Optimize 3.0 Inbound Marketing Blog

(Post updated March 2016) Curious about Hubspot competitors and how internet marketing systems compare?  What about Hubsot vs. Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot? What are the key differences between these internet marketing systems?  This comparison chart analyzes each across 10 key features including blogging, CMS, SEO, lead nurturing, price, ease of use and analytics.  Each feature is ranked (0 = Not at All to 4 = Awesome) for a best possible score of 40 points.  Quick summary points below:

What exactly are the differences of inbound vs outbound marketing?  Here’s an explanation that I trust will help your understanding and help improve your own marketing efforts.

During one of my periodic reviews of my full SEO traffic (this is a great source of material for a blog), something jumped out at me that relates to the darker side of Hubspot – Does it work?  Some terms in my SEO results include Hubspot Sucks, Hubspot Not for Me, Hubspot Bad, Hubspot Fail, Hubspot Negative Reviews, Hubspot Overrated, Hubspot any good and Hubspot Termination.   Some choice stuff and this generates traffic for me.  Interesting.  This can’t be a complete surprise since there are undoubtedly people who feel that way about Apple.  But I’d like to use this as a jumping off point to shine a light on Hubspot and give the #1 reason Hubspot doesn’t work. 

Finding targeted Twitter followers is at the heart of any sound Twitter marketing strategy.  Identifying targeted followers on Twitter increases the audience most interested in your business or service  offerings.  Yet having targeted followers alone is not going to help unless you can provide specific information that is appealing.  With that in mind, here’s a Twitter marketing strategy that leverages a targeted Twitter following and shows you how to use that audience for your business objectives. 

Looking for Internet marketing help?  This can be a daunting task indeed.  There are many places to turn – email marketing specialists, article marketing submission bots, social media consultants, SEO experts, lead gen gurus – the list is endless.  Not to mention the constantly shifting strategies and technologies. In an attempt to provide some clarity, I’m going to lay out the two most important principles to consider when looking for internet marketing help or internet marketing consulting.    

As businesses become increasingly virtual it is more important than ever to use social media for a variety of marketing purposes. As the leader of the social media empire and arguably the number one form of getting information to mass quantities of people, using Facebook for business can have a great impact on the success of your marketing efforts, both through promotion and interaction with clients and customers. Facebook has so many capabilities that are compatible with websites, blogs, and even other forms of social media that it’s almost negligent to not take advantage of using Facebook for business purposes.

 Recently, someone asked me what is inbound marketing?  I recognize there are quite a few definitions  and Hubspot put together this great video.   But I have a particular answer for “what is inbound marketing software”, that differs from simply explaining it relative to old-school outbound tactics (e.g. intrusive TV and newspaper ads).  This definition can best be described as inbound marketing in practice.  That is, how is the software actually applied from beginning to end.  It certainly helps to do this if you have inbound marketing software that integrates the various components.  Here’s Optimize 3.0’s definition of what is inbound marketing:

How to use twitter for business can be confusing.  Fully understanding the utility of the medium is difficult.  Twitter can be a confusing place with its own nuances and nomenclature such as "followers", # hashtag symbol and lists. Also, a majority of business owners still consider it a place for social interactions and “fun”, not fully realizing that it is a powerful inbound marketing tool. The following statistics show the ubiquity of social media, and the potential impact a twitter business account can have on traffic, leads, and inevitably, sales. Any meaningful inbound marketing needs to be closely tied to a strategy that embraces how to use twitter for business.  This outlet actively promotes content and engages with potential buyers in a dynamic manner.  

What is landing page?  Many people don’t know what this means.  Landing page is a term for where your site visitors convert.   Convert can mean many things, but in this context it’s a site visitor that passes along their contact information (name, email, telephone #, etc) in return for a piece of information (whitepaper, ebook, podcast, etc) or interaction with you (e.g. demo, webinar).  Landing pages are a critical component of online marketing and often get overlooked.