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Infographics are an awesome way to present information. When you combine data visualization, contextual information, and graphics, it’s much easier to capture and maintain the attention of your audience.

However, creating well-designed infographics that actually help increase your traffic can be quite the process. With so much information, where do you start? What colors should you use? Which data should you represent?

That’s why HubSpot and Venngage are joining forces to bring you a live master class on September 27th where Venngage Co-Founder & Chief Data Viz, Eugene Woo, will discuss everything you need to know about creating and using infographics in your marketing.

More specifically, he’ll cover:

• How to incorporate infographics into your content strategy.
• How to optimize infographics for your funnel.
• Best practices and design principles to live by.
• How to visualize different types of data.
• How to organize data, information, and graphics effectively.
• Much more about using infographics in your marketing!

Save your seat for How to Create and Use Infographics in Your Marketing today.

Inbound marketing is about matching the way you market and sell with the way people actually want to shop and buy. And after reading the 2016 State of Inbound report, it became clear that inbound was beginning to change at a pace more rapid than anything we’ve seen before.

New technologies were being introduced. Consumers’ habits were evolving. Things were different.

What does that mean for the future of this movement? Quite honestly, we believe that in five years time marketing and sales as you know it will no longer exist.

To help dissect some of these future trends, we invited WordStream Founder Larry Kim and ClassPass CMO Joanna Lord to have a discussion with HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, via YouTube Live. This talk dives into what the future of inbound marketing might look like, as it relates to content, search, and ads.

Watch the video below to hear the full discussion:

The Future of Marketing: A Forward-Thinking Conversation Featuring Leaders From WordStream & ClassPass

If you didn’t have a chance to watch the full YouTube discussion, don’t worry. We’ve summarized both Kim and Lord’s thoughts and input below to make it easy for you to distill some of the top takeaways.

How do you see technology changing the way people shop and buy?

Larry Kim, WordStream

According to Kim, the future of shopping online is going to be less about stumbling upon something in Google and more about customers actually expressing their preferences for brands. Marketers need to do more marketing. And that boils down to getting people familiar with your brand so that they favor you when it comes time for a purchasing decision.

If your first appearance is when a consumer finally decides to search for your products and services on their own, you’re too late. People overwhelmingly click on the things they are familiar with, so you have to get them even before that.

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

Lord mentioned that when ClassPass first started, they spent a lot of time on the consideration phase and differentiating value props. Because consumers are far more informed, they’re far more in control, and marketers really need to create that bias early. Of course it’s about being where they want you to be, but it’s also about connecting with them sooner.

What stood out to you most in the 2016 State of Inbound report?

Larry Kim, WordStream

One of the things that stuck out most to Kim was that inbound marketing and advertising don’t seem to be getting along that well. Advertising is seen as being overrated and annoying — and that’s really unfortunate because, like all channels, it’s less about the medium and more about how you use it.

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

The big thing that stood out to Lord? Video as an emerging vehicle.

She went on to explain that video helps you tell a great story, but today, marketers might over-index on that being videos’ purpose: a dynamic, compelling way to tell a story. However, what came through in the different statistics in the State of Inbound report is that there’s a stickiness to video.

According to Lord, marketers need to be thinking about multiple touch points along the video journey, and different ways to build infrastructure to support and track that effectively. Marketers can’t just be ‘dabbling’ in video at this point — it has to be an all-in play.

Do you think people are frustrated with advertising because a lot of marketers are doing it poorly and not providing a great experience?

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

Lord admitted that a lot of advertising is, in fact, poor. A lot of people try to take historical advertising approaches and apply it on new platforms.

The best marketers that understand advertising will see these new and emerging platforms as a way to amplify their best content. Right now, there’s a bit of a disconnect: Marketers are trying to apply a historical approach on new platforms and they need to take a new approach on new platforms.

Larry Kim, WordStream

When it comes to this debate, Kim explained that he thinks we need to be pickier in terms of what it is we’re advertising.

He went on to explain this example: If you have $1K to spend on social media advertising, and your blog puts out 10 posts a month, the worst thing could do is split the money up and use $100 to promote each post.

Why? Because some of them are going to be garbage, and one or two of them might be great.

Kim argued that what marketers need is a change in mentality. Instead of dividing the money equally, you should take the $1K and go all-in on the top performing post. Doing this will not only get you a much higher ROI, but ultimately it will help you appear less annoying in the eyes of those coming across it, as you’re promoting stuff that people actually find interesting.

Do you think that video has a place across the whole funnel, or does it work better in one part of the funnel?

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

Lord explained that while it’s probably very specific to the brand and the service or product they offer, video can be used in every part of the funnel. She followed that by stating that video is often more compelling in different phases for different brands.

For example, ClassPass is a lifestyle brand with a demographic of young urban women, which provides an opportunity to use video more often — and in more phases — than some B2B companies.

She went on to explain that one of the best places that video comes into play for ClassPass is actually in post-conversion nurturing for lifetime value, because it’s all about motivation and milestones, and that’s the voice of a customer story.

Larry Kim, WordStream

According to Kim, the purpose of content marketing and advertising is to bias people. You want people to have happy thoughts about your brand and what it is you do, so later when they need to buy whatever it is you’re selling, they favor you.

When it comes to the effectiveness of video, he thinks that the message you convey through video is more memorable, inspiring, visual, and dynamic than any other medium. And from that perspective, video content is orthogonal to the funnel, meaning you should be creating video assets for every stage.

While Kim doesn’t think of bottom of the funnel or top of the funnel as being more important than the other, he does have a hard time with the costs tied to video production.

To avoid wasting budget, he suggests auditioning a lot your content to see what performs best — especially in regards of engagement. Then, transforming only the top-performing stuff into video content.

What big bets are you making at WordStream and ClassPass around marketing tactics that you think will be important over the next couple of years?

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

Lord explained that their top investment priorities are photography, video, and humanizing the brand.

People love the service when they when they sign up and when they try a class, but there’s also a lot of noise in fitness, and there are a lot of great brands to compete with. Everyone is getting into health and fitness and wellness, which is why ClassPass’ biggest investments are around differentiating the brand’s point of view. And they way they see it, photography and video are their strongest bets in terms of bringing what’s important to them and their audience — living fully and spending time of experiences that nurture you — to life.

Larry Kim, WordStream

According to Kim, one of the challenges WordStream has is that they’ve kind of tapped out the market of low-funnel people — people who are actively searching for these types of pay-per-click advertising solutions.

So when he thinks of growth in 2017 and beyond, it’s all about creating demand and awareness among people who aren’t actively searching for the products and services that WordStream sells. He explains that if you’re just waiting for people to search, you’re not really growing your market — you’re just harvesting the demand of people who are already looking to buy that thing in the first place.

His goal is to create biases in people’s minds earlier on, so that when the need arises for advertising solutions, they’ll automatically think of WordStream.

What formats would you encourage marketers to invest in over the next 12-24 months?

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

According to Lord, the vehicle is important. And when it comes to vehicles and formats, video is going to be very important — especially episodic content and snippet video.

She went on to explain that episodic content is the idea that there’s a volume or a series to it. In other words, you’re telling a story over a long period of time. It’s a multi-touch approach, and that allows you to meet people earlier in the funnel, nurture them, and hopefully bias them along the way.

How important is it to publish content on external sites like Medium or LinkedIn?

Larry Kim, WordStream

According to Kim, if you’re in the tech space, Medium is a fantastic outlet for content publishing and content syndication.

In the last six months, he was able to become the top 20th ranked author on Medium. (That’s about a million views of his content every month.) The best part? He said it wasn’t all that hard — all he did was syndicate existing content. And Medium makes that easy with the help of its republishing tool.

In terms of time distribution, Kim went on to explain that he spends about 20% of his time creating content for external sites. However, he also urged that the worst thing you could ever do is abandon your blog, and that 70-80% of the content you create should still be going there. 

What evolving consumer trends will disrupt marketing the most over the next year?

Joanna Lord, ClassPass

One thing Lord mentioned that she is currently focusing on is this concept of being the backdrop to a consumer’s life. As she explained it, a lot of companies are thinking about the currency of time: How can you have enough value around your core product so that it’s actually consuming more of someone’s time?

ClassPass is primarily an app-based experience, but everything they’re starting to test in the product will be peripheral and adjacent to that, so they can earn the right to have more of someone’s time. Part of that is thinking through the many times a person might need your brand or product in a day — in other words, what are they hiring you for in their day? If you uncover that, you can build it into your product road map.

Lord also stressed the importance of personification. She asked the questions, “Who does your customer want to be?” and “What will they need to hire you for in 3-5 years if you do your core job right today?”

Larry Kim, WordStream

The biggest thing that’s going to grow revenues for WordStream over the foreseeable future, and for their customers, is advertising. Not just advertising the same old way, but online advertising using ridiculously powerful new technologies that have been released in the last 12-18 months.

For example, they are currently focusing on the ability to target specific ads to specific phone numbers or email addresses. According to Kim, it’s kind of like email marketing, where you can target people who are on your lists and build custom audiences. What’s different is that you’re not limited to segmenting by just everyone on your lists — you can segment by behaviors and interests and demographics. According to him, it has never been easier, in the history of marketing, to go after your target market.

If you enjoyed this discussion between Larry Kim and Joanna Lord, head over to stateofinbound.com to learn more about the future of content, search and ads and how it’s evolving in 2017.

Running an agency is a tough business. You’re constantly balancing new business development, creativity, employee management, legal concerns, invoices, new tools… the list goes on and on.

With so many responsibilities, how do you know what to prioritize? Wouldn’t it be nice to know what your clients think you should focus on?

We rounded up some pieces of advice from a few marketing executives and CMOs to help you handle the many varied demands of running an agency.

7 Pieces of Agency Advice from Marketing Executives

1) Focus on building a partnership with your clients

The advice is, for marketers, you only get what you put in. If you kick it over the fence, expect it to be kicked back. Okay? If you lean in and you say, ‘Hey, agency. This truly is a partnership.’ In that, we’ll get the best solution and the agency gets the best partnership because there’s a transparency in our business.

Part of what happens early on in our agency relationships is everyone is taking a guess. The tension tends to come as reality starts affecting that guess.

When you’re trying to sell in on the agency side, you’ll always err towards the side of, ‘Oh, it will be fine.’ On the client side, you’re like, ‘Well, I don’t understand what those fees are,’ and yet there’s no working in between. That would be the big thing, to lean in.

– David Jaye | CMO of The Weather Company

2) Get your executive team involved from day one

Think about some of the great marketing of our age. Apple’s a perfect example. It wasn’t a partnership between Lee Clow and Apple’s CMO. It was Steve Jobs and Lee together creating great work.

I think that is a formula at the top, a creative partner and the CEO working together. If those two people can work together, it’s magic.

– Brian Chesky | CEO of Airbnb

3) Highlight your specialties

There is too much focus on sales and cross-selling, and not enough on unique capabilities.

Never hire your PR agency to do your paid search and find agencies that truly specialize in one core service to deliver the best results.

– Ed Nevraumont | CMO of A Place for Mom

4) Empathise with client’s drive for revenue

One big thing that the agency side doesn’t understand is the ever present need to drive revenue and to make sure that I’m managing the spend against that.

Things can get away from you very quickly if you have a slow Q1 — you’re not going to make your annual revenues. Just that shift and thinking away from the quality of the program, if you will, to the responsibility for the revenue and investment for the enterprise. That was probably the biggest shift I had to make.

– Ellen Donahue-Dalton | CMO of Medecision

5) Don’t wait for a crisis to build strong relationships

Should a crisis or high-profile communication occur in your organization, you need to already have strong relationships across your executive team.

Build the rapport now so that you’re not waiting until crisis hits to build those relationships and protocols.

– Amy Comeau | CMO of Emory Healthcare

6) Don’t underestimate the value of speed

I need agencies who are very fast — that’s point number one, especially in a startup. I will actually sacrifice some strategy for speed.

I needed an agency that would be fast, that would be nimble and also that wasn’t going to lock me into a big retainer. That’s a real mistake that companies make, especially small companies. You just can’t afford monthly hits of $10,000 or more.

You may not use the agency in a given month because you have other priorities, and then you’re still paying the $10,000, and there’s always exit fees. It ends up getting very expensive.

– Jeff Perkins | CMO of QASymphony

7) Play well with others

I love the agencies that play well with others. I love putting agencies together.

I think that’s one of the most powerful things we can do. I know that’s not always easy. Who’s on first? Who’s on second? Can be tricky. When that dance is well danced, I think it’s beautiful.

I love agencies who truly understand they fill a void. Yet are able to rise up out of that specialty and connect other dots for us. I think that’s a very, very powerful capability from an agency.

– Rebecca Messina | Global CMO of Beam Suntory

Is your company fully embracing the digital age? Is your team engaging digital transformation beyond updating your website every 6 months? For many companies, failure to adapt to new technology means getting left behind and losing business. Your prospects and customers are researching and buying online, so why aren’t you focusing on marketing to them via digital channels?

Ask any millennial about Kodak and they will struggle to tell you more about what it does. For many of us however, Kodak was a household brand and a former heavyweight in the analog film business. Kodak not only missed the boat on digital but also acutely misunderstood the ways consumers wanted to be engaged, interact with their photos and the technologies involved. As a result, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

For companies like Kodak, to stay in business, they are forced to make desperate cost cutting measures starting with employee layoffs. Often, these layoffs start from traditional cost centres like IT, Human Resources and Marketing. During layoffs planning, the company looks at departments that are unable to prove return on investment (ROI) and are adding to the cost of running a company.

When the marketing department gets downsized, it can be difficult for marketers like us to accept. After all, marketing has always been in charge of bringing the product to market. The reality for most marketing departments is that they have a long list of complex strategies influenced by a mix of internal and external stakeholders. We are bogged down with a host of business functions such as increasing brand awareness, product adoption & pipeline creation, resulting in being tied down with more projects than we can handle, which means proving the ROI can get left behind.

But how do you know what’s working for your business if you can’t measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns?

Let’s compare this outlook with the sales department, which operates under a constant sense of urgency because they are always working to meet a predetermined sales quota. This sense of urgency is exacerbated by the fact that their compensation is tied to meeting or exceeding those quotas. This gives them an extraordinary sense of focus around measuring their results and reviewing their strategies.

There’s no reason why marketing can’t work towards targets in the same way sales does.

Work Out What to Focus On 

In order for marketing to be empowered as a function, we need to cut out the noise and confusion that can make it difficult to focus on objectives that matter the most; those that ultimately drive sales and prove ROI. At a high level, these objectives should address the Top of the Funnel (TOFU), Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) and Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU):

• TOFU — If you need to increase traffic to your website, utilize tactics like blogging, Search Engine Optimization & Social Media

• MOFU — While blogs are very effective at bringing visitors to your website, they won’t help you qualify prospects or make a sale. To turn visitors into leads, MOFU tactics like ebook offers & webinars will help you get there

• BOFU — By the time a lead reaches the bottom of the funnel, they are ready to buy and the only question is who they will buy from. This is the chance for marketers to add more qualified opportunities to the sales pipeline by using tactics like lead nurturing through email marketing & case studies

Once these objectives are top-of-mind, the marketing department can devise a strategy that turns them from a cost centre into a profit centre, fully capable of explaining results and impacting the company’s growth.

Set SMART Marketing Goals 

To do all that, we first need to develop  measurable goals that allow for strategy changes and reviews along the way. Measurable goals also help us prove how effective we are and spur on improvement.

However, goals are useless if they’re not realistic. That’s why it’s critical to set SMART goals. Here’s how you can set a SMART goal:

• Specific — Set real numbers with real deadlines
• Measurable — Make sure you can track your goals
• Attainable — Work towards a goal that is challenging but attainable
• Realistic — Be honest with yourself, including what your team can or cannot do. Address the challenges that might come up
• Time-bound — Give yourself a deadline, “sometime down the road” is not specific enough

To help you do all that now and eliminate the confusion on setting goals, HubSpot has put together a free goal setting template. With this template, you will be able to find out how far off you are at from your year-end goals so you can put in place a strategy to make this your best year yet.

More than ever before, people are relying on their mobile devices for web browsing. In fact, a recent study from Hitwise found that almost 60% of U.S. online searches are conducted via mobile, and according to Litmus, 56% of emails were opened on mobile devices in April 2016.

With so many potential customers opening emails on mobile, it’s essential that marketers optimize their sends for tablets and smartphones in addition to desktop computers. Luckily, Google has made that easier with their announcement that Gmail will begin supporting emails created with responsive design later this month.

Let’s dive into some of the details marketers should know about this announcement.

What’s changing?

Until this month, many email marketers have had to optimize their sends for mobile using manual tactics — changing the sizes and proportions of images, links, calls-to-action, and so on. (HubSpot customers: You get to skip the headache thanks to default emails automatically optimized with responsive design.) But these steps are time-consuming to say the least. 

However, last night, Gmail announced that both Gmail and Inbox by Gmail will now allow for emails developed with responsive design. In other words, emails will dynamically adapt so their content automatically fits the size of all screens.

What’s the difference in experience between an email that’s been optimized for mobile, and one that hasn’t? When emails aren’t optimized for mobile use, the content might appear distorted, forcing readers to zoom in or out to read the message or click on a link. When emails are optimized for mobile devices, images and links automatically adjust so they’re easier to view on a smartphone or tablet. 

To put the significance of responsive design into context, consider that 39% of people will stop engaging with a mobile site if images take too long to load, and 38% will stop engaging with a website if the layout is unattractive, according to Adobe. 

This GIF from Google illustrates the difference:

If you’re design-minded, Google is making this possible by means of CSS media queries. According to Jeffrey Vocell, principal product marketing manager at HubSpot, these coding filters are used in website and email creation to ensure that an email, regardless of the device it’s accessed on, will look just the way the sender intended. They make it easy to change the style of content depending on which type of device is loading the email or website.

What does this mean for marketers?

I asked HubSpot Demand Generation Marketing Manager Nick Barrasso what he thought about the announcement.

“It’s about time that Google is supporting media queries for responsive design,” Barrasso said. “The growth of email engagement on mobile devices is not slowing anytime soon, so this is a move that’s not only welcomed, but long overdue.”

Here’s why Gmail’s announcement is such a big deal for marketers:

1. Greater access: Gmail has one billion users worldwide, and 75% of Gmail users access their accounts on mobile devices. This change represents a tremendous opportunity for email marketers to target millions of potential customers with emails optimized for mobile.
2. Better user experience: 42% of consumers in a BlueHornet study said they would delete an email if it didn’t display properly on a mobile device. This change will improve the recipient experience, and perhaps save some messages from the dreaded delete.
3. Greater accessibility: According to Kevin Mandeville, content designer at Litmus, “Accessibility in email is essential for a campaign’s success.” Features in CSS media queries that Gmail now support include larger, touch-friendly buttons and automatic image resizing. Additionally, Gmail will support CSS screen-reading settings so recipients can more easily listen to emails as well.
4. Streamlined email design: Email marketers and designers will no longer have to hack their way to mobile-optimized emails using CSS inlining, templates, or manually adjusting sizes and proportions. CSS media queries are a far less complicated, one-stop process for responsive design.
5. Gmail is an influencer: Now that the largest email provider is supporting responsive design, other services may follow suit in order to compete. 

With more than 80% of global email users projected to access their email on mobile devices by the end of 2018, it’s of no small consequence that Google has just taken the next step to improve user experience and results for Gmail users and email marketers.

Now that producing mobile-optimized emails has gotten that much easier, check out our roundup of remarkable email marketing campaigns to start brainstorming creative sends to engage mobile users.

What do you think about Gmail’s announcement? How are you preparing to optimize your emails for mobile? Let us know in the comments.

Not all keywords are created equal. Some, like “marketing,” draw in huge crowds of searchers each month. Others, like “marketing tips for small shoe store companies,” might squeak out a couple hits.

As marketers, we’re often conditioned to go after attainable high-volume keywords. You know, the kind that pull in over a hundred Google searches per month? The rationale seems sound: We’ll attract more traffic, generate more leads, and close more customers. More clicks = more business, right?

Not always. We always knew that targeting some low-volume keywords was a sound strategy, but one surprising discovery backed it up with cold, hard evidence. We dug into one client’s keyword strategy and found that a forgotten low-volume keyword was generating some of their most highly converting leads.

This goes against the “more clicks = more customers” convention. But when logical assumptions and data go head-to-head, data always wins.

Here’s how we improved conversions with low-volume keywords, and how you can make them work for your own strategy.

Low lead conversion with a “typical” keyword strategy

(Editor’s note: Our experience was based on one client’s experience, but for privacy purposes, we’ll refer to them as Client A; and we have changed keyword examples.)

We began an inbound partnership with Client A, a content management system for churches, and all was going according to plan.

We implemented an inbound marketing roadmap with Client A and devised a keyword strategy based on industry norms: keywords that had high searches (at least 140 a month) and low ranking difficulty (under 70). We kept buyer personas in mind, considering who the target customers were.

Download the free eBook, “Inbound Marketing: Blueprint to Your Success,” to learn how keywords generate qualified leads in an inbound marketing strategy.

We developed a list of keywords that hit the mark. Then, we set off developing content and campaigns around them. Our main focus was especially high-volume keywords (a few thousand searches a month) — we were shooting for the stars, and hoping for big wins in organic traffic.

Then we began implementation. We pulled out all the inbound stops for optimization. We blogged, wrote ebooks, posted on social media, hit “send” on email campaigns, and began workflows for engaging leads.

Traffic… but not conversions

Thanks to our efforts in high-volume keywords, we moved Client A from a 100+ ranking for high volume keywords to the top of Google in just eight weeks. Cue the celebration! But even though traffic was solid, we weren’t seeing astounding organic lead conversion success from these high-volume keywords.

This meant we were hitting all the keyword stops, but not converting traffic to new leads. We were generating traffic, yes, but not necessarily the most ready-to-convert traffic… and that’s where a forgotten low-volume keyword saved the day.

Low-volume, highly targeted 

Recently in Client A’s website, we found a year-old, untouched landing page that was converting at a miraculous 50%. (For a visual, picture a gleaming treasure chest buried in dust). The offer had been developed before our partnership began — months and months ago — but was quietly converting leads all along.

Many of Client A‘s offers convert well, but this landing page was especially high. So we dug into the landing page metrics to find where all the traffic was coming from. The surprising (or, not so surprising) answer was organic traffic: the evergreen goldmine of marketers. 50% of this highly converting traffic was coming in for free via organic, and these people were practically diving down the funnel.

We audited the content offer and found that it was on the first page of Google results for the keyword “church icons.” We did a collective “huh?” This low-volume keyword didn’t fit the criteria for a typical target… after all, it had fewer than 10 searches per month. By definition, this wasn’t a keyword we were going to invest content creation into. It just didn’t seem worthwhile.

Even so, 21% of the people it attracted each month were becoming brand new contacts. This offer was an incredible source of traffic-to-lead conversion, especially compared to many of Client A’s offers that mainly reconverted existing leads. 

How did it work so well? Let’s dig in.

Why it worked

Since the keyword “church icons” was so specific, it’s unlikely to show up as a recommended keyword in any keyword tool. In fact, it was labeled as a “low volume” keyword in our HubSpot portal, meaning you could count monthly searches on two hands. But the interesting thing was that those handfuls of monthly leads were piling up. And this is where you need to break from convention and go with your gut.

The successful lead conversion of this keyword owes itself to two things: clarity and relevancy.

1) Clarity

What do we mean by clarity? Since this keyword was so specific, visitors searching the term and then clicking through the link knew exactly what they were going to get. 

These people were directly searching for something, and so they were brought to a landing page just for that purpose. They skipped the “blog post” and “CTA” steps entirely — no need! They were already convinced they needed the offer, and Client A just needed to deliver.

2) Relevancy

The offer itself had the perfect chemistry of being relevant and useful — mainly because it was perfect for Client A’s buyer persona. These people were looking to improve their websites themselves, so they searched for design elements (icons) related to their industry (Church).

When they landed upon such a relevant resource, they naturally engaged with the landing page. Submitting the form was a breeze. And a form submission put them on an educational track to begin thinking about their problem (ineffective websites) in terms of a solution — like investing in a customized CMS! (AKA, Client A’s service.)

Use low-volume keywords in your own strategy

In your own keyword strategy, take a closer look at your high volume keywords and the conversion rates they are generating. They might be bringing in high traffic, but is it clear which content you should be producing to match the keyword’s intent?

For example, when someone searches for the high-volume “project management,” they could be looking for information on how to implement project management, or what the definition of project management is, or which methods are best for small business project management, or how to find tools to improve internal project management. Your content might hit the mark, or it might not. And for many of those questions, your service might not even be the answer.

On the other hand, someone who searches something like “church icons” is pretty clearly looking for, well, church icons! And design elements naturally tied into Client A’s mission: better church websites.

This keyword was a ready-for-conversion opportunity — the dream Google result. It proved our presumed hypothesis that we could pump effort into high-volume keyword optimization, but that those keywords weren’t necessarily clear for searchers… meaning potentially irrelevant offers and fewer conversions.

But is it worth it? Consider this equation:

• A keyword with 100 monthly searches that converts 20% of traffic, of which only 5% are qualified leads = 1 potential SQL/month.
• A keyword with 10 monthly searches that converts 50% of traffic, all of which are qualified leads = 5 potential SQLs/month.

The key is in finding the right low-volume, long-tail keywords that bring in qualified leads — and pairing them with just the right offer. Here’s how it can be done.

1) Brainstorm your offer

Think: Which tools, handbooks, or other freebies can you offer potential leads? They don’t need to be directly related to your product (after all, Client A isn’t a design company specializing in icon design), but they must interest your buyer personas and eventually tie back to your product. Think of pain points for your ideal customers, and how you can easily solve them with some freebie or resource.

(If you’re stuck, you can skip directly to step 2 to start with relevant keywords and work backwards to identify an offer idea.)

2) Find the right phrase with keyword research

Run these ideas through a keyword tool to find potentially related keywords. Remember: clarity and relevancy are key. And if you’ve got a good idea, don’t mind the “search volume” after all!

3) Craft the offer

Spend some time using your resources to get this offer just right. It doesn’t need to be complex: simple checklists or handy how-to worksheets can work wonders for leads.

4) Optimize your landing page

Craft your landing page accordingly. Make sure to optimize the landing page around the keyword with best practices.

Takeaway

Don’t put all your eggs into the common benchmarks for keywords: high volume, low difficulty keywords. It’s important to spread your strategy across different options. After all, some of the best lead conversion opportunities come from highly relevant, low-volume keywords. (That being said, don’t  put all your eggs in the low-volume basket, either! Aim for a diversified strategy.)

The best way to find those opportunities is to understand your buyer personas and what your most qualified traffic is searching for. This affirms our stance that it’s not necessarily web traffic that matters, but rather the right web traffic.

Download the free eBook below to learn how an inbound marketing blueprint helps you nail down your target customer — letting you generate qualified leads and more customers.