Inbound Marketing Day: Main Takeaways

I recently had the pleasure of attending Inbound Marketing Day, an event sponsored and hosted by Savvy Panda and BMA Milwaukee. The event was packed full of valuable insight that was enough to make my phone go dead from constant tweeting by 2pm.

There were 6 Main Track sessions.

1.

Dan Zarrella from Hubspot started us off with the data side of social media.

Main Takeaway: Ideas don’t simply spread because they are good.

Good helps of course, but ideas spread when they are optimized for sharing. The most shareable content is visual, will provide value to your audience, will help your audience in turn provide value and build their reputation, and will fill an information void for which your audience has been looking.

2.

Then Oli Gardner from Unbounce and his orange shoes took the stage to talk about what makes a great landing page.

Main takeaway: Don’t make your landing pages look like the overcrowded shelves of a supermarket.

It is pretty likely that everyone has experienced that moment in the store when you realize you have been staring, eyes glazed over, at the millions (mild exaggeration) of toothpaste brand choices. For sensitive teeth. All-around protection. Breath defense. Extra whitening. Cue panic mode. If a customer is presented with too many options they are either going to bail or just randomly select and hope for the best. As marketers, this is the last thing we want. We want to map out our customers path and direct them to the exact place where we will hook them and make the conversion. According to Gardner, there are 5 essential elements to every landing page, nothing more and nothing less.

Unique selling point
Hero shot
Benefit statement
Proof
Call-To-Action

3.

After that came Savvy Panda’s own Luke Summerfield, presenting on Neuromarketing – using psychology to drive strategy.

Main Takeaway: Use data as behavioral psychology to tailor your marketing strategy.

The data that you gather, whether that be from social, an email campaign, or page views on your website, you can leverage that information and translate it into the basic behavioral psychology of your audience. What are they doing, where are they doing it, and (most importantly) why are they doing what they are doing? You can use that data to see what is working as well as what needs improving. Data will help you interpret who your audience is and what sort of language they respond to best. In turn you can use that information to specifically tailor your message to your audience, optimizing your chance for conversion.

4.

Ezra Fishman of Wistia followed, informing us all about the importance of video in your marketing plan.

Main Takeaway: The secret ingredient to inbound marketing is trust. Trust = videos.

Why does trust = videos? Because video helps you and your company look human. Video is the perfect chance for your business to showcase its brand. Whether it is a simple, “This Is What We Do” video or a “How To”, showing a face on your website will attract visitors. Fishman recommended starting with videos focused on conversions. Once you are accustomed to the camera try using videos to teach and after that, experiment with trying to get your viewers to “feel something”.

5.

Next was lunch and then the ever dreaded after lunch slot. Andrea Tarrell and Chad Tisonik of HNi Risk handled it well, getting the audience pumped with action items to help sell your sales team on inbound marketing.

Main takeaway: It isn’t “Outbound vs. Inbound”; it is “Outbound + Inbound”.

This means that the sales and marketing departments must work as one. The sales team should be blogging and the marketing team should get in on sales calls. Once the two work together to generate leads, they must then nurture those leads as a team as well. Tarrells advice for lead follow up? Don’t be creepy, be freaky fast, and make the message content oriented.

6.

Kathleen Garvin from SEMrush finished up the Main Track speakers with keyword research tools.

Main takeaway: Keywords are as important as ever.

There has been recent hype that is making marketers believe that perhaps keywords aren’t as important as we thought they were for SEO. Garvin was there to put those rumors to bed. Keywords, as well as your competitor’s keywords, are as important for SEO as ever and deserve our attention and dedication.

Now let’s crowd source.

Next the group dispersed into breakout sessions. Each session was 40 minutes long and we had three to choose from each cycle. The overlying themes were either about Strategy, Attraction, or Conversion. Here is a list so you can get the idea:

As I was only able to attend 3 of the 9 fabulous breakout sessions I would love to hear from other attendees to see what their main takeaways were for each of the breakout sessions.

Comment below to share the insight that you gathered! Click here to learn more about our inbound marketing approach!