Easy to Follow Inbound Marketing Sequence

There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet… a real LOT of stuff. Products, Services, Kanye West and door-to-door pizza delivery. It’s all there.

There’s also direct mail, TV, Radio and emails. That’s a lot of noise surrounding each and every one of us each and every day. Oh… almost forgot, there’s competition too.

So what makes you so damn special?

Wrong question! The question should be “What makes your customers think you’re so damn special?” Until your customers realize that you have more to offer than all the noise surrounding them, you’re no better than your competition… or Kanye West.

So the new question becomes; “how do I show my special degree of specialness?” Well, truth be known – I don’t know. I’m just a guy pecking away on a keyboard. But I can show you what I do to make my customers think my company is special. And I can do it with pictures!

Let me go over the strategy and give you the background

I’m the Director of Web Services for a Digital Marketing Agency in Southern California. Although our agency is very special, you can’t swing a dead cat across PCH without hitting another agency. Unless we can demonstrate that we can do the job better than our esteemed competition, you would have no reason to give us a second look.

So what warrants a second look? FREE STUFF! People love free stuff. Not just any free stuff…it’s got to be useful free stuff.

Let me take you step-by-step through one of our Inbound Marketing campaigns:

We wrote a very useful piece of premium content. An eBook called: “the digital marketing smell test – How to Hire an Agency that doesn’t Stink”. It’s a guide targeted to businesses who are evaluating agencies like us. It’s a peak behind the curtain. It even comes with a checklist of questions to ask (that many agencies don’t want you to ask) and acceptable responses.

So how much is this monument to literary genius you might ask? $20? $50? $74.95? Wrong! It’s free (but you already guessed that).

When someone downloads our free eBook, what do we get? We get to be special for the moment and offer them something else of value... which in turn makes us even more special.

Obviously our goal doesn’t stop with giving away free content. Our objective is for them to take us up on our secondary offer of a free WebScan™ web presence analysis. Whereas the eBook gives our potential clients some insight into our industry and a guide to help them select the right agency, the WebScan™ analysis gives them insight into their own web presence and to some extent, their competition.

It’s a Win-Win, The business gets some ridiculously important information about themselves and their competition, and we simply get an opportunity interact with them to see if we are a good fit to work together. Nothing nefarious or tricky or underhanded.

Here is how our sequence works. You can follow the same sequence of events, but your offer has to be value to your target market. Now for the pictures.

Step 1: Initial offer

Notice there is no navigation or distractions on the page. There is only one call to action. Download the eBook, or leave and go about your business.

 

Step 2: Thank You Page with secondary offer

This is where they would download the eBook, but notice the secondary offer on the right. Also notice the return of the navigation. If they want to take a look around the site at this point, I’m fine with that. By the way, as they are going to this page to download the eBook, they are simultaneously getting an email also inviting them to take us up on the more valuable WebScan™ analysis. We are still testing this page, so it might already change by the time you read this.

Step 3: Request the Analysis

If they are interested in the WebScan offer on the previous page, they go to this page to give us some additional information that we need for to run the report. We use “Smart Form” technology, so anything they previously filled out will already be filled out and waiting for them.

Step 4: Analysis Offer Confirmation

Once they fill out the request for the WebScan analysis, they go to the final Thank You page which just lets them know what they can expect, and when they can expect it. And of course, they get a complimentary email with essentially the same information. And as long as they are here, I invite them to contact me personally with my email address, and connect with me on Social Media. We could have them connect with our company profiles, but we found that people seem to prefer the personal touch. 

Step 5: Monitor and Improve

There’s always room for improvement. We found that we got a very high download rate for the eBook, but significantly less with the secondary offer (which was actually more valuable to the consumer). We updated the download page (Step 2 above) to add the WebScan offer directly to the eBook download page. See the image below.  Guess what? You guessed it… a significant improvement in the response to our offer!

Well that’s pretty basic, but you get the concept. If you would like to walk yourself through the actual process and score the eBook and WebScan, you’re more than welcome to do so. Just click on the image below and experience the glory of inbound marketing.

So how do we get people to the first landing page?

Well I’d tell you, but I have to go. I’m expecting a pizza delivery.

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