Insights

As anti-government protests in Egypt stretched into the third week, President Hosni Mubarak took to Egyptian national television for the second time. Although the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians crowded in Tahrir Square were hopeful that the 82 year-old would announce that he was stepping down, those hopes were dashed when Mubarak stated that he will continue to “protect the constitution and the people and transfer power to whomever is elected next September in free and transparent elections.”

Lead generation is the lifeblood of an inbound marketing campaign, and the best way to get leads is to place relevant, targeted content behind forms which are designed to gather information about the people who visit your site.

While most companies gather basic information such as name, email address, and company name, demographics like age and gender, and contact information such as phone numbers are not collected.

A balancing act

Registration and sign-up forms are an integral part of the inbound marketing cycle, but creating them is similar to walking a tightrope: lean too much to one side or the other, and down you go.

Because marketers want to collect as much information about their leads as possible, the temptation is to make forms longer. But as research shows, the more form fields a form has, the fewer people fill it out:

I’ve spent the past several weeks attending Inbound Marketing University (IMU), a program hosted by HubSpot. I came to Digett with little experience in inbound marketing, so it’s been nice to get an overview that covers all aspects of content creation and promotion.

Although each of the courses provided great information, there are really only six things you need to know to succeed in inbound marketing.

1. The basics are very basic

We spend a lot of time fretting over the minutiae of inbound marketing, but in the end it boils down to creating helpful content, publishing and promoting it, and contributing to others’ conversations.

In November 2010 the international airline KLM surprised its customers: As passengers arrived at security checkpoints and gates, flight attendants were there to greet them by name and give them a personalized gift — something that the passenger could use on his or her trip, or enjoy when they returned home.

In the highly competitive world of pay per click (PPC) advertising, it’s becoming more important than ever for businesses to ensure that their PPC campaigns are highly optimized. The goal is to maximize your return on investment (ROI) by using keywords which are most relevant to your business, and are more likely to result in traffic, conversions, and sales.