"5 Reasons Your Inbound Marketing is Failing:" The IMPACT Show Ep.17 [Show Notes]

Inbound marketing takes time, yes, but you could also be struggling to see success due to some common struggles.

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick discussed 5 reasons your inbound marketing is failing, as well as the latest in augmented reality and how you could be misguided in your implementation of video.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

Like what you saw? Make sure to subscribe for email reminders and give us a review on iTunes.

Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

Before we get started our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Houston, and now Louisiana affected by Hurricane Harvey, as well as the people affected by the storms in southern Florida.

Two members of the IMPACT team, Brie (in Houston) and Britt (in Florida), have both been affected, as well as a member of our expanded family, John McTigue, and we just want you to know we love you and we’re thinking about you.

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, Bob and Nick share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught their eye and found interesting to share.

Augmented Reality

We recently found a sponsored post from Facebook saying, “Augmented reality technology will allow you to experience art in new ways - coming soon from Facebook.” There was no link, just a picture of an artist painting in their studio.

And, in a post by Search Engine Land, Brian Smith talked about how big players like Facebook and Apple are committing to the technology and he argues that AR will become more than just a novelty to marketers. 

Where we are:

• Pokemon Go brought augmented reality to the masses
• "Augmented reality isn’t just for gamers anymore. It can be a major asset for brands and their local marketing initiatives.”
• “Imagine billboards and advertisements that exist purely in the virtual world and offer exclusive deals and promotions to AR users.”
• Big companies:
• Apple reportedly hiring dozens of new mapping experts and engineers, assumed for AR
• And obviously Facebook… Where Zuckerberg confirmed the company’s commitment to AR at the recent Facebook F8 conference.

What does this mean for marketers?

• You can build an AR experience for your buyers
• Or, you can integrate your ads into existing AR experiences

Here are some examples of brands using AR:

• IKEA
• Jura
• Blippar example 1
• Blippar example 2 -  By pointing their cameras at particular objects, users can receive suggestions on similar or complementary products. A couple at a restaurant for dinner, for instance, could get wine pairing recommendations just by opening their camera apps.

Read More Here

Video is Being Misguided

• There is an over emphasis on video. People still like to read.
• Video should be used alongside of the written content you're already producing.
• Marketers will need to work even harder  
• Last year, we learned that almost half of consumers want to see more video content -- but almost the same amount also wanted to see more news articles.
• Research suggests:
  • People of all ages wanted to see more in-depth multimedia articles, eBooks, and blog posts, too -- and you shouldn't cast that segment of your audience aside in favor of solely creating content in the latest and most popular medium.
  • Most video being consumed was short and sweet and entertaining -- leaving plenty of room at the table for written content consumption, too.
• Ideally, you should be writing articles and reports, and then incorporating videos and other multimedia elements into them. 
• A challenge many marketers have is that videos are hard to make.
  • Consider a workshop from The Sales Lion.
• Video should also help your business drive results
• Read More from HubSpot Here

INBOUND Updates

IMPACT will be there the entire week, and four of our team members are speaking:

• Bob: “Your employees need to see their future at (you company here)” - His 6th time speaking at INBOUND
• Nick: “HubSpot Reboot: 5 Secrets Successful Marketers Wish They Had Known the First Time Around”
• Liz Murphy: “How to Create a Content Style Guide for Your Business”
  
  • Which we also have an article about here!
• Carina Duffy: “10 Things We've Learned from Doing Over a Hundred Website Throwdowns”

You can also find us in Club INBOUND where we'll be doing in-person Website Throwdowns. And if you're attending INBOUND, get your website critiqued (and score free swag), by reserving your spot here.

Main Topic: “5 Reasons Your Inbound Marketing is Failing”

Before we dig in, start thinking about how the things we’re talking apply to your company. If you have any challenges or questions that you want us to address, leave a comment or send us an email to show@impactplus.com. We’ll get to as many as we can either at the end of the show or during next week’s episode.

There are things you probably think you could be doing better or parts of your program that aren't clicking and you're wondering why. This isn't an all inclusive list, but here are the 5 most common reasons/struggles we see over and over again. 

1. You Don’t Understand How Your Buyer’s Buy

• In this information-accessible world… things are changing fast:
• If you’re a taxi company?
  • How people used to arrange transportation and how that is done today.
• If you’re a hotel?
  • Airbnb disrupting the hotel industry
• If you’re HubSpot?
  • How people purchase software for their business?
• If you’re a watch store? A furniture store?
• As a business, you need to evolve and understand how your buyer's buy in order to stay in front of your customers.
• Recommendation:
• Spend time with your customers
• Ask great questions
  • The questions they ask today, might not be the same one year from now.
• Document themes
• Answer their questions
• Revise often… the world is changing fast!

2. You're Not Matching Your Content to Your Buyer's Desires 

• Price/cost
• Problems
• Comparison
• Reviews/ratings
• Best of or top
• Miss-match of search intention to title to content
• Recommendation #1: Consider the journey from keyword > result/title/promise > delivery
• Recommendation #2: Big 5
  • Something Marcus Sheridan talks about in his book, They Ask You Answer

3. Your Content is Crap

• The content we're talking about is your emails, blog articles, website pages
  • Content might not be optimized for keywords
• TAKE RISKS… Try different things
• An organization needs to invest in inbound… they’re the subject matter experts
• Most common things people might be saying about your content is: 
  • “I’ll never get that time back”
  • Me too copycat content
  • “Writer clearly isn’t the subject matter expert”
  • “Written by someone that doesn’t know English (or the native language)”
  • Back button

4. You're Not Human Enough 

• You’re not taking the chance to connect at a human-level
  •  People hide behind the logo of the company. It's a faceless company… no one trusts faceless companies.
• Simple - add personality to your website/content… faces, bios, social profiles
• Intermediate - more video content, express the brand / the people, communities
• Harder - Get your marketing offline and get in front of people - events, speaking

5. You Don't Know How to Sell Inbound Leads

• They're not nurturing the leads correctly
• Not aligned with sales
• It won't happen automatically
• Do you have a bandwidth issue? You need a team that can handle all of the leads you're inbound marketing is bringing in.
• Recommendations: hire a sales coach or consultant that can help you build your sales process or sales enablement as well as your sales team.
• Your sales reps should be using your content. If not, you should find out why.

Next Steps:

We would love your comments! Feel free to send us an email or comment on the Facebook thread. 

If you really liked it, please give us a 5-star review on iTunes. Review offer: We have a special price for the first 10 people to leave us reviews on iTunes (hopefully 5-stars). After you do, send us an email at show@impactplus.com so we know it’s all set.

Join Us Next Week! Topic: Marketing Team Roles & Structure

We'll be back again next Thursday, September 7th at 1:00 PM ET. Want to get reminded? Drop us your name and email address below and we’ll make sure you’re notified before the broadcast every Thursday!