This is the third (and final) post about the ESD Alliance workshop on digital marketing in EDA. The first two were Digital Marketing in EDA...with No Hands on the Wheel , and ESD Alliance Workshop on Digital Marketing . Here is Nicolas's detailed recipe for a successful digital marketing campaign. 1 Start with Corporate Website The corporate website is the hub of every inbound strategy. The key factors for an engaging user experience are: Responsiveness: state-of-the-art web design requires responsiveness. See intel.com for a good example, and use Googe Pagespeed to check yours. Mobile: optimize layout for mobile and desktop. Google has gone mobile first for search. Consistent layout of subpages Clear navigation with just 5-6 navigation points. If Intel can manage with 4 you can too Don't offer overly deep linking from the beginning 2 Create Digital Content to Get Traffic A part of every strong content strategy is publishing owned content. Blogs are a great opportunity to drive inbound (hey, you are reading this, it's working). Always integrate backlinks to your own website to move people into your branded environment (if your blogs are not on the website already). Ensure continuous publishing to drive sustainable awareness. In B2B (like EDA), a best practice is to build up a company-related person to the rank of an industry expert who is highly regarded because of his or her expertise. Technical white papers in exchange for sign-up is very common. Users are accustomed to this but it is important that the material is truly relevant. You need to add filter systems to stop people signing up with fake or free email addresses. Only give the good stuff for a good email. The more relevant the content, the more likely it is that the leads will convert. Email can still be valuable, but with all the spam, there are very low open and click rates. Inbound should focus on valuable subscribers with a limited send-out rate. Let me plug Sunday Brunch here, a once-a-week email that gives a summary of the previous week on Breakfast Bytes. To subscribe, click on "sign me up" at the end of every Breakfast Bytes post (including this one). 3 Get on Social Media to Increase Engagement Facebook: the majority of content is private (not business) related. But huge possibilities of publishing and advertising to very targeted populations Twitter: fast moving platform, best engagement during periods such as conferences when people are likely to be following it actively. But needs constant maintenance and at least daily updates LinkedIn: most common networking and digital sales platform in B2B, but targeted ads are pricey and reports/APIs very restrictive YouTube: excellent way of sharing engaging teaser videos, but the platform only offers a value for general awareness and branding Quora: large engaging community, a great place to establish opinion leaders. But it needs a dedicated editor who spends time engaging with the community WeChat: ultimate platform for addressing Chinese users (FB and YT are banned in China) You can automate the social media flow with tools like feedly, Hootsuite, automate.io. 4 Optimize for Being Found by Search Engines Search engines are the most influential channel. Almost every business-related interaction with a company starts with a search query. SEO is no longer about including keywords but more about en enhancing the user experience. Search engine ads (at the top of search results) can be a good opportunity to drive initial traffic. However, paid traffic should only be an extra to a solid SEO strategy aimed at organic search results. Since search engines now operate with AI algorithms, they detect (and penalize) spammy tactics. Don't forget about duckduckgo, baidu, bing etc.. For Google, major ranking signals that go into the algorithm are: backlinks from external sites (but high quality, not spam from dummy sites) anchor text relevance, so pick meaningful phrases for the link text titles are very important, keywords no longer so much comprehensiveness and so good user satisfaction metrics page speed: Google expects pages to load in 2 seconds or less and speed is even more important for mobile mobile friendliness: pages must be optimized for smartphones. Remember Google is mobile first now. You need to be too user experience: only the most relevant results with the most convenient environment will win the search queries 5 Supplement Your Efforts with Paid Advertising This is mostly Google AdWords. Broad keywords draw significant traffic but face a lot of competition in ranking (and tend to be expensive). Niche keywords have less traffic but are lower cost and may pick up only relevant users. Don't forget about Bing. It is the underdog and often offers lower cost-per-click. It is easy to use, similar to AdWords. You can even import an AdWords campaign. But it is an add-on, not a substitute for AdWords. 6 Convert Visitors into Leads with Landing Pages In addition to the regular website, inbound campaigns need optimized pages with special content. These are single pages created to fulfill a particular goal such as generating leads, getting newsletter subscriptions, recruiting social media followers, and so on. A proper landing page doesn't need regular elements like header and footer (like other pages on the website). The whole page concentrates on one specific call-to-action. In more detail: Create an attention-grabbing headline Remove navigation Get straight to the offer Outline value of the offer Use relevant images Highlight CTA Keep branding prominent Avoid clutter Format for easy navigation & aesthetics Include trust factors 7 Nurture Leads into Customers with Automation Integrate inbound marketing with the CRM system you are using. Every new lead then be stored in one central database, and each step or contact will be recorded. With enough leads it is possible to analyze and optimize further actions to improve the process. For small companies, recommended CRM tools are AgileCRM, Capsule, pipedrive, and HubSpot. Marketing automation (eg with HubSpot) can help the team with daily moderation and maintenance: Automatic notifications when leads are engaging with your published content Scheduled send-outs of newsletters within a defined period to maintain engagement with leads Analysis of best time slot(s) to reach out for leads with emails or blog posts 8 Measure the Effectiveness of Your Marketing In digital marketing, data is the foundation of every action. Tracking and analysis of performance data is essential to succeed. Every inbound activity should be measurable and align with a key performance indicator. The most important metrics are: overall site traffic traffic sources bounce rate average time on site click-through-rate (CTR) cost-per-cllick (CPC) conversion rate cost per lead The best way to get started is with Google Analytics (which is free). There are additional Google tools such as Google Data Studio, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, and Google Optimize. An Example Below is an example of a real AdWord campaign with a budget of just €1260. If you want to contact Nicolas, use his LinkedIn profile . Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.![]()
↧