What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing promotes your company with content that appeals to your target customer and aligns to their needs. It earns attention by drawing prospects toward your company.

Content should be personalized to the potential customer, and be crafted to best meet them at different stages of interaction with your company.

Examples of inbound marketing include blogs, social media, videos, podcasts, newsletters, whitepapers, and more.

How inbound marketing converts visitors into leads:

  • Visitors reach your website
  • They click call-to-action button
  • Upon doing so they reach a landing page
  • Now interested, they fill out a form

Any good inbound marketing program will also include lead scoring and lead nurturing.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategy of creating and distributing content that captures the attention of your audience by being informative, relevant, and captivating.

A strong content marketing campaign will be consistent and compelling. The goal of content marketing is not to sell directly, but to drive sales by cultivating a targeted audience and building brand awareness, and eventually, brand evangelism.

Content marketing should engage through all available channels.

What is Social Media?

Social media is online communication via websites and other virtual communities in which people can create, share, and collaborate.

Social media is a key marketing tool that can be utilized to expand awareness of your company or product, drive traffic to your website, and increase your customer base.

Some common social networks are Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

The goal of search engine optimization, or SEO, is to make your website visible by earning a high ranking in the search results pages of a search engine.

To effectively employ SEO, your marketing team must know how search engines work, what people are searching for, the terms and keywords entered into search engines, and which search engines your targets uses.

SEO does not affect paid or sponsored search results.

What is Page Rank?

PageRank is one part of the algorithm used by Google to decide placement in search engine results. PageRank scores websites based on factors such as importance, reliability, and relevance.

The goal of earning a high PageRank is not necessarily to obtain a high placement in search results, but to have your site viewed as important. 

What is a Paid Search?

Paid search, a form of web marketing, is advertising within the sponsored listings of a search engine.

Two primary types of paid search:

  • Cost-per-click – You pay the search engine for each individual click
  • Cost-per-impression – You pay the search engine for every 1,000 times ad appears on page
What is Organic Website Traffic?

Organic traffic accounts for visits to your website due to relevancy, not paid advertisements. These visits come from people clicking on the unpaid search results of a search engine.

As organic search results account for almost two-thirds of web traffic, taking the time to produce strong content and create value for visitors of your website can really pay off.

What is Direct Traffic?

Direct traffic is the number of visitors who directly accessed your website.

Direct traffic is important, because these visitors directly sought you out, meaning that they already have some interest in what you do.

What is Referral Traffic?

Referral traffic is visitors to your website that have arrived from links on other websites.

Referral traffic is useful to track, because it gives you an idea of what sources are sending the most visitors to your website.

What is Link Popularity?

Link popularity is the number of quality links to your website from other sites. It is one of the factors that affects search engine results placement.

Three types of links increase link popularity:

  • Internal Links – Links within a website
  • Inbound Links – Links to your website from other websites
  • Outbound Links – Links to other websites from your website
What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who leave your website after only viewing one page.

A high bounce rate indicates that your website may be lacking in speed, functionality, or information that visitors seek.

What is a Call To Action?

A call-to-action is just what it sounds like, a prompt to a user to take action. They can take the form of a button, banner, graphic, or text on a website.

A good call to action should be clear, attractive, hold a value proposition, and lead to a specific landing page.

What is a Landing Page?

A Landing page is a specific, stand-alone webpage designed to receive visitors, usually those who have clicked on an SEO search result or online advertisement.

The two most common types of landing pages are Click-through and Lead Generation.

What is the Sales Cycle?

The sales cycle is the process that takes place from initial contact with a lead to close of sale. 

What is a Lead?

A lead is a potential sales contact that may have the interest, authority, and budget to purchase your product or service.

  • Unknown/Raw Lead – An unqualified contact
  • Scored Lead – Lead that has been evaluated for further qualification
What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is the act of developing consumer awareness and interest in your products and services.

Lead generation fuels the early stage of your sales cycle.

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a way to evaluate a lead’s level of interest by assigning them a value ranked against a defined scale that you’ve created. This scale must be agreed on by both sales and marketing. It is based on both explicit and implicit information about a prospect:

  • Explicit – Factors such as size of company, industry, title, etc.
  • Implicit – Factors such as engagement with marketing, page visits, email opens, etc.

Lead scoring is a crucial step in the sales process, because it allows you to filter your lists.

What is a Marketing Qualified Lead?

A marketing qualified lead is a lead that has shown a level of interest based on their interaction and engagement with your marketing efforts. These leads can be nurtured further or given to your sales team.

This lead will often be one of the strongest leads you can pass to your sales team for further qualification.

What is a Sales Accepted Lead?

A sales accepted lead is a marketing qualified lead that has been passed to and accepted by the sales team for further qualification.

What is a Sales Qualified Lead?

A sales qualified lead is a lead that has met the qualifications of the sales team. These leads have a good probability of closing. 

What is Lead Nurturing?

Lead nurturing is raising your company’s profile in a prospect’s eyes. Though that prospect may not be ready to buy at the time, they can still be led toward a sale through personalized messaging and contact. 

What is Pipeline?

Pipeline is a representation of the sales process of a business. Effective pipeline will have clearly defined stages that an opportunity or lead will place into along the sales cycle.

Managing your pipeline allows you to keep track of how business is doing as well as allow you to most effectively nurture your leads.

What is Pipeline Velocity?

Pipeline velocity is a metric used to measure the rate of change in your pipeline.  A high velocity means that sales are closing at a good pace and business is running well.

What is an Opportunity?

An opportunity is a qualified lead that has reached the point of near-term close. An opportunity is a lead that has a defined pain, the authority, an established time frame, and the budget to make a deal.

What is Pain?

Pain is a need that a customer has that a business aims to solve. A customer is not going to buy a product or service if they do not have a problem that requires a solution.

What is Customer Lifetime Value?

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the projection of the value a customer has to a business over the duration of their relationship, based on historical and predictive data.

Predictive CLV is useful because it gives you an idea of whether or not the future relationship is worth the potentially high cost of acquiring a customer.

What is Churn?

Churn is the turnover of your customers. Churn rate is the percentage of customers lost. 

For a business to succeed, it needs to have a higher growth rate than churn rate. 

What are Metrics?

Metrics are measurements, statistics, or analytics used to track progress. Tracking metrics is crucial to knowing how your business is doing. 

What are Leading Indicators?

Leading indicators are used to predict the outcome of a process. They allow you to get a sense of future business.

What are Lagging Indicators?

Lagging indicators follow an event or process. They allow you to measure how things are going.