurement of success? Is it units sold? Dollars generated? Donations made?

Note that I didn’t mention Facebook Likes or Twitter retweets. Although those can be important inputs to measure and view, and may actually increase your visibility on social media sites, these metrics alone are not usually used for inbound marketing campaign objectives. In fact, marketing metrics are subservient to the business objective. Using business objectives that tie into your business plan, your marketing plan, and your Shared Strategic Blueprint is the preferred inbound marketing measuring stick. Measuring the degree of influence of your tactical marketing inputs in achieving the desired business outcome or objective is an important part of whether or not your inbound marketing campaign succeeds or fails.

Establish your inbound marketing campaign objectives by stating them in terms that connect to your overall business. And remember, to keep your objectives S.M.A.R.T.

Designing your inbound-marketing campaigns

Inbound marketing is consumer-centric so you’ll begin with your target customers in mind when designing your inbound marketing campaigns. By focusing on one product or service, you can better identify which target profiles are likely to purchase, uncovering their needs and pain points for that specific product. This is how inbound marketing campaigns connect your product with people.

Here’s how to design your inbound marketing campaign:

1. Discover a need.
2. Choose a product.
3. Articulate a campaign outcome hypothesis.
4. Work with your sales department to establish the parameters for defining an MQL.
5. Review historical conversion data, including your cost-per-lead (CPL) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) information.
6. Populate your Customer Conversion Chain. (Refer to Chapter 9.)
7. Recalibrate your hypothesis based on your initial Customer Conversion Chain inputs.
8. Measure and test results; replicate successes and discard underperformers.
9. Report and make adjustments.

Mapping your inbound-marketing campaigns

If you built a Call-to-Action Map as the basis for your website map, it’s much easier to map your campaigns. Because your CTA Map is, by definition, organized based on conversion this is a good starting point. Figure 13-1 shows a campaign map created by Eloqua, the marketing automation software company.

You can see how there’s a logical flow that connects. Mapping your inbound marketing campaigns with this tool, or something similar, helps you create an organized, logical conversion flow. Keeping it simple makes it easier for your visitors to navigate closer to an action, which is what you want.

Understanding the campaign build process

Here’s a simple process to follow when building inbound marketing campaigns:

1. Use the product your persona is most likely to purchase and create your product pyramid.
2. State your end business objective for the chosen product, defining it in measurable terms.
3. Assign a budget based on this objective.
4. Identify the most likely first conversion point.
5. Assess your current content assets to determine if you have existing content that connects people with your product. Use current relevant content or develop new engagement content that better serves your needs.
6. Build a dedicated landing page for your engagement content at the first conversion point.
7. Identify the attractive content that will act as input feeders to your engagement content.
8. Create your CTA buttons and forms to connect your attraction content with your conversion content.
9. Design email workflows to follow up at each point of engagement, creating a specific CTA with clear action for the prospect to take the next step for reengagement.
10. Connect and track the digital media you’ll use as attractive inputs (social media, PPC, SEO, and so on), assign a budget to each and link to the appropriate content for this particular product pyramid.
11. Set up analytics to measure your success as compared to the campaign objective.

To see campaign mapping and building in action, take a look at an example from my own website. Figure 13-2 illustrates an inbound campaign map overlaid with different attraction and conversion content. You can see how this campaign extends beyond my website. Consumer action begins off site, enters into the properly designed CTA Map, continuing with engagement remarketing emails and reengagement opportunities and ultimately through offsite conversion to those people demonstrating interest. When my inbound marketing campaign connects my profile persona with my product, culminating with an offsite sale, the campaign is performing its job. The degree to which this job is being performed well may now be measured and expressed as ROI.

Organizing your campaigns for conversion

You’ve created an inbound map and taken stock of your content assets as well as the additional content you’ll need to create an effective campaign. You’ve seen how to assign content to different steps in the customer purchase path. Now, organize that content as a user would consume it. This means creating new content and organizing it in a way that provides the quickest intuitive path to conversion while still allowing your visitors and leads to explore other information on your website on their terms. Remember, this includes creating reengagement emails that direct people to return to your site to reengage.

Creating new content for your campaigns

When you perform your content asset census, chances are you’ll discover you have content gaps. These may be one of the following, in order of importance to your campaign:

• Content gaps for purchase path alignment
• Content gaps for target personas
• Content gaps by form
• Content gaps in relevance
• Content gaps in timeliness
• Content gaps in contextuality

You’ll probably discover that you don’t have the optimal amount, nor the optimal type of content. That’s okay. Start by populating your inbound campaign map with existing content, even if it’s not optimal. Next, list the “must have” content to populate the campaign. Last, create your optimal list, ranked by overall importance to the success of the campaign based on the priority list above, and then create that content to populate your inbound marketing campaign.

Your first inbound campaign won’t be perfect — in fact, there is no such thing as a perfect campaign. All inbound marketing campaigns are imperfect. Likewise, initially you won’t have the optimal content. Creating a hierarchy of content needs helps you prioritize content creation.

Overlaying content for inbound campaigns

Effective inbound marketing campaigns are fueled by compelling content. When it comes to content, one size definitely does not fit all. Buyers are unique. Each buyer persona has different needs. Because people are searching for different things at different times, it’s important to match your content with your buyer’s profile and place on the purchase path. HubSpot provides a handy tool for just this purpose — the blank content map. (See Figure 13-3.) Content mapping can be complex so this tool breaks it down into five simple steps:

1. Name the persona (from your list of previously created personas created in the diagnostic assessment stage) to whom your content is targeted.
2. Identify the problem that persona is attempting to solve.
3. Generate educational content ideas for the first step in the purchase path (awareness).
4. Generate engagement content ideas for the second step in the purchase path (consideration).
5. Generate encouragement content ideas for the third step in the purchase path (decision).

Of course, I recommend you add a sixth step, which is:

 6. Generate embracing content for the customer reattraction phase in the Lifestyle Loop.

You can download these templates to map out your own content at http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/137828/file-799282870-pdf/HubSpot_Concepting_worksheet_editable.pdf.

If you’re having trouble generating content ideas, HubSpot has another great content tool — the content map — which breaks down content generation even further. It’s a simple one-page content organizer, as shown in Figure 13-4. You can download it for free at http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-mapping-template-personalize-marketing.

Table 13-1 shows some of the creative content assets I used in setting up this particular inbound marketing campaign. Here’s how the content for this campaign is classified when you apply the 4 E’s of Content Marketing:

Keywords: Inbound Marketing Assessment and Website Review

Target Profile: Chief Marketing Office/$20M+ in annual revenues

For this campaign, my keywords are inbound marketing assessment and website review (first contact) and my product funnel is an Einstein Assessment with the desired action being a customer acquisition via a paid assessment (first contract). My content is written to CMOs. Here’s a summary of the content I deliver to connect with different content forms and at different times, based on a prospect who discovers us via organic search by searching the term inbound marketing assessment:

1. Stranger’s entry point that’s linked to the search term is my inbound marketing assessment page (see Figure 13-5), which offers an Einstein informational video and written content (educational).
2. By clicking “Website Grader” in the body copy, my visiting persona may choose to move laterally in the product pyramid to learn the difference between a website grader and an IMA (educational), and they may also download an e-book (engagement). (See Figure 13-6.)
3. Leads who download the e-book receive an email for a free IMA (engagement).
4. The visitor can engage by clicking “Get My Free Assessment” CTA button, which navigates to my IMA survey landing page (engagement). (See Figure 13-7.) My visitor is moving down the purchase path, becoming a marketing qualified lead.
5. By submitting the form on the landing page, my visitor is now a lead.
6. The lead completes the IMA survey (engagement) and upon submission becomes a sales qualified lead.
7. Alternatively, my lead may wish to click on the Einstein Pricing CTA button, migrating much closer to the desired action (engagement).
8. Upon contact — either via the “Contact Us” form or through completion of an IMA survey — leads receive automated and personal emails to schedule a review of the results via phone (encouragement). (See Figure 13-8.)
9. SQLs review IMA results with assessor (encouragement).
10. Timely automated emails are sent as a follow-up reengagement SQL purchases an Einstein Assessment, becoming a customer, receiving the occasional newsletter, topical email (embrace), or encouragement to participate in another product offering like strategic consultation (reengagement).

Matching content form with function

Deciding between all the options of content form, content function, and content types based on a content map in a content strategy will make your head spin! One of the best tools I’ve discovered for matching form with function is the simple one-page sheet that HubSpot created, seen in Figure 13-9.

There are other navigational paths a stranger may take, resulting in the same conversion. For instance, visitors may seek my educational content about IMAs by clicking on social media links connecting to educational blog content, then follow the same, or similar, path to purchase.

Optimizing your content

Remember, your content must be optimized for both UX and for search engines. Contrary to common thought, UX should trump SEO. Why? Because truly meaningful content, content that is relevant, timely, and contextual, has a way of being found. That’s not to diminish the importance of SEO. SEO facilitates your attraction like oil lubricates your engine. But SEO doesn’t buy your product. People do.

Here’s a checklist for optimizing your content:

• Does your content resonate with your target persona? How do you know?
• Does your content provide a systematic logical progression from point of first contact through point of first contract (at a minimum)?
• Have your on-page content, your blog, your images, and your videos been optimized to SEO best practices?
• Does your content connect with your digital media attraction inputs by providing a “welcome mat” at the place of website entry that makes sense to the visitor?
• Do you have meaningful content for each of your product/service offerings?
• Does your content align with each step in the customer purchase path?

In essence, you’re asking yourself this: “Do I have a content strategy?” — which is a good question to ask.

Creating a frictionless consumer campaign path

You learned about creating a conversion-based website with CTA Maps in Chapter 11. You’ve also learned the importance of connecting your attraction inputs with your content. You know the importance of paving the path to conversion. As you build and test your campaigns, your goal is to create a frictionless user path. Here are some quick tips on how to do so:

• Creating intuitive navigation paths is more important than how many clicks it takes to reach a conversion point.
• Having said that, don’t over-complicate the process. For example, if it makes sense for your PPC campaign to circumvent your website entirely with a landing page geared toward an encouragement offer, by all means do so!
• Link your pages in a conversion path that directs a visitor either laterally or downward toward an action.
• Provide obvious navigation signs so that it’s very clear which action a visitor should naturally take next.
• Resist the urge to provide too many click options. You may overload your visitors with too many options resulting in a bounce out from your site.
• Create and connect side entryways into your home page other than your home page.
• Perform user-testing after you think you’ve got it perfect. You’ll discover further opportunities for refinements.
• As time passes, look for trends of sources, pages, CTAs, and landing pages, using that analytics data to inspect conversion opportunities and roadblocks.
• As you gain customers, model the paths to conversion so you can replicate those paths with other products by building similar campaigns.

Creating a frictionless path to an ultimate action creates a happy customer. Pay attention to how your visitors interact with your site and you’ll spot opportunities to obtain more customers and garner more market share.

Measuring and replicating campaign success

Although Part VII of this book covers analytics more in-depth, it’s worth mentioning some ways to track and test your inbound marketing campaigns. This includes:

• Google Analytics: Creating campaigns in Google Analytics that match your inbound marketing campaigns is usually a smart idea. Depending on your needs, it may not provide the depth that marketing automation software does; however, it’s industry standard to track campaigns, especially conversion events, in Google Analytics. You may want to build custom campaigns in Google.

• Tracking codes: Attaching an Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) to a custom URL in order to track a source, medium, and campaign name. This enables Google Analytics to tell you where searchers came from as well as what campaign directed them to you. Figure 13-10 shows Google’s URL builder, which enables the tracking you’ll need. If this all seems intimidating, hire a developer!

  You can see that the URL builder features other tracking fields to add to your code which is helpful in tracking specific keywords or content. You may also track by medium (social media), a source (Twitter), and campaign.

  Creating and applying tracking codes to your attraction sources and conversion pages help you understand what’s occurring every step of the way down the customer purchase path.

• User testing: Consider these tools to test your campaign path:
  • Clicky
  • UserTesting.com
  • Morae
  • Camtasia
  • Ovo Logger
• Customer Conversion Chain ROI analysis: Measure your attraction and conversion hypothesis as well as your business objectives versus your outcomes to determine your degree of success.
• Marketing automation software: If you can afford it, buy marketing automation software to help you track your campaign results. If you can’t afford it, try to find a way to afford it. If you still can’t afford it, measure every point in the conversion chain as best you can.

The unmeasured campaign is like Major League Baseball without statistics. The game can still be played, and the final score can be tallied, but you won’t be able to consistently maximize your wins and systematically avoid your losses because you’re missing important data. Although that data doesn’t guarantee a win every time, it may stack the odds of outfoxing your competition in your favor. Anything worth doing in inbound marketing is worth measuring. So, if it’s worth doing it, measure it. If it’s not worth measuring, don’t do it.