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Echo Partners is a B2B financial company that was started to give community banks access to the tools and resources traditionally available only to large institutions. Echo Partners has successfully used social media and inbound marketing to drive leads and support support business growth.
Managing director of Echo Partners, Howard J. Lothrop was investing time and money in online marketing from the very beginning of Echo Partners back in 2005. In an interview conducted Lothrop says all he had back in 2005 was a static website that “functioned no better than a digital brochure”.
Moving from Static to Dynamic Online Marketing
When the company started, it focused solely on outbound marketing. They early on realized scaling their business through this method would not be achievable. Recently, they made the transition to inbound marketing by including more dynamic content such as a blog, social media, and search engine optimization.
Understand What Has Worked for Others
It is important to understand what techniques work for other B2B small businesses to improve your businesses social media and inbound marketing plan. Lothrop began by optimizing the company webpage for better search engine optimization results. He set up landing pages to have a method of driving leads, focused on creating content around long tail keywords to increase search engine traffic.
Getting Over the “Getting Started” Hump
Getting started may seem daunting, however Lothrop advises that after taking the time to learn inbound marketing it really is not complicated at all, it’s all common sense. After getting started Lothrop feels the time he invests in inbound marketing is very manageable. By evaluating website traffic and lead sources he is able to focus on the tactics that are creating the best results. It has only been a few months and Echo Partners has successfully begun to generate leads online and increase website traffic.
Inbound Marketing Drives Business Strategy
Lothrop also shared the additional benefits of using social media and inbound marketing, he explained from the preparation of inbound marketing he now has better business intelligence than before. Inbound marketing has strengthened his abilities to emphasize on company strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses. Echo Partners now has long term goals and clear steps on how to achieve them.
Advice for a Successful Inbound Marketing
Small business owners need to gain a better understanding of tactics such as social media, blogging, and SEO in order to drive better results by using a combination of tactics rather than just one. Integrating social media tactics and content creation brings outstanding results. Lothrop also advises to track the success of each tactic in order to determine which methods to invest the most effort and time in.
Visit: https://www.hubspot.com/hs-fs/hub/53/file-13222081-pdf/docs/ebooks/small_business_social_media.pdfto read the full article
