My sales funnel is looking hollow so I took this advice from Laura L. Bernhard, inbound marketing...

Hello and welcome to Laura Bernard, who's joining us all the way from Toronto to talk about inbound marketing on this episode of Speak PR. Laura, welcome.

Hi, Jim. Thank you so much for having me today.

Now, Laura, you have a podcast called The Marketing Bound, and you're an expert at inbound marketing. What is inbound marketing and how can it help a business owner or entrepreneur to get noticed?

Very, very good question. Inbound marketing is a strategy to get your audience to come to you. So if you, if you Google inbound marketing, you'll get a bunch of definitions. But in summary, it's, it's when you put content out there, when you're building trust with your audience, you're putting it out for free. And when people are searching for a problem that they're having on a daily basis, and they stumble upon your content, your content is not disrupting their day, it's helping their day. So it's a non-destructive, helpful piece of content.

Now you say that it's getting to be content that they want to receive and helping with their day. How do you define that? In our Speak PR, we talk about content being new and simple and context Sensitive. What's your definition for content that people want to receive? Because people are so busy, do they really want anything else?

So when you type in, for example, how to start a podcast into Google, you can stumble upon, you can stumble upon blogs that are 3, 4 years old. That's the perfect example of an inbound marketing blog because it's still helpful. And it's still popping up because it's still useful. So what we, we call those kinds of pieces evergreen content because it keeps lasting and it keeps helping your audience.

So you've got evergreen and you've got some things that are time sensitive, I guess. How does the small business owner create this content? Because most people that I talk to don't have the time or they're just struggling with Kind of the creativity part. So any, any advice?

A lot of people think that inbound marketing is very, very time-consuming, and I would have to agree. It's a long-term strategy that you have to constantly put effort into. However, the long-term benefits outweigh all the time that you put into it, and experts are actually saying that it's more cost-effective to be working on an inbound strategy than let's say Facebook ads or a billboard or a commercial, you know, things like that.

So why would inbound be more powerful or better value than say Facebook ads? Because obviously that's where a lot of people talk about Facebook marketing, LinkedIn marketing, Instagram marketing.

They could be considered inbound marketing because they're also non-disruptive. When you speak about inbound marketing in terms of blogs, email nurturing, social media, Those have a longer life than a Facebook ad. Okay, so let's say you, you promote in a magazine. The magazine will eventually be thrown away. It won't be looked at anymore. People are going to flip through the magazine, see your ad, and that's it. However, a blog, for example, that stays on your website, that stays on the internet forever. And if you have a good piece of evergreen content, That will keep popping up on Google and will keep working for you.

I see. So really then inbound is as much about sort of giving first, isn't it, rather than shouting to say, I'm over here. And are there any sort of formats that are particularly good as inbound marketing content? You mentioned, for example, you know, blog posts. You've got a podcast, I've got a podcast, there's video on YouTube. Any of these better or worse than the other ones? What do you recommend?

Not that they're best or worse. It's what's best for your audience. So if your audience is listening to podcasts, then that's where you want to be. If your podcast is watching video, then that's what you want to create. There's no better or worse. We just have the luxury of having many options. And then we get to pick, okay, which one are we good at? Which one can we put time into? That's gonna reach your audience at the right time.

So Laura, you mentioned time. How often do you think people should be posting content then? Is there a formula?

There's no magic formula to what's best. It is what depends on your audience, but I would say on a weekly basis, you should be putting out content. And I'm specifying putting out content and not creating content. Because I believe a strong strategy, a strong inbound strategy requires batching your content. So you're creating, let's say you're writing blogs, you spend one day writing 4 blogs, and then you slowly leak them out throughout the month.

Now, your average business owner or entrepreneur may not feel comfortable with the writing, for example. And if they brief a freelance writer, one of the criticisms is that it takes as long to brief somebody as it does to do it themselves. And then they don't feel comfortable doing it. So they get to the cycle. How do you help someone to break through that sort of content block?

That's a great question. I think you have to start with what your audience is asking you. So for me, for example, when people ask me about inbound marketing, people always go to, how do I do inbound marketing? So right there, that can be an idea for a blog. What is inbound marketing and how does it help them? Boom, one blog. Then you can continue. What else is your audience asking you? Right? You have to keep addressing people's questions. So then when they are typing it into Google, you're popping up.

Okay, so that's— so really, then it almost becomes just listening to your, maybe your staff, your partners, and your customers. And I read that one person also goes on to, for example, the Amazon book reviews and sees what questions are still coming out, uh, having read a book. So, but what about then from a practical point of view, if someone's not comfortable at the writing but they know what the content should be, what should they do to get that article written?

Well, then I would actually argue that maybe they shouldn't be writing articles. Maybe they should be doing podcasting like this. Because then when you do the podcast, even if you never put this podcast out, you still have this information. You can turn it into a blog, you can turn it into an audiogram, you can convert it into a lot of other media, which is still helpful to you, and it's still considered inbound.

And how would someone take, for example, maybe they've recorded a podcast, or maybe just done a voice memo on their phone, What tools would you recommend from a practical point of view as a workflow for them to do that?

I love that you mentioned workflow because when you're— when you have one pillar piece of content, you always have to think, okay, how am I going to turn this into different pieces of content? And what is my process for that? So for me, when I have a podcast, I use Otter.ai. To transcribe the podcast. I put that up. Then I also use Headliner. I'm not sure if you've ever used Headliner, but Headliner, you can create the audiograms. And then I have a video component to my podcast. So I also put little videos and I put captions under them. So those are the main ways that I repurpose my podcast. And those are the tools that I use.

Right, right. I use one called Repurpose Let's assume you've got all this content, Laura, going out there. And I find myself, I produce a podcast and have a newsletter, and I'm getting a lot of page views on the website, but what I'm not getting is inquiries. So what am I doing wrong?

At every point in the visitor's journey, you can identify what is actually going wrong. So you're getting people to To the website, correct? And then people are not converting on the website?

That's right. They're not signing up to the newsletter, for example.

So I would say it could be a few things, but the first thing that comes to mind is that your call to action is not strong enough. You're not giving people a reason to sign up to the newsletter. Right. So that can be with your form, that it's just not attractive enough. It can be the text of the form. It can be both. Your text might not— it might say sign up to the newsletter. And at this point, everybody has a newsletter. So you have to give people a reason to sign up to yours as opposed to, let's say, mine.

Okay. And what sort of reasons do you need to give, Laura, if you're a business person, you're sending out a newsletter, and there's so many newsletters coming to people's inboxes? So how, how do you create that Call to action that's compelling?

For example, on mine, I say, sign up to get free inbound marketing resources right to your inbox once a month. So that can be attractive because it's not often, it's only monthly. It's attractive because instead of coming back to my website and reading, you know, the blogs or listening to the podcasts, I'm sending it all to their inbox. If that's something that is going to be helpful to them, They're gonna sign up.

Okay, so we need to improve the text itself on the, on the homepage. Or what about this idea of having a lead magnet that a lot of people on the internet are talking about? You need to have something that you're giving away that isn't the newsletter. What about that, Laura?

That's a great way of people to get people to sign up to your newsletter as well. You might have, you know, top 5 reasons Um, top 5 ways to, to put PR into your company tomorrow. Let's say that's your lead magnet and say the only way that you can get this is if you sign up. That's one way to do it. That's what's called a lead magnet.

Now, once you've got this person to have subscribed to your newsletter, what about then sort of moving it down the funnel? Because the newsletter subscription is not the end in itself, right? So inbound marketing is on a journey to customer acquisition. Can you tell us a little bit about how that works? Because for most of us, it's, you know, technology and a little bit of maths, a little bit of marketing all mixed in together.

Yep, that's a great question, and I'm super glad that you pointed that out. It's always a journey, and especially, especially now that there's more and more and more free content out there You have to be giving them a reason to go down the funnel, right? So let's say the lead magnet, you're starting with a lead magnet, people are signing up to get that lead magnet, and then, okay, what's the next step? How are you going to convert them? If you're not thinking about that, then your lead magnet is, is worthless. So the whole point is to get your audience to engage. You want to build a community. You want people to get involved. And the way that you do that in your newsletter, you can do it a bunch of ways, but a way that I've seen that works really well is that you ask your audience questions. Hi everyone, what do you want to hear in the podcast next week? You give people 3 options, they pick which one they like the best, and then in the podcast you're addressing them. That gets them involved.

Nice. And how would you do that from a practical point of view? Like, for example, we use Zoho Campaign. How are you putting a poll question into a newsletter from a practical point of view?

Oh, you would just ask. You would ask, or you would direct them to like a Facebook group or your Twitter. But you can easily just say, respond to this email with which one that you want to hear from. People will respond to you, especially if they, they're already subscribed. They already think you're helpful.

Okay, that sounds, that sounds really good. Builds up that interactivity, which is really what we're looking for as well, right? Now you've mentioned the dreaded F word, the Facebook and the Facebook group. Do we have to live on Facebook? Because—

No, I'll stop you right there. You don't have to.

Okay, good, because that's reassuring, because I personally don't like it because I find it so distracting. Um, but I hear some people say, you know, you've got to have a Facebook group, you've got to spend 2 or 3 hours a day, you know, contributing and farming. Um, and that for me seems like sort of standing at the bar for an hour and a half a day hoping that you'll meet the right person. So not very productive, Laura. So what, what's the alternative to kind of standing at the Facebook bar? Oh boy.

Um, well, no one wants to stand at that Facebook bar.

No, it's universally unpopular right now.

Yeah, but I would say, because the end goal is that you want to create an engaged community. So you pick your preference. That can be in your newsletter. You can just have all your engagement within your newsletter where you're talking back and forth. Instead of it being a monologue, you might have a dialogue with your subscribers. That's okay. You can Ask people what they want to hear in the podcast and say, hey, email me or fill out this form with your recommendations. That's one way to do it. But it's always making sure that there's a monologue— a dialogue and not a monologue.

Right. I think that's certainly the case for me is that I'm sending a lot of information out, but there isn't enough come back and have a conversation about it. We touched a little bit on technology, Laura. Could you recommend what people could use once they've got their content together? What platforms do you recommend?

So I use Social Pilot for all my social media. I use, um, if you need something free that's pretty good, use Buffer. So at first I used Buffer, uh, because you can post like 10, 10 posts for free. And at first, that's all really— that's what you need, right? You don't need to be posting more than that. Um, yeah, I think those 2 are the ones where to start if people need anything for their content.

And what about for the newsletter that you talked about there? Because it's quite a powerful platform that people don't use very much, in fact.

Yes. So my favorite one is Autopilot. That one's my favorite. I know everyone likes MailChimp, but I don't like MailChimp. Mailchimp is, they say you can do things and it takes, like, you have to jump through hoops for anything to work in Mailchimp. So to me, I like Autopilot. Autopilot is the best.

Anything with the word auto sounds like an entrepreneur's dream, right? And is there something that you've seen out there, Laura, that you go, well, that's a cool new tool that you'd recommend that's not Buffer, not Autopilot, that something else just caught your eye?

Okay, this is gonna sound Weird, but Google Forms. So I discovered—

Is that new?

It's not, it's not new, but I feel like sometimes we always try to find the most fancy, shiny new tool. And I took a step back and stopped looking at the shiny tools for my CRM, so my customer relationship management. And I said, what if I just use Excel, Excel sheets? And Google Forms, and that's what I did. And it's amazing because it's free.

Well, people love those kind of tips. Laura, if you want to find out more about you and have some sort of one-on-one time with Laura Bernard, how can they do that?

Yes, so you can find all my information and all my free resources at marketingbound.com.

Laura, thanks so much for joining us today. And I've learned a lot, especially about the need to create a a magnet of some kind and a conversation with my subscribers.

Thanks so much for having me.

So thank you to Laura for joining us from Toronto, and, uh, thank you for joining us from wherever you're sitting. So until we meet again, I wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that you keep on communicating with inbound marketing. And if you'd like to find out— tell me what you'd like us to cover on the next podcast, just write to me, jim@eastwestpr.com. There you go, Laura. I'm already taking your advice. In the meantime, wish you very well. Thank you again for listening.