The Six Best MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Articles of 2017

In 2017, these were the most popular inbound marketing articles with MarketingSherpa readers …

How to write compelling content that will keep your customers hooked

“If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger,” said Jay Baer, President, Convince and Convert.

This blog post offers some tips for telling your brands’ story with content marketing — and having your customers help tell that story as well. For example, if you’re interested in making user-generated content part of your content marketing, put the customer first. As Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales advises, you need to start by asking “What do people want? What do they need?”

Read Content Marketing 101: How to write compelling content in five tips for ideas on improving your content marketing.

How to use social media tactics to make your emails more enticing

Email can be an inbound channel as well. After all, when practicing opt-in email marketing, email is just another way to deliver content and promotions that people ask for. To really succeed in email, see what you can learn from other channels — like social media.

“I was running just a social campaign for them and spending $500 and just putting it out there — hotel plus ticket package — and targeting people with just the base offer,” said Melani Evans, Director of Corporate Marketing, Affinity Gaming.

Evans team ended up bringing the promotion to email, using a social tactic — gamification — to get a 400% increase in rate of ticket sales.

Another successful tactic is integrating video into email sends.

“We may do like a quick 10-, 15-second reel of an auto show … and then we’ll have the full five minutes posted and ready for YouTube. We’ll break out a piece for our email,” said John Ken, Director of Customer Retention Marketing, Edmunds.com.

Read How to Use Social Media Tactics to Make Your Emails More Enticing to get ideas for leveraging lessons from social media to improve your email marketing.

The best of inbound marketing from MarketingSherpa Summit 2017

“Ultimately, the goal is to be authentic. Use Snapchat like a real user. And do your best you can to engage with Snapchat users on their level,” Frank Danna, Content Director, Softway, said at MarketingSherpa Summit 2017.

In addition to the importance of authenticity, speakers at MarketingSherpa Summit shared nuggets of wisdom about SEO, content, UGC and social media, like:

• “What works in PPC does not always work in organic” — Brett Billick, Chief Marketing Officer, SpareFoot
• “The challenge of content is you must be an expert — to people who are experts” — Ginger Shimp, Senior Marketing Director, SAP
• “If something happens to Facebook or Instagram, we want to make sure our business doesn’t die” — Blake Pinsker, Marketing and Brand Director, MVMT
• “Fun videos perform much better higher in the funnel” — Max Anderson, Video Producer, Nextiva
• “Don’t be afraid to be YOU” — Marc Lobliner, Chief Marketing Officer, TigerFitness.com

Of course, it takes more than a few out-of-context quotes to succeed in inbound marketing. So read the full article — Sherpa Summit 2017 Takeaways: Make your customer more than just a number with these six speaker tactics — to learn some transferable principles from these successful customer-first marketers.

Overcoming The Jackson 5 Effect in content marketing

There is hesitance on the part of some inbound marketers to let employees engage freely in social media. What if they do something that reflects poorly on the brand?

But when we asked Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, IBM, about balancing trust with empowering employees, he didn’t share those concerns, saying “if they’re not going to give away trade secrets in a parking garage at midnight, they’re probably not going to do it in the Twittersphere.”

So, trust your employees. And then turn them into brand-promoting, lead-generating SMEs (subject matter experts) with ideas from this blog post — Content Marketing: You must overcome The Jackson 5 Effect to find subject matter experts.

The customer is always right … but not always right for your company

Customer feedback can be a treasure trove of gold, providing insights into why customers buy your products and refer your brand — and why they don’t.

But those nuggets of gold can be hidden among a whole lot of craggy rocks in social media feeds and customer service feedback.

Well, you need the right feedback mechanisms in place. For example, “Chatbots can be placed on social media messaging platforms and websites to handle customer questions,” said John Forrester, CMO at Inbenta.

From there, you must decide if the customer feedback is truly valuable and from a customer segment you can profitably serve. Get ideas for doing just that in this blog post — Customer-First Marketing: The customer is always right … but not always right for your company.

How Facebook video ads increased revenue $250K for a luxury property auctioneer

With customers buying properties in the $2.5 million and above range, it’s important for Concierge Auctions to not only sell a lifestyle, but to do so to a specific, targeted audience.

 “It's setting yourself apart, [with] the visuals that go with our brand — the very filmic nature, then the message that targets your audience, and then building [by] reaching the customers who matter most in your business,” said Krystal Aeby, Chief Marketing Officer, Concierge Auctions.

Read the full case study — Inbound Marketing: How Concierge Auctions increased revenue at least $250K through mobile Facebook ads — to learn how the marketers at this luxury real estate auction firm used targeted Facebook video ads to generate over 251,000 video views and increase revenue by at least $250,000.

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