According to
Hubspot,
"lead generation is the science of converting site visitors into leads. In inbound marketing, visitors become leads once they fill out a form in return for some sort of offer on a targeted landing page. These leads can then be qualified and distributed to the sales team who will work to convert them into customers."
We work a lot with school districts in various ways to assist them in their marketing and communications efforts. We're also a Certified Hubspot Partner. So, it just became a natural progression to question whether lead generation can work in school districts. Let's start answering this question by looking at the first 2 parts of Hubspot's definition and apply them to school districts.
Lead generation is the science of converting site visitors into leads.
School district websites, the good ones, typically have a high volume of traffic. Especially if the district is constantly creating compelling, search optimized content. Many districts don't capitalize on their high traffic volume for one simple reason. They're not focused on generating leads. Why? Because a school district believes it isn't selling a product or service, which isn't entirely true. School districts are in the business of educating young people and equipping them with the knowledge or skills required to graduate, maybe go to college, or in some cases, enter the workplace. So, a district is selling a service; education. Career technical centers kind of understand this idea because they have to actively recruit students into their programs to survive. However, traditional k12 schools are missing a huge opportunity because they don't see the education they're providing as a service to their students or the students' parents. Traditional k-12 schools should focus on lead generation for no other reason than to increase the reach of their e-newsletters and social media efforts.
In inbound marketing, visitors become leads once they fill out a form in return for some sort of offer on a targeted landing page.
The whole idea behind inbound marketing is to pull your best customers and prospects to your website by creating great content, promoting that content through social media, and then converting site visitors to leads. I talked about it earlier. School districts that are creating great content are already pulling their "customers" (students, parents, alumni & community members) to their website. They need to take the next step and create calls-to-action that link to landing pages. These landing pages need to offer the visitor something they don't typically get by visiting the website on a regular basis. So, if a school district is utilizing e-newsletters, they need to create a call-to-action (CTA) and place it on the web pages that are getting the highest amount of traffic. Place the CTA above the fold of the web page, and link it to a landing page where visitors can sign up to receive the district's e-newsletter. Tell the visitor exactly what they're going to get from receiving the e-newsletter, how often they'll receive it, and reiterate your privacy policy that you're not going to share their personal information with anyone, and that it will be used for the sole purpose of keeping them informed about the district and its activities.
Can school districts use inbound marketing? Absolutely! While districts aren't trying to sell a product or service like a business, they are selling themselves to a specific group of customers who have a strong emotional connection. The idea of using inbound marketing techniques to grow a district's e-newsletter database is just one example.
What other ways can school districts use inbound marketing in their marketing & communication efforts? We'd love to hear your feedback!
At it's very core, inbound marketing is all about pulling prospective clients to your great content, converting those prospects to leads, nurturing them, and then closing the deal. When you go bass fishing, you have to lure the fish to your hook, react to the bite, set the hook and land the fish. So bass fishing and inbound marketing are the same? Not really, but there are 3 areas that bass fishing and inbound marketing resemble one another!
Lures Are A Start
Look in any bass angler's tacklebox and you'll find a myriad of different lures for different situations. Spinnerbaits are great early spring/fall baits to use when bass are chasing shad and other bait fish. Jigs are pretty much a good all-purpose lure when your looking for the "big bite" Plastic worms are perfect for those hot summer months when the bass are a bit more lethargic. Ultimately, all these baits are great for catching bass, but you have to know when to use them.
An inbound marketers "tacklebox" isn't much different from a bass angler's tacklebox. Different tools for different situations. Blogs are great content to show a business' expertise in a particular area. Whitepapers are even better content than blogs because a business can actually go into more detail about a particular service or a client success from implementing a business' product or service. Videos are great content because viewers can instantly build a connection with a face, or a business can show its product or service in action. These are just three examples of "lures" available to an inbound marketer. However, just like a bass angler, an inbound marketer must know when to use them.
Location, Location, Location
Bass anglers may have the greatest lures in the world, but if they aren't around fish, they'll never catch a single bass. Bass anglers use lake maps to locate ledges, points, and other structure that could hold bass. Then, once their on the water, they use pretty sophisticated depth finders to find these structures and determine if they have the right elements (brush, logs, pea gravel, chunk rock) to hold bass. Once they've found a "spot", they then start fishing to see if any bass are in these locations.
Inbound marketers are no different, except their "lake maps" are the internet and social media. Once a company is on the "lake" they have to do some research to find the right elements. Inbound marketers do this through tasks like keyword research and social media research. Once they've found the right elements, inbound marketers start optimizing their website for the best keywords and start listening to social media conversations to find out what others are saying about the products or services that are similar to those of their business. Inbound marketers then start "fishing" by sharing their great content with the social mediasphere, through lead nurturing campaigns, and pay-per-click campaigns just to name a few.
Rinse & Repeat
Once a bass angler has located fish on a structure with certain elements using a certain lure, they'll start looking for other areas on the lake with the same attributes. Once they find areas with these attributes, bass anglers will start trying to build a "pattern". Once they've found a pattern, they can start catching bass by the barrel full!
Inbound marketers are similar, in that once they've started to convert visitors to leads, they start analyzing the data to find how the visitors found their content and how those visitors converted to leads. The name of the game in inbound marketing is lead conversion. Once an inbound marketer starts converting site visitors to leads, they can hand the leads to the sales team to close the deal.
So, bass fishing is a lot like inbound marketing. They both have tools, are all about location, and require a great deal of analysis to experience success. What other ways do you think bass fishing (or fishing in general) and inbound marketing are similar? We'd love to get your feedback!
Photo courtesy of my personal tacklebox
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Start your journey today to become an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional with these great resources from Rock Solid Media LLC.
While many Ohio school districts are still avoiding social media, there are several that have embraced the revolution. Two districts cited by Shane Haggerty (follow Shane on Twitter), Marketing & Communications Director for Ohio Hi-Point Career Center, include Pickerington City Schools and their involvment in the "We are Pickerington" Facebook Fan Page. The other is the Cincinnati Public Schools' "I Am CPS" campaign. Shane also discusses why many Ohio school districts are not utilizing social media, plus he shares some advice for school districts considering the implementation of social media.
We hope you've enjoyed our 3 part interview series on school district social media. Visit our YouTube Channel to view all 3 videos.
If there's a topic you would like to learn more about related to social media, lead generation, email marketing or any other aspect of inbound marketing or communications, please contact us and we will work to bring that topic to our blog!
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Start your journey toward becoming an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional today by accessing Rock Solid Media's IMU Resources!
Inbound Marketing utilizes techniques focused on getting found by your small business' best prospects. This form of marketing is more efficient and cost-effective than traditional "push" marketing. By combining great content with social media, landing pages, conversion forms and website analytics, companies and organizations are able to reduce their cost per lead by nearly 60% based on data from Hubspot's 2010 State of Inbound Marketing.
Inbound Marketing University is a training program focused on teaching the inbound marketing methodology to marketers around the world. IMU involves 16 online courses that provide you with in-depth information and knowledge about the methodology of inbound marketing, and how you can apply these methods in your current marketing efforts.
Becoming an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional has many advantages, least of which are the five listed below.
- It's FREE - Inbound Marketing University is a FREE training program designed to teach you the methodology behind inbound marketing. Who doesn't love FREE certification programs!
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- Increase Your Knowledge - It is said that knowledge is power. By completing the training courses, 16 total, you will have the knowledge about inbound marketing methods to start incorporating them into your company's overall marketing strategy.
- Expand Your Opportunities - Becoming an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional can open up doors for new opportunities for yourself within your present environment. The IMU certification shows that you've achieved a great level of understanding, and are capable to lead the inbound marketing efforts of your company.
- New Career Possibilities - The IMU Certification, like it or not, looks AWESOME on a resume. Plus, when you interview for jobs with companies that just have a "brochure" website, you can knock them off their feet with your knowledge about the benefits of inbound marketing. It's definitely a leg up in a challenging job market.
At the end of the day, the value you'll get from becoming an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional is priceless. Opportunities for growth and advancement are endless because companies large and small will need to start implementing inbound marketing methods to grow in this changing economy.
Start Your Journey Today
Start your journey toward becoming an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional today by accessing Rock Solid Media's IMU Resources!
One of the facts that we'll never deny is that we're a small business. This helps us have a better understanding of the challenges our clients face on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. When it comes to website performance, we're like every other small business in that we strive to generate a return-on-investment from our website.
In March 2010, we started using Hubspot and its full suite of products for small business. We now have the ability to update & change every single part of our website based on data, and you can't refute data. More important than using Hubspot's software is the fact that we have fully entrenched ourselves in the practice of inbound marketing. We've bought in, hook, line and sinker, to the inbound marketing methodology in that same time period and have started seeing small successes.
Baby Steps
One of these "small successes" has been a pretty significant increase in our website traffic from organic search, referrals, social media and email marketing. Here's a screenshot straight from our Analytics. You'll notice the May 2010 data is slightly faded, when compared to March & April, because we're still collecting data.
Here's a month over month breakdown based on each reporting metric.
| | Organic
Search
| Referrals | Email
Marketing
| Social
Media
| Other
Campaigns
|
March-10
| 44
| 27
| 0
| 42
| 0
|
April-10
| 42
| 35 | 6
| 59
| 0
|
May-10
| 58
| 34 | 16
| 98
| 2
|
How We Did It..So Far
Two areas that have grown significantly in the last 3 months are organic search and social media. This growth can be attributed to 3 things we've done as part of our inbound marketing strategy, and can be applied to any business.
- Blogging - Blogging is one of the central activities to any successful inbound marketing strategy. By creating and maintaining a blog, we've been able to share insights into our industry, client success stories and our own success stories. One of the biggest challenges we've overcome centers around the topics and information we share in each blog post. We'll save how we overcame this obstacle for another blog post!
- On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - We'll never claim to be SEO experts. But, we think we're pretty darn good because we've increased our organic search traffic over the last 3 months. When we started using Hubspot, we utilized the Keyword Grader function to figure out which keywords we ranked for at the time, as well as uncovering keywords we wanted rank for in the search engines. We've also focused on long-tail keywords and monitoring the keywords visitors are using to find our website. Finally, we've started optimizing our old blog posts for SEO. Again, very easy to do all these tasks with the Hubspot software. But, it's something we've made a commitment to reviewing on a regular basis.
- Social Media Marketing - In a previous post, we looked out our website traffic generated from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you didn't read it, you'll be surprised at the data. From a more macro-level, we've made our blog, and other content, the focus of our social media marketing efforts. Our goal is that our blog posts will spark a conversation with our friends, followers and group members. These conversations are what's critical to social media marketing success. Good, bad or ugly, we've made a commitment to be involved in the conversations that take place everyday in the social media world.
The Next Steps
The last step in the inbound marketing methodology is to analyze and repeat. So, we're going to keep applying the same strategies we outlined above, while at the same time increasing our content. Will we make some small changes? Sure. You have to evolve to stay relevant. We have a checklist of items that we want to create based around our goals of getting found and converting visitors into leads. After all, leads turn into sales, and that's what every business needs and wants!
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If you don't believe that LinkedIn works for marketing a business, then stop reading this RIGHT NOW.
Leave. Go read the Wall Street Journal.
....
Are you gone yet?
....
No.
You're still here?
Good. Then it's obvious that you've got some brains about you when it comes to social media marketing. One of the driving forces behind an effective inbound marketing strategy is promoting the great content that you create on your website. Whether it's a blog, whitepaper, video, e-book...whatever. You need to promote your content. The easiest and most cost-effective venue for promoting content is social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Buzz.
Let's focus on LinkedIn. Here's a REALLY brief history of the growth of LinkedIn. Check out LinkedIn's company history for a closer look, if you have the urge.
- 2002 - Started in a living room with 5 guys
- 2003 - Ends the year with 81,000 members
- 2004 - Ends the year with 1.6 million members
- 2005 - Ends the year with 4 million members
- 2006 - Ends the year with 8 million members
- 2007 - Reaches 15 million members by September
- 2008 - Ends the year with 33 million members
- 2009 - Reaches 40 million members by May 5
- 2010 - Currrently boasts over 65 million members
In less than 10 years, LinkedIn went from an idea to a power-player in the social mediasphere. One of the best parts about LinkedIn is that they've built a membership base around the idea of business networking. Business Networking. It's repeated for a reason. LinkedIn, simply stated, is all about building you social business network. It's a virtual business after-hours event with no time restrictions.
Why are we talking about LinkedIn? Couple reasons. First, we're born-again believers in the power of LinkedIn. Since our partnership began with Hubspot 3 months ago, we've realized, first-hand, the power that LinkedIn has to help drive traffic to your website. As of the date of this post, LinkedIn is our number one source of social media traffic to our website. Check out the numbers below.
Second, we want more people to not only join LinkedIn as members, but also to be active participants in the discussions that occur within the LinkedIn groups. We're a part of nearly 20 different groups on LinkedIn today. There are some great conversations taking place about anything business-related you can imagine. Get involved in these conversations, especially when the topic is related to your expertise.
Are our numbers going to compel you to run over to LinkedIn and start networking with other business professionals? Maybe, but probably not. That's okay though. We see a big opportunity to promote our content on LinkedIn, and you not joining is one less voice that we have to compete with for people's attention!