Explore insights on SEO, AI, and digital marketing strategies designed to help your business grow, stay visible, and adapt in a constantly evolving online landscape.
Alaska’s economy is often referred to as a “3 legged stool. Which means, jobs customary to Alaskans can fit into three primary categories, or “legs”; Petroleum, federal government, and all other sectors. What this means for those of us who have jobs that do not depend on petroleum or the federal government make up the third part of our economy, which is just about equal to that of gas/oil or government alone! According to the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage, about 31% of Alaskan residents work in the petroleum sector, while 35% work for the federal government, leaving 34% for all other sectors combined. This economic system has worked great for us in the past; however, with changing times we need to begin diversifying our economy because the petroleum will run out in time.
As stated by AlaskasEconomy.org, we, as Alaskans, have a choice of two paths: a slow decline or a stable and sustained growth. On one hand we use Alaska’s natural resources to generate short-term benefits and forget to think about the future generations of Alaska. The economy will slowly decline as investment in new opportunities decreases. Businesses will struggle to stay afloat, Alaskans will leave due to the lack of job opportunities, and property values will drop as well as many other negative effects. If we take action to diversify our economy, we can see a much brighter future for our state where there are new jobs and thriving businesses.
How can we begin to diversify?
Now that we’re advanced in technology, it opens many opportunities for economic growth. Many jobs are currently done from remote locations, like inbound marketing. Individuals can train themselves from home with many online courses & blogs on the subject manner. This also includes events, such as the Alaska Inbound Marketing Summit where you can learn and develop your skills within social media and inbound marketing from the experts — including network opportunities. This is a perfect time to dive into this new and exciting shift regarding businesses.
As an Inbound Marketing Agency, we are often asked if inbound marketing works for medical practices and physicians. It is generally known that consumers have embraced the internet as a place to research products and services before making a buying decision. Think about the last important purchase you have made. Did your research start on Google? If you’re like most people, it certainly did.
Health Care Information on the Internet
An obvious question now would be: Do consumers use the internet to research health related problems and specific physicians or surgeons or procedures? The answer is an astounding YES. Perhaps you have seen the stats that prove this point but they are worth repeating:
80% of internet users seek online health information
59% of U.S. adults look online for health information
Without question, most people are searching online for information about their doctors, their conditions, and their care.
How Medical Practices Can Benefit From This Shift?
In a sentence, go where the people are- connect with them, engage them and delight them. Inbound marketing is the practice of getting yourself or your business found online when prospects are searching, getting more people to your website and then converting them into customers. This is in contrast to traditional marketing, which includes tactics like magazine and television ads as well as telemarketing.
Inbound marketing for medical practices is not one specific action but a cohesive system of proven, effective tactics that work together and become greater than the individual pieces.
Converting this traffic into leads by providing premium content offers
Converting leads into customers with lead nurturing, lead scoring and email marketing
Measuring and analyzing every step to see what’s working and improve on what is not.
Bottom line? Inbound marketing works. When implemented correctly, you’ll start to see results and new faces and families come through the door. In what ways have you seen inbound marketing practices affect your business?
There is an old saying “nothing is as constant as change,” and this is perhaps never more true than with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Google is constant adjusting and improving their highly secretive SEO algorithm to improve the transparency of the user online experience. Then you have the other four top search engines working to keep up with Google and give users a reason to switch: Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and AOL. But considering Google has 900,000,000 (estimated) unique visitors per month and it’s closest competitor, Bing, has 165,000,000, we are going to focus on Google first.
There are big changes afoot in the world of SEO, and have been for several years. It is no longer just a “simple” case of paying for link-building and not having to worry about quality content if your website was overly optimized on the backend. As with social media, most of this change centers around the end user. Now content is king, so it is more important than ever to have dynamic content. This way people want to “backlink” from their website to material on your website. There are some pretty specific ways you can go about doing this, and one company Raka Creative calls it the Inbound Marketing Trifecta. The way they summarize this is fantastic, so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. Instead I’m going to recognize them as thought leaders in this and put a “backlink”.
Keep these three things in mind when strategizing your SEO:
Dynamic Content
Make sure the story of your buyers is driving the content you are creating and publishing, both on your website and in your blogs. Claim Google Authorship to build trust and thought leader status.
Social Signals
Engage consistently in a conversational and meaningful way with clients, buyers, and other experts in your industry.
Clean Linking
It is important to reach out to vendors, clients, and colleagues and offer to link their quality material on your website and other social media outlets.
Implementing these three areas on a consistent basis strategically positions your website to dominate organic searches in your market. Organic SEO will continue to bring you leads long after the material is posted, unlike paid SEO that will cut off the leads at the same time the payments stop.
So, take some time and identify the keywords you believe people could use to search for you, and weave them into your content, engage on social media, and practice clean linking. These three will be a rock solid foundation for your ongoing, lead-producing, organic SEO strategy.
HubSpot’s all-in-one marketing software helps more than 8,000 companies in 56 countries attract leads and convert them into customers. A pioneer in inbound marketing, HubSpot aims to help its customers create marketing that people actually love. Founded in 2006, HubSpot has seen consistent, expansive growth. In 2012 they grew 82% and now have headquarters on the East Coast and in Europe.
Jennifer Christensen VP + Public Relation of BEACON Media + Marketing announced, “We are excited for BEACON to be a HubSpot partner agency. It allows our clients to make smart business decisions, and it perfectly aligns the marketing we provide with the sales process. Our clients want to see results from the marketing and the dollars spent – and HubSpot can provide this.”
Adrienne Wilkerson President + Creative Director of BEACON Media + Marketing added, “HubSpot is one of the premier authorities on inbound marketing and we are honored to represent them in Alaska.”
Tim Thyne, HubSpot Marketing Consultant said “I am excited to begin working with BEACON Media + Marketing. We share the belief that to truly transform your marketing, “inbound” is the way to go and we are thrilled to have BEACON bring this message to Alaska.”
We are a visual society that consumes digital data at an insane rate. One of the best ways to communicate large amounts of data is an infographic.
Offer precise and compelling data.
Choose the data you would like to share and simplify it into numbers, graphs, and icons. Only share information that is relevant and exciting, you want your infographic to grab attention, which is hard to get online.
Get Creative.
Keep in mind that most people are visual and will tend to share a visually striking post over solid text. Use icons, colors, and typography in a way that portrays your message. For example, if your infographic were about Alaskan winters, you wouldn’t want to show palm trees. However, if you’re selling winter vacations, palm trees could be a perfect element. No matter what your visuals are, make sure they’re relevant.
Spread the word.
The purpose of an infographic is that it will be shared and bring new visitors back to your page and to your company. Start by sharing your infographic on your blog and website, since this is where you eventually want them to come back to. Link your infographic to your social media pages (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.), email newsletter, and by sharing with fellow businesses.
Use your infographic.
Infographics don’t need to stop at the web. They translate very easily into video, using music and transitions to create a more dynamic message. They can also be used in print for posters, media kits, annual reports, and in brochures. Once you have the design, there are endless possibilities on how you use it.
This blog post wouldn’t be complete without an infographic, so here’s an example of one that will help to get the ball rolling for your next visual post!
Are you intimidated by the new buzz words popping up everyday? Are you wondering where to start and how far in to get? Do you groan every time someone asks you if you have Pinned, Tagged, Tweeted, Friended, etc?
The scope of advertising and marketing is changing and it is changing fast. How are you as a busy business owner supposed to keep up with it all much less manage it?
This blog is the first in a series that intends to answer at least some of your questions regarding business marketing techniques. More over we are going to give you some tools to navigate the ever-changing waters of current business marketing trends. I want you to walk away with distilled version of what is out there and an idea of what is going to be effective for your industry and even your business. To begin I want to introduce what may be a new concept in marketing.
Introduction to Inbound Marketing.
As I mentioned before the whole face of marketing, the way we interact with our clients, our prospects is changing. In fact it has changed right out from under many of us.
No longer is the primary focus on what many are now calling “interruption marketing.” I call this the traditional marketing efforts and it includes TV, radio, direct mail, print ads, and many things that ‘interrupt’ our lives. Think about it like this: You are listening to your favorite radio station, it’s a sunny day, the snow is melting, the roads are dry, and you are cruising down the highway and your work week is done. Does everyone have that picture in their head? It’s a good moment. Then suddenly the station cuts to a commercial about a new consulting company promising better workflow management and a smoother hiring process. There’s nothing wrong with this. But suddenly everything from work comes crashing back down and your moment has been interrupted. You may remember that consulting firm favorably, but then again you might not.
How about this example? It’s the season finale of your favorite TV show. There’s ten minutes left in the program. What’s coming? We all know; there has to be the cliffhanger commercials, right? Especially if it is a popular show, sometimes there’s almost 10 minutes of commercials for 5 minutes of the finale. Do you really watch these commercials or are they just an irritant. An interruption? If you record your shows like me, you just fast forward everything.
There is a better way! Do you really want to be the company that interrupts your prospects’ moment to sell them something? People do not want to be sold! They want to buy, oh yes they want to buy. But we as a culture HATE to be sold.
So what if there was an alternative? What if you could consistently reach your prospects and set yourself up as an expert in your industry? What if you could build a community where you could interact with your clients, vendors and prospects before, during and after they buy or sell to you? What if your company could be the one they turn to when they need your service or product because they already know and trust you? What if you could do this all without spending a small fortune? This is the opportunity “inbound marketing” offers businesses.
According to Gleanster Research 50% of leads are qualified but not ready to buy. Companies that build relationships with their leads over time have the greatest success in turning leads into customers by staying top-of-mind until the lead is ready to buy. Therefore staying connected with contacts through social media, blogging, and other “inbound marketing techniques” is beneficial from a business perspective. The end goal is to get your leads to “raise their hand” and self-select into further engaging with your business.
Inbound marketing uses high quality content to qualify warm leads so that a company knows their material is reaching those who want to hear what they have to say. It is about offering non-promotional, interesting content through blogging, social media, and well written website copy so that when people are ready, you are the one they turn to. It is cultivating leads instead of having to relay so heavily on cold calling, attending trade shows and playing the sales numbers game.
There is a better way to market your business. As a business owner, you no longer have to rely exclusively on the traditional marketing methods who’s results are difficult at best to track.
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