If you missed parts of the 2011 Inbound Marketing Summit here’s some of the best take-aways. Here are the morning notes.

Boston Sports Shootout with Peter Stringer and Ann Zeigler

• Interact with fans in a open and interactive forum – be where your customers are
• Engaging with fans by listening to what they need
• Red Sox goal: Our social media goal is to capitalize on the opportunity to engage fans in a transparent, public dialogue.  This daily interaction allows the organization to enhance the experience of all Red Sox fans; from the casual to the die-hard.
• Red Sox reach:
  • 138,706 Twitter fans
  • 2,897,000 fans on Facebook;
  • 78% of fans are not local
• The news coverage model has really changed, if reporters aren’t on social media they are missing out.
• The @celtics realize that everyone is a journalist these days including the players
• Stringer thinks press releases will be dead in the next year
• When you have 2 million followers you are your own publisher
• Celtics don’t track metrics, but then again they are the 2nd largest followed sports team on Facebook
• Your fans become customers
• With so many fans and interactions, you can’t control the comments, and the insults don’t last long. However, sports community managers do monitor for complaints so they can be addressed quickly
• One challenge is how to manage response.  Ideally the customer service people are on twitter/facebook and respond personally. This gets noise off the normal brand channel.
• Stringer doesn’t find value in LBS checkins. Avg of only 100 checkins at a Celtics game. Service issues reduce the value of mobile apps. Lastly the fan base is larger than just people in the stands.
• Celtics aren’t seeing traffic with QR codes, paper sign-ins garnered 1,500 new names, QR scans just 100

7 Habits of Highly Successful Facebook-era Marketers: Lessons from the Field with Clara Shih

• 2011 is the year of social media execution in Fortune 100
• Facebook Connect extends identity across the web
• 73% of surveyed CMOs list social media as high priority this year
• Our individual capital grows in accordance with our network size
• You can connect with more people with fewer messages via segmentation,  targeting and positioning
• Transitive trust – before web 2.0 marketers could not use the power of transitive trust because the social graph.  Marketers can use refer a friend programs

7 Habits of Highly Successful Facebook-era Marketers

1. Target your message – use what you know about potential customers: sell your product/service to those interested
2. Know when to use which medium – consider using Facebook for frequent communications and in some cases your primary web presence
3. Be human, be authentic – people don’t want to connect with a logo
4. Invest in killer content – talk about your brand, at most, 1/5 posts, build content that the customer needs
5. Evolve your metrics – you can quantify social, but the end of the day you just need it; new metrics should be related to business goals. Social CLV is an updated form of CLV.
   1. Social CLV = Word of mouth referrals + new sales idea + customer support savings
6. Don’t go it alone – Use digital agencies to kick start ideas
7. Have fun and keep learning – Examples Pizza Hut & Farmers.
   1. Pizza Hut embedded the pizza ordering order in Facebook because customers didn’t want to click off the Facebook page
   2. Farmers put the Farmers blimp into Farmville as a virtual good

Video Content Creation Made Easy with Steve Garfield and Nick Saber

• How much content do you need? 2-3 pieces to maintain your audience; 2-3 pieces a day to grow your audience

• Site Recordsetter is used to record the record

Redefining Influence – Panel Discussion

What is influence?

1. The power that influences a person or a course of events
2. Influence is about decision making. If you trust the person communicating, they have influence over your decision
3. Mainstream influentials are on Facebook, the are your friends, not in major networks blog
4. The ability to influence other people naturally
5. Influence is a number like number of RT, number of actions
6. Not a popularity contest. Trust the subject matter expert.
7. Impact of what marketers do. It’s about originality

Creating The Perfect Customer Lifecycle: How To Convert More Leads And Boost Repeat Sales In Your Business with Greg Head

• The old days were “a little too simple”. Older marketing models were PUSH. Almost no marketing data. Was much easier to connect biz tactics to growth.
• Typical customer Lifecycle: Leads –> Prospects –> Customers
• How do you scale? Double your spend? Double your marketing and sales staff?
• Focusing on tactics while ignoring strategy leads to holes in your funnel

Gaps in the funnel:

1. Lost traffic
2. Lost leads
3. Lost customers

Be clear about your plan to make every move count

[important]Tools + Tactics – Strategy = Chaos[/important]

Perfect customer lifecycle

1. Traffic Attraction Strategies
   1. Content is king (blog posts, videos, etc)
   2. Social media
   3. Online Marketing (PPC, SEO)
   4. Referrals, Partners
2. Capture Leads
3. Lead Nurture Strategies
   1. Create custom campaigns for hot, warm, and cold leads
   2. Personalization is key
   3. Make every relevant and useful
4. Sales Conversion Strategies
   1. Automate sales stage communications
   2. Proactive handle objections
   3. Provide supporting evidence
5. Wowing Customer Strategies
   1. Welcome customers (make it personal and relevant)
   2. Be systematic about every decision
6. Upsell Strategies
   1. Upsell or cross sell later in the relationship
   2. Offer upsell products during ____
7. Referral Strategies
   1. Ask for referrals – and track them
   2. Partners, customers, networking
   3. Testimonials and social promotion

Create a M.A.P. – Marketing Automation Plan to gain efficiencies

Download the template and workbook at http://www.infusionsoft.com/pcl

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted – What the Middle East Revolt Means to Marketers with Larry Liebert and Allen Bonde

(The presentation had nothing to do about the Middle East)

Five rules for success

1. Story > Source
2. Sharing > Views
   1. Create content that want to be shared
3. Medium <> Message
   1. The message of caring about customers must be cared across channels and being authentic
4. Community Builds Commerce
   1. TripAdvisor does a great job of providing community with tools that help share content. Engaging content creates reach which drives sales
5. Know your Capital
   1. Curation + Programming + Distribution = Capital

Accidental Billionaires: The Real Story Behind Facebook with Ben Mezrich

• Had to read two books a week before he could watch TV
• Had a janitor write him a rejection letter after finding his manuscript in the trash
• Hung out at The Crossroads a MIT-dive bar where he met mostly young Asians who always had $100 bills
• The MIT Blackjack club lasted 25 years. It was passed down from class to class

If you missed parts of the 2011 Inbound Marketing Summit here’s some of the best take-aways.

Youngme Moon on being different and standing out

• Embrace your negatives as part of your brand to stand out
• No one can tell you how to be different, you must have an idea for how to be different which is hard
• You must be willing to ignore your critics
• Negative markers is one of the most important tools marketers have for differentiation
• Differentiation in a crowded market comes not from well roundedness, but almost always from lopsidedness (focus on strengths only)
• Customer will almost always be able to how to improve but they will almost never be able to tell you how to be different
• Different and crazy can look the same at first
• To be different is to be alone. What makes it feel risky but also captivating to behold
• Doing anything you aren’t passionate about can feel a lot like work.
• Examples: Twitter (140 characters), IKEA (self service), Mini (crazy small

Chris Brogan on using Google+

• Fall in love w/the People & where they are not just Technology
• The biggest thing about Google+, when it’s all boiled down, is its impact on search
• We want to talk to the real person, not their PR agents
• Favorite part of Google+ is the ability to have deeper conversations around content.
• Find people on Google+: Findpeopleonplus.com
• Find people on Google+: Group.as
• Fill in About page otherwise people don’t get to know you
• Fill in “Current Employment” with the most interesting content because that’s what people see when they roll over your image
• Why to be in Google+ – because it ranks more highly in the Google search rankings
• Don’t abandon your main website, you own that.  You don’t own Google+ content

Brian Halligan on version 2 of inbound marketing

• Inbound version 1 was about fixing top of the funnel: spam, cold-calling, interruption based marketing
• Inbound version 2 is about the middle and bottom of the funnel: conversion, etc
• Old world marketing model
  • Asymmetric relationship
  • Sales had power over the customer (and had power within the organization)
  • “Enterprise death-march” sales process
• New world marketing model
  • Symmetric relationship
  • Customer has the power; Power needs to shift from sales to marketing because sales gets involved at the bottom of the funnel
  • New B2B buying process starts with search (search remains a useful tool throughout the process)
  • Content becomes a sustainable asset that appreciates over time, as opposed to traditional marketing where you rent space.
  • Gen1 website was brochureware. Gen2 was putting in a CMS. Gen3 is making them personalized

  MOFU – Middle of the Funnel

  • “Conversion expertise” is the common trait of the most successful marketing companies
  • Uses the “network effect” to improve the customer experience
  • Personalized experiences improve value and increase conversion rates
  • Build a moat around your business using inbound marketing
  • Organize around purpose: TOFU & MOFU
  • The profile of new-age marketers: digital native, content creator, analytical and social reach
  • Company examples: Netflix, Amazon, Google, Pandora

Content Management Systems and Platforms – Panel Discussion

• CMS value is getting the right message to the right customer in a timely manner
• Use theme of : Bait –> Hook –> Sinker
• Need to be able to repurpose content across multiple channels
• You need a strategy to leverage your CMS.  Tools alone have no value. YET the strategy has to be flexible and iterative
• “Engagement Value” scoring the ability of behaviors/actions to convert to a customer. How to do you measure the value of your website activites.
• Use A/B testing and thresholds to measure the value of content
• The system is only as smart as you are. You need to understand your analytics. Be ready to fail faster.