The Virtual CMO Podcast
Season 7, Episode 6
This week, host Eric Dickmann interviews Steve Wiideman. Steve is an SEM & SEO expert, writer, educator, and business consultant. For over 22 years, he has been helping startups, SMBs, and Fortune 5000 companies develop creative growth strategies to ensure sustainable growth.
With his passion for SEO and growing businesses, Steve started Wiideman Consulting Group where he advises clients on SEO, link-earning, multi-location ranking factors, and PPC advertising.
His current projects include experiments to better understand the impacts of voice search, featured snippets, and structured data have on search results. Steve also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of California San Diego and California State University Fullerton.
You can connect with Steve on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Measuring Inbound Marketing
Measuring inbound marketing is important to help determine how well your business is doing with its marketing efforts. Website traffic is considered the primary indicator of your inbound success. In most cases, higher web traffic can translate into more opportunities for new customers and product sales. On the other hand, a lower volume of site visits can mean that your strategy is not going as well as expected. It is essential to measure inbound marketing because it gives marketers insights into what is working and what is not. Furthermore, tracking inbound marketing success allows the business to adjust its approach to convert more visitors into loyal customers.
There are four ways to measure your inbound marketing:
- Conversion rates
- Engagement metrics
- Website and blog traffic
- Lead generation by content and channel
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is creating content tailored to the needs of your target market. Its goal is to build a lasting relationship with people through channels like social media, blog content, videos, and podcasts. An inbound methodology executed correctly is less expensive and more efficient than traditional outbound or paid marketing tactics.
Highlights from Our Conversation with Steve:
“Social media isn't a place for you to reach out and say, me, me, me, us, us, us, right? It's the place to say YOU, YOU, YOU, and what do YOU like? "
- [00:03:59] How do you define SEO, SEM, and SMM?-The goal of SEO is to appear as high as possible on Google and other search engines, SEM encompasses paid search ads, while SMM focuses on social media channels.
- [00:07:15] How long should people wait when measuring inbound marketing results?- Organic content can take some time to rank. For quick results, a paid strategy is a better option but over the long term, organic search results can have a positive ROI for your inbound marketing efforts.
- [00:15:44] What is the real value of bringing in experts?- Small businesses might consider outsourcing inbound marketing efforts to a professional agency if there isn’t a strong team in-house. You can bring it in-house if your team is willing to learn the tools and techniques from the many online resources available.
- [00:19:38] How do you advise people to engage in a paid strategy?-Â The best place to start with a paid ad strategy hire a resource that can help you put together a plan. In this way, you can build an organized roadmap that you and your team can follow.
- [00:26:53] How can one use organic and paid social media effectively?- Don't put too much money into a tool until you've mastered how it works. Only promote posts with the highest user engagement.
- [00:33:13] Hitting the mark with ads-Â It's much easier to create ads once you have built out your buyer's persona, understand who your ideal customer is, and recognize what they are searching for. It's math, art, science, creativity all in one!
Measuring Inbound Marketing and Other Resources Mentioned
- Wiideman Consulting Group- Company Website