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SD Inbound Marketing - Event Recap

By Madison Potter

HUG17

Introduction to Event

This past week, GreenRope had the privilege of attending the San Diego Inbound Marketing event. HUG 2017 is an inbound marketing experience purely focused on accessible and up-to-date education, experiential learning, and the idea of organizations building trust with and attracting the right audience. Such an exciting day filled with keynote speakers, breakout sessions, book signings, food trucks and networking! We want to share some of these great insights and important elements from the event with you, with hopes that your business will notice an impact from this valuable information! Continue reading to learn more about just a few of the incredible speakers from the event and a few highlights on growth hacking, content planning, as well as Facebook marketing focuses and trends in 2017.

 

1. Speaker: Neil Patel “Growth Hacking” HUG1

Key Topics:

  • Keep engagement through content upgrades and animated exit pop-ups
  • Selling your Product through webinars
  • Integrating geo-location on your site
  • Asking your audience to help market your business
  • Quizzing your clients for engagement and insight

 

Neil Patel was the first keynote of the day, and started off the event strong. Walking up on the stage, he had this quiet confidence that compelled the audience to pay full attention, and connect with Neil on a personal level. Neil is the co-founder of Crazy Egg and Hello Bar, and had no problem sharing his wisdom and experience with the crowd of a few hundred people. His presentation was all about how to create an onboarding process that makes people addicted to your product and/or service. First you need to understand what your business is about and what you are offering, then you can market it to your customers in a way that makes it hard to refuse. Oftentimes, the sales cycle is not clean cut such as yes/no buying, but more of a relationship that you are trying to build and nurture.

Neil shared many tips including the understanding that “the money is in the people that say no.” Meaning that although a client might not purchase the first time through your website, all hope is not lost - and can actually lead to more revenue. Take this time to understand your customers intentions and what brought them to your site. In this case, your goal is to direct these potential clients back to your site and collect their email addresses. This can be done in various ways, including using content upgrades or creating animated exit pop-ups (using gifs). These two options actually increased Neil’s email collection by 38% and 42.2% respectively, and ultimately lead to higher conversions.

Also, Neil encouraged the audience to quiz our visitors. Once the visitor starts the process and goes through the steps, they begin to feel invested. Now, in order for the visitor to view the result of their quiz, they would need to add their email address. Of course, not all clients will fill out their information, but since they feel invested and have committed to this quiz - Neil recorded an increase of email collections by 108.3%!

These “growth hacking” tips that Neil shared primarily focused on increasing the number of email collections for clients. The next step is to convert those potential clients into paying customers of your product or service. That is where an integrated CRM platform comes into play. You know where to start looking.

 

2. Workshop: Jon Wuebben - Content Planning & Production Strategies

HUG2Key Topics:

  • Understanding & capturing your brand essence
  • Understanding your target market and audience
  • Surveying the competition and their content
  • Creating buyer personas
  • Brainstorming topic ideas and specific content types
  • Performing keyword research
  • Creating your content plan and editorial calendar
  • Getting the content done… producing amazing content, day in, day out

A very insightful workshop was hosted by Jon Wuebben, and was all about Content Planning and Production Strategies. Jon is a recognized expert on the topics of content marketing, content strategy, marketing technology and the future of marketing. He works with companies like Konica Minolta, Intuit, Kimberly Clark and marketing agencies world wide. Throughout his workshop, Jon emphasized that without a plan, nothing really works. To create anything incredible, you need to know what comes first, second and third. And you need to know how to carve out your own little piece of the market - with content, of course!

Start by asking yourself this: What is our content marketing mission statement?

This is an important question to answer and understand, as your answer will inform every other part of the planning process.

The workshop flowed from first understanding and capturing your brand essence for your business. Being specific and knowledgeable about what you provide will help you better and more clearly understand your target market and audience. A great way to get to know where your business stands is by surveying the competition and their content - which will help you find a differentiating factor to attract your specific buyer personas.

Once you understand what you are selling, who you are selling to, and where you stand in the scheme of things - it is time to start brainstorming topic ideas and specific content types. This includes being open minded to different opportunities, and performing keyword research to find out what others are searching for. The most important part of this brainstorming and background research is to start creating your content plan and editorial calendar. The last big point of this process is getting the content done, you want to produce amazing content day in and day out! Jon emphasized that “this content doesn’t have to be perfect, it has to be good!

This session demonstrated the important elements of content planning and production. When planning and creating content, you want to be real and interesting. Try not to have too many people making additions and changes, as “Over-editing can loose the fresh, raw feel from the first draft.” The content you produce about your business needs to connect with your clients and help them understand the important elements about your business so the can

We definitely recommend looking into his new book, “Content is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web and Mobile” for a better understanding of how you can take the important elements and implement them immediately for a big impact.

 

3. Speaker: Mari Smith - Facebook Marketing 2017: What To Focus On For Maximum Results

HUG3

We all wear two hats - Marketers and Users” - Mari Smith

Key Topics:

  • How to maximize 2017 Facebook trends and opportunities
  • Proven high-ROI methods
  • Step-by-step processes
  • Specific tactics for success
  • Your strategic action plan

Often referred to as “the Queen of Facebook,” Mari Smith is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Facebook marketing and social media. With Mari’s infectious attitude and enthusiasm, it is not hard to believe that she is an in-demand speaker that travels the world to keynote and train small business owners on the effectiveness of Facebook.

From the moment Mari walked on stage, she commanded the room with diving straight into understanding Facebook’s 2017 trends and opportunities. All the tactics she presented were proven to be successful in obtaining high ROI (Return On Investment) for companies using Facebook as a form of engagement and exposure.

During her presentation, Mari emphasized that Video and Mobile is a “Mega Trend” within Facebook’s future. She backed this up by showing all the new updates and additions starting within Facebook, which includes the new video tab on the mobile devices (mainly available within the US). This new shift with the video’s being so popular stems from the push for people to be more real, living in the moment, and being “more you.”

 

TIP: Check out these Top Video Apps

Lumyer

Flixel Cinemagraph

Animoto

Ripl

 

The Biggest trend we see in Social Media is the shift towards proving your authenticity and connecting with others on a personal level. This is the reason that there is a huge increase in the use of video, and the introduction of “Facebook Live” which helps people stay connected. Live video is all about ‘being real’ and showing your authentic self, which allows others to connect with you.

 

This new trend within Social Media is showing that “Eyeballs are monetizable” and that is causing pressure for businesses to jump on this band wagon. An avenue that is gaining traction to reach your customers is through Facebook Messenger Ads, which are becoming more important to reach your customer. The pressure is building for marketers to embrace the technology, or get left behind…

Facebook is such a powerful tool with trying to reach this huge network of clients, as the majority of them have their information already on display. This new trend towards using social media and Facebook Messenger Ads are becoming more important to reach your customer, as this shows directly in their inbox and is customized to their feed and searches. Many smaller business can greatly be benefited by making use of social media, especially Facebook, since you are going directly to where the customers are. By connecting through Social Media on an off-day, or when the potential clients are not working, they are more likely to spend time looking into your product/service and increase their consideration.

With this powerhouse of an application that has developed over the years, it is no wonder that Facebook is gaining popularity among businesses as a way to get in front of their customers. This is the perfect example of how Mari described today’s marketing efforts, and saying that “We all wear two hats - Marketers and Users.” Maybe this was the dream all along, and Mark Zuckerberg is way on his way to fulfilling his dream of connecting the whole world through the Internet, and specifically Facebook.

 

Wrap Up

The HUG 2017 event was such an insightful and eventful day, which demonstrated many different ways to look into your business' inbound marketing efforts. As marketers, we are all competing for exposure and to increase our customer base - sometimes all it takes is gaining a new 2017 perspective. Understanding what is driving your customers, where they seem to “stuck,” and how to motivate them towards selecting your business is the goal in this years Inbound Marketing event.

HUG4

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