The Inbound and Outbound Marketing Mix in 2013

Inbound marketing is the hot term of the year but it doesn’t mean outbound marketing has gone away forever. The difference between the two is that outbound marketing means you are going to find leads, while inbound marketing helps leads find you. The latter sounds much more interesting and effective, but that doesn’t mean you can forget outbound strategies.

Outbound marketing gets your brand/product in front of a target audience that may not have heard of you before. Inbound marketing gives the customer time to learn about and trust you before they continue on in the buying cycle. The right mix of the two depends on what works for you, but you should at least have a mix. 

Inbound Strategies

• Content: Content is king for a reason: it engages your audience in a way that builds trust and offers them increased value without having to purchase anything. Examples include white papers, blogs, video, infographics, and photos. 
• SEO: Organic efforts are still extremely important. The tactics have changed, but ensuring you show up at the top of search results is the most effective inbound marketing. Instead of keyword mania, now start thinking about semantic search for your SEO strategy.
• Social Media: Inbound marketing also includes real time marketing such as having a one-on-one conversation with a fan on Facebook. Don’t use social media as an outbound marketing channel; it is strictly for being social and providing great content and service to your fans.
• Conversion Optimization: Inbound marketing eventually leads people to landing pages on your site, which then need to be optimized for conversions depending on where the user is at in the sales cycle.

Outbound Strategies

• Display Ads: Ad Networks can get your message in front of people who are your target audience but might not have made it to your content organically. A little nudge in the right direction with strong display adsand remarketingcampaigns can broaden your reach.
• Webinars: Webinars are a mix between inbound and outbound strategy, but since you are pushing something out there we will consider it outbound. Webinars can help educate your audience and establish you as a thought leader in the industry. 
• Sponsored Emails: Paying a small fee to send out a custom email to another brand’s email list is a strategy that most marketers use to boost lead generation quickly. The trick to effective sponsored emails is finding companies that have a very specific target audience equal to the user profile you are targeting.
• PPC: Still very important, PPC campaigns need to be extremely focused on an audience, keywords, and where they are in the sales cycle. Advertising Online remains vital for the marketing mix, but the tactics and strategies have changed.

Pylons Signage: A Great Way to Catch People Attention!

As you drive or walk in the street you will pass a ton of Pylon Signage, which that you won’t even remember after 2 minutes   The statistic shows that in average per day a person is faced to 3000 signs in general! What a huge number, and when you think about it I am sure you are not even aware of this and can only remember few of it! Pylon signage’s are usually on the side of the main road where, the best place to catch attention easily and quickly.

Now a day brands have to get crazy idea to catch the attention. As we face every day a lot of pylon signage the brands have to be original and outstanding.

Big brand such as Miele, one of the number one in high end domestic appliance, have a full budget in marketing to make those signs much more visible than others brands. They also have the inspiration to make their pylon signage attractive. As you can see on the picture, they mad a funny signs and unrealistic for the people who see this. This is such an unusual pylon signage that it will catch everyone attention and stay in minds for much longer than a simple one. Out of all the sign you see in one day this one you will for sure remember. This is the main goal of this pylon signage, being different and catches the attention. With such an unusual pylon signageyou are sure to get a lot of word to month, the people will have just one brand in mind for a vacuum and it will be Miele!

It looks so real that its leads to great attention from the people and a positive feeling toward the brand. Let’s have a look at the second pylon signage. What a great idea for street marketing. The pylon sign was placed on the high way at the entrance of a tunnel. 

What an imagination to create a pylon signage as attractive as this one. As the high way is always noisy you could fell like it is the sound of a vacuum. The pylon signage itself is not really special there is only a vacuum and the brand with is slogan. All together the pylons signs and the tunnel create the idea of a real vacuum in the middle of the high way!  A pylon signage that will stay in your mind for a long time!  Can you imagine how surprise would you be when you see this big vacuum from far, I hope the drivers don’t get too scared and won’t create an accident!!! 

Obviously Miele is not the only brand able to do such a good street marketing campaign. To be different and to attract new customer all the big brands must dedicate a budget important enough to be one of the best one in the market in term of market with for example for pylon signs. 

8 Remarketing Strategies and Techniques

The good old days of simple PPC keyword marketing are long gone and the gold standard for Online Advertising is now re-targeting. Re-targeting allows marketers to put their ads in front of visitors who have either already shown some sort of interest or have been qualified as a targeted lead based on their Internet activity. These leads convert on a much higher level, are extremely qualified, can easily be segmented into buckets and personas, and generate a higher ROI than traditional PPC strategies.

Search Remarketing: One of the main types of Remarketing looks at a user’s previous search terms and displays relevant ads across the web that user is browsing. Large ad networks can show an ad that matches the keyword to that user on several different sites.

Site Retargeting: The original form of re-targeting was based on placing a cookie on the user’s computer when they visited a certain page on a site. Then when the user left the site, they would be presented with ads directing them back to the original site while browsing the web.

Email Retargeting: Advanced email marketers are using re-targeting strategies based on actions the visitor takes when viewing an email. An example would be re-targeting all the people who clicked through on a specific link and sending them a follow-up email with a special offer related to that link. 

Abandoned Shopping Cart Remarketing: One of the highest converting remarketing techniques is abandoned shopping cart remarketing. A visitor that has reached your shopping cart is obviously close to making a purchase and being able to serve them an ad is extremely valuable. There are two ways this can be accomplished. First, a cookie is placed on the visitor’s computer and an ad network displays your ads to them after they have left your site. Second, JavaScript is placed on the shopping cart and when a visitor begins filling out the form the JavaScript will capture their email address and a third party service automatically delivers an email within an hour.

Engagement Retargeting: Marketers with a lot of engaging content such as videos and rich media can retarget their visitors based on a certain level of engagement with their content. Understanding the user’s intent at specific levels of engagement will help the marketer to present highly relevant ads.

Contextual Retargeting: An often unused but highly valuable marketing technique is to partner with other websites that are extremely relevant to your target audience and exchange pixels with them. Then you can retarget their visitors and they can retarget yours, both of which should fall into the same demographic and fit your ideal personas. Contextual retargeting automatically doubles your reach with retargeting efforts (assuming web traffic is equal).

Geo Targeting: A simple strategy that works to qualify traffic is to target only visitors from a certain geographic region. While it is not a form of remarketing, it is an effective form of targeting.

Behavioral Marketing: On-site behavioral marketing is not a form of PPC but takes users’ actions, intentions, and on-site patterns into consideration in order to deliver the most appropriate content for that user or “persona.” A website may have several different personas and therefore will have different behavioral targeting rules in place for each one.

Custom Business T Shirts: Your Walking Billboard

Have you ever wished you could create a billboard that traveled with people wherever they went? Have you dreamed of putting your advertisements in high-traffic, high-visibility areas, but you just don’t have the money? Custom business T shirts are the answer! If you’re rolling your eyes at the thought of T shirts as an effective advertising medium, consider five reasons those ubiquitous cotton garments can give your business some unique advertising opportunities:

• Almost everybody wears T shirts: Even if it’s just to the gym, almost everybody wears a T shirt some of the time. And every time someone puts on your T shirt, everyone around that person will see your brand. It’s like a walking billboard.

• T shirts are inexpensive: You can create a custom printed T shirt for a fraction of what it would cost you to put an ad in the paper, in a magazine, or on a billboard. That means you can give them as gifts, sell them in your store, or wear them as a team for fundraising events, all without going over budget.

• Customize your T shirt to promote your brand: T shirts can include your company name, logo, tag line, and anything else you want to have printed on them. Customize your artwork to match the tone of the event you’re participating in or the group you’re giving them to, and let the wearers give your brand a promotional boost.

• T shirts make great giveaway items: Because they’re so inexpensive, T shirts are perfect giveaways for fundraisers, conferences, vendor fairs, contest prizes, and other occasions. The money you spend will be well worth the advertising exposure you receive in exchange.

• Promote your business in otherwise inaccessible places: Your custom T shirt can go into stores and restaurants, concerts, parties, theme parks, and scores of other places you might not be able to advertise in otherwise. Even if advertising seems out of reach based on budget concerns or permits, T shirts can take your brand promotion anywhere.

If you’ve ever wished for a walking billboard to promote your brand, then Los Angeles Promotional Products can give you the advertising exposure you need. A solid brand promotion strategy is one of the pillars on which successful businesses are built. If you haven’t worked T shirts into your strategy yet, take some time to evaluate whether they could be the new opportunity you’ve been looking for.