In its most basic form InboundPHX (IPHX) is a place for marketing professionals to gather and learn from other marketing professionals.  What people who don’t attend miss, is the buzz and excitement that IPHX provides. The moment you enter the room the energy is a tangible thing; ideas are shared, connections are made and that’s even before the first speaker has been introduced.

According to event organizer Mike Garland, Partner at Alaniz Marketing, that’s the whole idea. “In 2014 the first InboundPHX was developed to fill the knowledge gap, helping marketing and sales professionals to learn more in a fast paced format,” stated Garland.  This most recent IPHX was no different. For the June 2015 event Garland gathered four of the top inbound marketing experts to share best practices and industry tips and tricks related to the four stages of the Inbound Marketing Methodology. This post will focus on the Attract presentation.

Attract 

Strangers to visitors

Larry Levenson, partner at Alaniz Marketing kicked off IPHX with the topic of Attract.  With his compelling mix of passion for inbound marketing and  his down to earth street ‘tech’ smarts   Larry offers a deep understanding of the details of the technology behind inbound marketing that you won’t find in any published play book.

Key takeaways

Inbound in its purest form attracts people to your website and blog.  Like in Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams” if you publish, they will come.  The trick is to publish content that addresses your customer’s needs. “Stop selling and start helping” said Levenson.  “Answer their needs and concerns and you will drive traffic to your website.”

Attraction is a numbers game.

If 1000 people come to your website you may get one customers.

“Some people look at that and say, that’s terrible,” said Levenson.  “I look at that and say AWESOME!”

Bottom line is if you know those statistics, you know how much traffic you need to drive to your site  in order to gain those new customers. So, if you want ten new customers, then you know you need 10,000 leads coming in.  The trick is then figuring out how to bring those qualified leads to your site.

How do we drive traffic to the website?

Blogging

This is basic and a must for any business attempting to drive traffic to their website.

Businesses who blog have:

• 434% more indexed pages
• 55% more website visitors
• 97% more inbound links,
• and B2b companies who blog get 67% more leads than those who don’t blog.

Social Media

Your business must be on social media. Today’s social media help’s businesses:

• Share remarkable content.
• Engage with your prospects.
• Put a human face on your business and finally,
• Twitter is one of the best builders of inbound links.

So which social media network should you use?  According to Levenson, It depends on your business. The trick is to test and see which works best for you, but, he states that if you’re a B2B, LinkedIn better be on the list! Why?

• 43% of all marketers have found a customer via LinkedIn

Keyword optimization

A Levenson street smart tip on a quick, easy way to  find out if your long tailed keyword is being searched for in Google.

• Enter your keyword into the Google search bar,
• hit search
• go all the way to the very bottom,
• at the bottom there will either be 8 longtailed keyword links or no links.
• if you don’t see your long tailed keyword, it’s not searched for regularly, if at all.

According to Levenson this isn’t always foolproof, but in a pinch it offers a pretty accurate prediction.

Other Keyword tips

• Pick keywords that aren’t competitive.
• Stick with long tailed keywords over short tailed ones and finally,

Solve for the searcher, not the search engine.  Relevant useful content makes for happy humans.

Webpages

According to Levenson websites should have at least 51 webpages.  Now, before you think he’s lost his mind, Larry notes that every blog  you create becomes and indexed webpage.

Websites with 50-100 webpages generate 48% more traffic than companies with 1-50 pages.

And finally

As with all things Inbound always remember;

• Test and tweak
• Test and tweak
• Test and tweak
• Repeat as needed.

Also presenting on the four stages of the Inbound Marekting Methodology at June’s IPHX:

• Sheila Kloefkorn, CEO/President, KEO Marketing, Inc. – CONVERT
• Todd Speranzo, VP of Marketing, Avella Specialty Pharmacy – CLOSE
• Joey Borane, VP of Marketing, Bailey Marketing – DELIGHT!