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The following is a guest post by Maribeth Kuzmeski, author of And the Clients Went Wild! How Savvy Professionals Win All the Business They Want

Getting new clients can often be stressful and intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be. Business development isn’t a secret formula, instead it is about doing a few important things well. Here are 10 ways to electrify your clients to help win more business and retain current clients.

1. Build your connections—even introverts can do it! You might not be the type of person who loves to socialize, attend big parties, and network. If so, that’s okay! One of the more surprising things I discovered when interviewing notably successful businesspeople for my first book, The Connectors, was that those who were masters at leveraging their business relationships did not focus on creating relationships with everyone. But they did have a plan for reaching those with whom they wanted to meaningfully connect. It doesn’t matter whether you are introverted or extroverted; what matters is that you’ve spent some time thinking about which relationships are most vital and why.

2. Create your simple, repeatable statement of value. A simple marketing message is transmitted easily and without degradation of the meaning and content. A short, clear message is best. When creating yours, ask yourself: Who am I? What is my business all about? Who are my customers? What is something unique about my business?

3. Brand consistently. The variety of marketing efforts available today could easily confuse customers, send conflicting messages—and result in a fractioned brand. Every interaction a customer has with your brand must be integrated across all marketing channels. For example, your website content and e‐mail campaigns should be fully incorporated with your offline efforts. All should proclaim a single, clear branding message and design throughout.

4. “Wow” your clients with frequent communication. In today’s world, the more frequently you contact clients, the better the relationship is likely to be. For important clients, make sure there is always a “next activity” scheduled. You could give them a call, invite them to lunch, e-mail them, or simply drop a note in the mail. Plan your next contact or appointment with a client during your current one; it is a sure-fire way of maintaining consistency and implementation.

5. Find the compelling benefits. Compelling benefits answer the question, “Why should I care?” But do you even know what your clients truly care about? And do your marketing messages address this? List benefits based on what your customers—not you—believe is valuable. Remember, every word needs to show the reader “What’s in It for Me.”

6. Create surprising offers and people will pay attention! If you offer something of real value for free, people will listen. In fact, “free” can convert price shoppers into loyal customers. This is the model that online print company Vistaprint used to generate over $500 million in revenue in 2009. The “free” offer the company makes has a certain appeal to their target market: small businesses. While these companies need printing, they’re often very cost-conscious customers. So Vistaprint offers 250 business cards for free, with a nominal $5.67 shipping and processing charge. Today, 66 percent of Vistaprint’s business comes from returning customers. In the first quarter of FY 2010, they acquired 1.4 million new customers—many who started with a free order.

7. Create a website that is as unique as your business. Recent statistics indicate that people form an opinion of a website in seven seconds, and will decide within that timeframe whether to browse within the site—or move on. Keeping this in mind, it is important to have a website design that downloads quickly, is aesthetically pleasing, and tells users right away what’s in it for them. Simply put, your site needs to stop visitors in their tracks.

8. Stay out of SPAM folders. Ending up in the SPAM folder is the kiss of death for any e‐marketing piece. Before you send an e-mail or e-newsletter, be wary of the things that can get your e-mails deleted before they are even opened. All e-mails receive a SPAM rating that is affected by a variety of factors. As your SPAM rating increases, so do the chances of your e-mails being sent directly into recipients’ SPAM folders. To avoid the “forbidden folder,” watch the words you use (e.g., excessive use of “win” and “money” can send you straight to SPAM), avoid flashy colors and designs, and use a SPAM-checking service to review your messages.

9. Call them to action. Make sure that your marketing messages include a clear and specific call-to-action. Your audience needs to feel that they are part of a select group that’s been chosen to receive a special offer or value, and they need to be convinced after they put your piece down that the sooner they respond to your offer, the better. To call your customers to action, provide a specific offer such as a coupon or discount, add a sense of urgency, and repeat the offer at least three times in the marketing piece.

10. Become the media. One of the most powerful ways to gain exposure, increase your credibility, and get people talking is to get media coverage. Fortunately, today you don’t have to wait for the media to come to you. You can become the media. You can do so by using some newer tools that are available for free and right from your desk: Create your own blog. Host your own recorded radio show. Write your own articles or opinion pieces.

Photo Credit: Kyle May

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A few weeks back, I got some work done of my car at a local dealership. In all honesty, I took my car to this particular dealership, because I’m the Mayor of it on Foursquare.  Even if I just needed an inspection, why not also use this as another check-in to continue securing my mayorship, right? So why is this important?

There was something very interesting about the bill that I received at the end of my service. Well, not the bill itself, but a postcard that had been stapled to the bill. A very simple postcard – a logo of the dealership, a picture of a VW Jetta, and a message from the Service Manager: “Thanks for your business. If you have a few minutes, please visit any of the sites below and leave a comment or review about us”.  Then there was a list of some shortened URLs that led directly to the dealership’s profile on various review sites like Yelp and Google Places.

There’s no reason for you to not being doing this with your customers.

Here are three quick tips for turning customers into cheerleaders for your business:

1 .  Ask for feedback and reviews – In some manner, you had to ask for the initial sale, so keep that up – explicitly ask your customer to go and leave a review. Like a call-to-action to get them to convert on your site, be direct and to the point.
 

2. Make it easy for people to get to your profile on the  review sites – 
 Provide short and easy to type URLs with your message asking for their review
. Every URL shortening service lets you create custom tags, or you could send them to a page on your site which links off to all the profiles you have
. This page could be www.yourdomain.com/customer-reviews for example.

3. Be ready for any and all feedback – If you’re afraid that people will post something nasty, get in front of it. When you ask for their review, include the contact info for a real live person to handle anything less than absolute satisfaction, and make sure to state “call this person if you aren’t happy”. If something nasty is posted, try to follow up with the poster by using the customer records you have available, and see if there’s any way that you could make up for the bad experience.
    
To get you started, here are some common online review sites where customers are able to leave feedback about local businesses:

    •    Yelp
    •    Google Places
    •    Foursquare tips
    •    Facebook Places
    •    InsiderPages.com

And here’s some places that would be ideal for specific industries:
    •    Angie’s List
    •    Dealer Rater
    •    Hotels.com
    •    Expedia
    •    LinkedIn Recommendations

What are some places where your customers have posted feedback and reviews of your business?

Photo Credit: altemark

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Are you eager to try the latest marketing trends? Even if you’re skeptical about becoming an early adopter, it’s important to be aware of the new marketing opportunities available for your business.

In this week’s top inbound marketing article, Mashable discusses 10 emerging social platforms and what businesses can do to start experimenting with them.

1. 10 Emerging Social Platforms and How Businesses Can Use Them

Author: Erica Swallow on Mashable

Innovative brands are quick to start using new social media platforms, but that doesn’t mean other businesses can’t test them out as well.

This Mashable article serves as a guide to how emerging social media platforms can benefit businesses. Covering location-based services, Q&A platforms, platforms for press, and microblogging services, this guide will help you get a handle on how to start using them successfully.

Marketing Takeaway: Keep up with the latest marketing trends to maintain a competitive edge. If one seems applicable to your business, experiment!

2. 5 Facebook Fan-Acquisition Strategies

Author: Brian Carter on Search Engine Journal

Want more fans of your business’ Facebook Fan Page? Carter dives into five of his best fan acquisition strategies to grow your Facebook reach and ultimately generate more revenue:

1. Turn buyers into fans at time of purchase.
2. Implement incentivized like, or “reveal tabs.”
3. Use Facebook ads (social PPC).
4. Initiate incentivized word-of-mouth contests.
5. Drive traffic to your Fan Page via email.

Marketing Takeaway: Don’t operate under the Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” philosphy. Attracting fans on Facebook takes work.

3. 10 Things Bloggers Should NOT Do

Author: Onibalusi Bamidele on DailyBlogTips

If you subscribe to a bunch of internet marketing blogs, chances are you’re inundated with advice on what you should be doing to successfully navigate social media, rank high in search engines, build a great blog, etc. In this DailyBlogTips article, however, bloggers are warned what not to do.

Bamidele’s list of blogging no-no’s include that bloggers must not expect results overnight, ignore their readers, scrape another blogger’s content, expect success without promoting, be another blogger, fail to regularly update their blog, ignore SEO, ignore networking, have an unreadable/unnavigable site, and throw mud around.

Marketing Takeaway: Be sure to follow correct blogger etiquette.

4. Smart B2B Companies Now Think Like Media Companies

Author: Maria Pergolino on MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog

Maria certainly hits the nail on the head with this article. In order to be successful today, B2B companies must think like publishers, not advertisers.

Rather than the traditional practice of selling, which involves interrupting people, businesses must think about connecting with their audience and building permission. To do this, says Pergolino, a company must do some planning by building a solid content strategy into its overall B2B marketing plan and deciding on a direction for content, start creating powerful and engaging content for its audience, and promote that content via SEO and social media strategies.

Marketing Takeaway: B2B companies: Think like a media company.

5. Online Marketing Tips From the Farmer’s Market

Author: Adam Helweh on Social Media Explorer

In a clever Social Media Explorer post, Adam highlights some interesting parallels between his local famer’s market and the competitive world of online marketing.

Some of his best lessons from the market include showing your wares and giving them a taste, displaying your credentials, engaging with your customers and being remembered, and staying dedicated to being social.

Marketing Takeaway: In the saturated world of online marketing, it’s important to stand out from your competitors.

Image Credit: Mashable

 

Video: How to Use Social Media to Manage Your Company Brand Online

Learn how to use social media to manage your company brand. Download the free video and learn how to manage your company brand effectively using social media.

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Social media is an incredibly effective tool for sharing content, boosting popularity, improving search engine optimization, and getting found on the internet.  Using actionable icons that integrate with the theme of your site, content and online activities instead of bland generic ones will help encourage readers to share your content.  Finding the perfect icon set can take time, so we have decided to do some of the leg work for you.

Here is a collection of 50 free social media icon sets you can use to enhance your website. We have gathered these across the web. While some of these have different licenses they have been created for use in a wide variety of materials. Click on the link for the set that you are interested in and it should take you to the page on the designer’s site where you can find out more information or download the set.

1. ‘+’ Icon Set

2.  WG Social Media Icon Set

3.  Circular Social Media Icons

4.  3D Icon Set

5.  3D Statuette Icon Set

6.  SleekSocial: Icon Set

7.  Free Hand-Sketched Icon Set

8.  Vector Social Media Icons

9.  A Life In Pixel Icon Set

10.  Bevel Dark Icon Set

11.  Grunge Peeling Stickers Icon Set

12.  Sophisticated Premium Peel Over Icon Set

13.  Elegant Themes Icon Set

14.  Social Buzz Icon Pack

15.  Black Ink Grunge Stamp Icon Set

16.  Black Paint Splatter Icon Set

17.  Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set

18.  Made of Wood Icon Set

19.  Burnt Wood Icon Set

20.  Crumpled Paper Icon Set

21.  Dark Denim Social Media Icon Set

22.  Sticker Icon Set

23.  Nurture Social Icon Set

24. Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set

25.  Web 2.Origami Icon Set

26.  Worn Clothe Icon Set

27.  Web 2.0 Gift Icon Set

28.  Typography Icon Set

29. Simple White Icon Set

30.  Vintage Icon Set

31.  Puzzle Social Network Icon Set

32.  Jive Icon Set

33.  Exclusive Scribble Social Media Icon Set

34.  Cheers Icon Set

35.  Heart My Website Icon Set

36.  Folder Style Icon Set

37.  The Leaves Fall Icon Set

38.  Chrome Icon Set

39.  Matte White Icon Set

40.  InFocus Icon Set

41.  Handycons Icon Set

42.  Grunge Warning Site Icon Set

43.  Little Sketchy Monster Icon Set

44.  Splatter Social Media Icon Set

45.  Networking & Bookmarking Icon Set

46.  Orange Grunge Stickers Icon Set

47.  PinkStrip Icon Set

48.  Rivet Social Icon Set

49.  Yammy Icon Set

50.  Furry Cushions Icon Set

Free Webinar: Website Redesign for 2010

Learn how to redesign your website with an internet marketing strategy in mind with Mike Volpe, HubSpot’s VP of Marketing. Download the Webinar Nowand learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.

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Now that we’ve looked at the steps you should take before starting a website redesign as well as some SEO tips to keep in mind, we’re going to move on to what many consider the “sexiest” part of a redesign: the actual look and design of the website.

It’s very easy to get swept up in the excitement and wind up overdoing it or building something that looks great but isn’t very functional. Here are some tips from HubSpot Partners to keep you on the right path.

Don’t Turn Anyone Off or Away

So you’ve done your SEO homework, built up a repository of great content and established yourself as a thought leader – all the hallmarks of a great inbound marketing strategy. But what happens when someone comes to your new site and has no clue how to navigate it or find what they need? As HubSpot partner Christine Hafner of Hafner Creative Communications wisely points out, “We shop where we feel comfortable. We use services that we feel confident in. These feelings are conveyed by the combination of words and design. A site may be able to attract initial traffic to the site with SEO and social media but they may not stick around if they find the site visually confusing, boring or unappealing.” Make sure that your site is as inviting, clear and trust inspiring as your content.

Make Sure You Show Who YOU Are

We recognize that your content will help differentiate you from your competition. But sometimes we forget that design can do this as well. That’s not to say, your site has to be the most stunning, innovative design in order to separate you from the pack. What it does mean, is that you want to make sure that your company’s “essence” comes through in the design as well. Kuno Creative’s John McTigue believes that this element is vital to having a successful redesign. He states, “It’s always important to associate brand with content, otherwise there’s no “stickiness” between who you are, what you do and the content you publish…there’s an emotional, human component of every sale. The more you can appeal to the emotions of your target audience in design, the more likely they are to convert. A well placed graphic or video that does that can really help.”

Show the Design Who’s the Boss

We’re not all graphic designers or even have an eye for design. But, being a successful marketer means you have an instinct about or the intelligence to understand what will help create an effective website that will result in your targeted goals. So don’t let your fear of design boss keep you silent and don’t let the excitement of the process distract you. HubSpot Partner Tony Meister of NetSolutions Group says “..Effective calls to action and clear goals trump design. Don’t let the design step over your ultimate [goal] which is getting leads.”

Another HubSpot Partner, Jeffrey Abbott of AIM Integrated Marketing, supports this sentiment. “It can be easy to spend a lot of time thinking about the design and the effects, while not spending time through who your buyer personas are and accurately understanding…what the stages in the [the] sales process are in order to speak to each persona at each stage.”

Make Your Own Divine Redesign

Now that we’ve walked through the questions you need to ask yourself, SEO tips and finally design tricks, you’re ready to get started on your own redesign. Make it effective, make it visually appealing, make it yours!

Photo Credit: valakirka

Free Webinar: Website Redesign for 2010

Learn how to redesign your website with an internet marketing strategy in mind with Mike Volpe, HubSpot’s VP of Marketing. Download the Webinar Nowand learn how to turn your website into an internet marketing machine.

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Searching is one of the core utilities of the internet. Most websites today have a search function, and we all spend a lot of time searching. On Google, for example, 34,000 searches occur each second. For many internet users, Google has become the default search engine in web browsers and mobile devices; however, Google isn’t always the best search engine for the job. When Google isn’t getting the job done, give one of these other search engines a chance. For the marketers reading this post, though Google has the majority of the search engine market share it isn’t the only option for paid and organic search engine marketing.

9 Awesome Search Engines That Aren’t Named Google

1. Hunch – The reason we search is because we don’t know the answer to a question. Hunch is a recommendation search engine that helps users get recommendations about almost anything including books, movies, cars, software, clothing, and many other types of choices. Hunch provides recommendations by asking users a series of questions related to their current search term. Following the list of questions, the user is given a recommendation. Hunch easily may be the most addictive search engine on the web. Think about Hunch as a personalized search engine that is about recommendations instead of only results. It can even tell you if you should buy HubSpot!

2. Yelp – Remember that thick yellow book that used to magically appear on your door step? The Yellow Pages is dead, and Yelp is one of the services that helped kill it. Yelp is a local search engine and social network that allows searchers to discover and review local businesses. Yelp has become a popular tool for discovering successful restaurants, hotels, service providers, and much more in a local area and will even let searchers filters by their physical distance from each result in their search.

3. Flickr – Google is great at searching many things, but it is still working on making its image search the best in the world. If you are looking for images, your best option is to check out Flickr, owned by Yahoo. Flickr is a thriving social network and search engine based on images.

4. Searchtastic – Most Twitter users are likely familiar with Seach.Twitter.com as a method for searching and discovering tweets. The problem is that Twitter Search has some limitations including only search 7 days’ worth of search history and not providing a way to easily export the tweets discovered while searching. Searchtastic solves both of these problems. Users can search tweets from months back instead of just one week and can then export search results to Excel for reporting or data mining. If you are a marketer using Twitter, Searchtastic is worth checking out.

5. Collecta – We recently posted about Google’s new real-time search results page, but Collecta is a search engine startup that has been making a lot of noise in the real-time search industry. Collecta pulls in results for a search term in real time and continues to add them to the results page as they are published across the web. Collecta also lets users filter by content type.

6. ClipBlast – YouTube is the king of video as well as video search. The problem is that YouTube search only delivers videos uploaded to YouTube. While the majority of online videos reside on YouTube, there is still a lot of content posted to other services. ClipBlast solves this problem by searching videos across video sharing sites, including YouTube, and then displaying them as thumbnails on the search results page.

7. Pipl – Sure, people search for themselves on Google, but the search engine really isn’t designed to provide people-focused results. Enter Pipl, an interesting and sometimes creepy search engine that will let you find out more than you likely wanted to know about someone. Pipl gathers images, social profiles, business information, email, and many other types of information with just one click.

8. Simply Hired – Many of the search engines in this post and many more not mentioned are known as vertical search engines. These search engines focus on finding and displaying one specific type of content or subject. A prime example of a great vertical search engine is Simply Hired. This job search engine pulls in job listings from across the web from a variety of different sources, making it simple to find job listings or track competitor job openings.

9. WolframAlpha – Ever wanted to get a little nerdy with your searching? If you like numbers and computations, then WolframAlpha is the search engine for you. This search engine allows users to execute formulas, provide statistical data to search, as well as much more.

What are your favorite search engines other than Google?

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A key part of sales and marketing alignment is building strong communication between the two groups.  At HubSpot, we have built Smarketing (a term that I think was coined by Dan Tyre over two years ago) which is a partnership between sales and marketing that uses a number of different techniques to align sales and marketing better.  One of the most fundamental parts of this relationship is communication.  We have found that having strong communication between sales and marketing helps in many ways to make both marketing and sales more effective.  Based on our experience over the past 4 years, below is a list of tips for improving communication between sales and marketing.

All of these sales and marketing communication tips are only one part of building better sales and marketing alignment.  In fact we have a free sales and marketing alignment webinar if you want to learn even more about how we have built a partnership between sales and marketing.

1. Have Sales and Marketing Meet Frequently

While there is a growing culture at startups to eliminate meetings, we have found that frequent meetings between sales and marketing help keep the lines of communication open.  We have a Smarketing meeting every single week that includes the entire sales and marketing team.  We review the activity for the week for both teams, update the sales team on what marketing is doing, and vice versa.  Today this meeting is mostly about sharing information – with over 70 people it is no longer a great way to get feedback or discuss something – but in the earlier days of HubSpot it was smaller, more informal and we would discuss things and provide feedback both ways.  The meeting takes 30-60 minutes, and both sales and marketing people present, as well as some other groups within the company.

In addition to the weekly Smarketing meeting, a subset of each team (about 10 people total) meets monthly to review our results in depth and talk about future plans for improvement.  This is where we have more of a discussion, and we hold each other accountable for our portion of the partnership.  This meeting started later at HubSpot, once the weekly meeting got too big to use it for discussion.

On top of these two standing meetings, there are of course impromptu meetings on different topics, and because of the culture we have built, sales and marketing are usually both represented in those meetings together.  So marketing won’t get together to talk about leads without getting input from sales and sales won’t start a new sales effort without including marketing.  Sounds like Smarketing to me!

2. Build Multiple Relationships Between Sales and Marketing

At other companies the primary relationship between the two teams might be between the VP Marketing and the VP Sales.  This is a mistake.  Mark Roberge and I try to build strong relationships at multiple levels of our team to make the two teams functions more like one team.  You want sales managers talking to marketing managers, you want everyone in marketing talking to individual sales reps.  The idea is that rather than every problem bubbling up to the VP of Sales and then having a conversation with the VP Marketing and then it flows downhill, solve the problems at their source by empowering everyone on the team and building relationships at all levels in the team.  Today at HubSpot, Mark and I only have to get involved in a small number of issues.

3. Mix Marketing and Sales Desks Together

At most companies the majority of communication and relationship-building is informal, so it surprises me when the marketing and sales teams sit in different parts of the office.  Some companies might put sales and marketing near each other, but it is still one big group of salespeople and one big group of marketers that happen to sit near each other. 

What companies should do is mix sales and marketing together.  Every marketer should sit next to a sales person and vice versa.  The benefit to marketing is that they get to see firsthand what salespeople do, and if the marketing activities they are working on help sales or not.  The advantage for sales is they have a marketing person to whom they can ask questions about the leads they are getting and the different marketing programs created.  This is also a benefit for marketing, because when salespeople better understand the leads they are getting, they can go after them more effectively, which makes them both more productive and happier.

At HubSpot we actually take this office arrangement a step further, and all of our implementation and support consultants also sit among sales and marketing, so we have sales, marketing and post-sales all together, helping to build even more cross functional communication.  Using humans natural tendency to be social in order to build better marketing and sales communication works great.

4. Provide Many Types of Feedback Between Marketing and Sales

We ask each sales person to rate their leads in our CRM system.  We send out periodic surveys to the sales team to give feedback on leads and the sales tools marketing provides.  We have 1-1 conversations with many sales reps to get their feedback on marketing in person.  We ask sales managers to get 1-1 feedback from their teams and then provide that feedback to marketing.

Marketing people go on demos and provide feedback to the sales team on how they are doing.  We monitor the stats of each sales rep on their success with following up on leads and show them if they are not doing as well as the rest of the team.

The goal of all this activity is to make everyone in marketing and sales feel empowered to offer feedback, and that the feedback is actually used to make decisions and improve things.  While everyone in sales or marketing does not always agree with all the decisions they make, I think they would all say that they are part of the team and that both sales and marketing listen to each other and when we make decisions, their voices are heard.  This level of feedback and trust is key to successful marketing and sales communication.

5. Agree on Terminology

Communication requires the two parties to use a similar language and vocabulary.  One of the things that we did at a very early level (only a few employees in the company) was to decide what a “lead” was and what an “opportunity” was, wrote down those definitions, and then built them into our reports and culture.  If you don’t have agreement on what a “lead” is, you will constantly have the problem of sales complaining that the leads are bad and marketing complaining that sales is lazy and not working the leads effectively.

Our definitions of “leads” and our sales and marketing process have changed a lot over time, but at all times we had firm definitions and had a sales and marketing SLA that defined exactly what each group’s responsibilities and goals were.  (In fact, there was one period of two months where one of our definitions got a little hazy, and those were some of the rockiest months in terms of communication between sales and marketing.)

6. Use Data to Communicate

Finally, all of this communication between sales and marketing is built off of the principle that data never lies.  Salespeople are not allowed to say “the leads suck” without data showing that the conversion rate has dropped or a key demographic factor has waned recently.  Marketing isn’t allowed to say “sales are lazy” without data to show that they are only following up on each lead only one time. 

This does not mean that informal qualitative feedback is not useful in sales and marketing.  But it does mean that if there is a way to use data to verify your feelings, you should use the data.

At all of our meetings, we use data to understand the current state of sales and marketing, we have daily reports that show exactly the progress of both sales and marketing each day, and we generally don’t answer questions with “it feels like”.  Data is a wonderful tool to help remove the emotion from conversations, and to focus your teams on the real problems.

Do you do anything similar at your company?  Are there other sales and marketing communication techniques that you have found to be effective?  Leave a comment and let’s discuss.

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Have you ever thought finding what you were looking for on Google took too long? Google did. Today, the search giant launched a new version of its search engine interface. Google is calling this new interface Google Instant. Google Instant provides real-time suggested results as a user begins to type a keyword into Google. 

See the video demonstration below from Google to get a better understanding of how this new search interface works:

Google Instant is a major change to Google’s search interface; t allows users to refine their search terms faster to find the result they are looking for. As users type in new keywords, the page of results updates in real-time to display the results for the new keyword phrase.

According to Google’s Ben Gomes, “Google Instant results in more search queries.” He also stated that although search rankings do not change with the release of Instant, long-term search behaviors may change. This change will also reduce the need for natural language search, meaning that users will likely reduce searches like “How to …” and search for more speficific keyword phrases.

 

How Google Instant Changes SEO

Google Instant is a completely new user interface and experience for searchers, and this new interface will likely mean some changes for the search engine optimization industry. As Gomes said, the new interface will result in more searches, which is great for companies looking to get found organically through Google. 

Google Instant will likely cause a shift in SEO strategies. As you saw in the video demonstration above, the search results change almost instantly as the keyword phrase in the search box is edited. Because of this, people will spend more time refining keywords and ultimately focusing more on long tail keywords. Essentially, Google Instant will mean more searches for multi-word search phrases than before.

Google Instant also means a shift toward focusing even more on higher rankings for specific long tail keyword phrases. The Google Instant interface reduces the need to scroll down the page looking for better results and essentially eliminates the need to look at anything other than the first page of search engine results. Users will look at the first three to five results at the top of the page without having to scroll; if they don’t see what they are looking for, they will adjust their search phrase instead of scrolling or visiting the next page of results. 

Ultimately Google Instant means a more personalized search experience, and it ensures that search results are no longer static. Search results continue to become more customized to individuals and their habits and preferences. While long tail keywords are now even more important, the changes Google made today only reinforce that to be found by qualified visitors online, you need to create and publish relevant content that is valuable and solves the problems of your prospects and customers.

What do you think about Google Instant?

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Considering all of the conversations online and offline about new social media applications, when it comes to lead generation, email is a major driving factor. Despite being the elder statesman of online marketing tools, email is still growing in adoption as a marketing channel.

We found five educational infographics about email power and adoption as a marketing platform that we think are worth a look.

1. The History & Evolution of Email by Focus.com

2. What Does Your Email Provider Say About You? by Credit Karma

3. How Much Spam Is Out There? by Rackspace

4. Small Business Adoption of Email Marketing by MarketingCharts.com

5. Use of Video in Email Marketing by GetResponse

What was the biggest takeaway from these infographics for you? Do you know of any others you’d like to share?

Free Download: Marketing Data: 50+ Marketing Charts and Graphs

HubSpot has compiled over 50 original marketing charts and graphs on topics including lead generation, blogging and social media, marketing budgets, Twitter and Facebook. Download the ebook now to have access to these charts for use in your own presentations!

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On July 7, in the late afternoon, I tuned in to The Influencer Project. For the next 60 minutes (actually it was closer to 62 minutes), I listened to 60 online experts tell at least one proven way to increase your influence online. We’re talking real experts like David Meerman Scott, Anne Holland, Brian Solis, Todd Defren and our own Mike Volpe, and all of the unmentioned names are equal in expertise to those I mentioned. While some of the advice was obvious, like create valuable content or get on Facebook, what resonated was that these experts – all of whom have influence online, so they do know what they’re talking about – were passionate about their one or two tips.

As a sponsor for this event we have permission from ThoughtLead, the program organizers, to offer our community both the audio file and the complete transcript. For those of you who don’t have 62 minutes to spare, I’ve taken the liberty of shortening it even more – to 60 sentences.

This will give you the headlines, but you may want to take the additional time and understand why these experts came up with their practical advice.  I cannot remember when I’ve received this much solid advice in such a short amount of time.

1. Stop talking about your products and services and create valuable content.

2. Increase conversion rates on your landing pages by improving your buttons.

3. Build your thought leadership and digital influence through transparency.

4. Demonstrate commitment and increase your digital influence through consistency.

5. Know where you’re going, then make what you say about the people around you.

6. Follow better people.

7. Align yourself with outstanding strategic partners.

8. Make connections online, then meet the person in the real world, offline.

9. Create content that stands for something: ‘Higher purpose content marketing.’

10. Look under the hood of the shiny new technologies coming out.

11. Believe in ‘social objects’ as the way we socialize and share with others.

12. Avoid ‘incestuous blogging’ and look outside your circle.

13. Start talking to people.

14. Think about your narrative strategy because people connect with stories worth telling.

15. Find people who have your audience but not your products and co-create with them.

16. Establish influence either through complete honesty or absolute fakery – not in between.

17. Give your content roots and give it wings.

18. Try Facebook advertising.

19. Develop your online influence by getting offline and meeting people in real life.

20. Get very, very good at filtering and aggregating content.

21. Be early in the news cycles of any conversation of interest, then make context explicit.

22. Increase visibility through web video; the fastest way to get your message out there.

23. Feel passionate about your content and overcome your fears of reaching out.

24. Defy convention where it’s appropriate.

25. Share good content consistently.

26. Let your passion shine to create meaningful relationships and build deep connections.

27. Learn how to talk more about other people.

28. Get on Facebook, get on Faceboook now, and use it for your business.

29. Make people around you more successful than you are, and share stories from the heart.

30. Talk about what you know because content is always king.

31. Make something worth talking about.

32. Get your self properly interviewed.

33. Repeat your tweets.

34. Get more influence online by moving offline.

35. Really understand your audience, then build things that really help them.

36. Master one niche, own that niche, then use webinar marketing to promote your brand.

37. Think about what gifts and expertise you have that you can leverage to help others.

38. Map a strategy for integrating social media with other tactics.

39. Change from thinking about my influence to our influence.

40. Get active in other people’s communities.

41. Build ‘digital dimensionality’ by showing your many different sides.

42. Listen to the conversations taking place around you, then start to engage.

43. Network with other influencers and make them aware of your consistent value.

44. Think about the authenticity, consistency, and depth of your voice and story

45. Be willing to shake up your world.

46. Learn to be a storyteller, understand the psychology of people, create quality content.

47. Share ideas liberally and get increased accountability from the digital community.

48. Establish your business model before you attempt to become influential online.

49. Be consistent, connect the practical with the profound, and listen for the silence.

50. Find a unique niche you can own, focus on it and become known for that.

51. Find out what social network your customers are using and be there for them.

52. Build a community of readers by figuring out ways to get people talking.

53. Make friends along the way by helping others achieve their goals.

54. Think about social media as strategy to enhance your existing marketing goals.

55. Be systematic in establishing relationships with those on the same business path.

56. Become an advocate for gifted up and comers as they enter social media.

57. Start the media arm of your company that educates, inspires and entertains.

58. Give more than you get and build trust and relationships over time.

59. Take a look at what you have that others can’t do and use it to get where you need to go.

60. Figure out your value, identify influential individuals and connect to them directly.

Would you like to listen to the full details from each speaker?  We’ve set up the archived audio plus a transcipt of the entire event for your enjoyment here.

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