# INBOUND FUNDAMENTALS
## Essentials of an Effective Inbound Strategy
###I. Why inbound?
- What's the difference between traditional marketing and inbound marketing?
    - Traditional: Marketer Centric, is call calling, cold emails(SPAM),interruptive Ads
    - Inbound: Customer Centric ,SEO, Blogging, Attraction.
- What is inbound?
    - It is about creating marketing that people love""
- What is the Inbound Methodology?
    - Is the process to convert stragers into promoters.
    - from strager to visitor, visitor to leads, leads to customer, customer to promoters.
- What are the different phases that make up the Inbound Methodology?
    - Attract, Convert, Close & Delight.
- How does analyze fit into the Inbound Methodology?
    - Analysis should be inherent in every single thing you to with your inbound strategy.


###II. What are the fundamentals of inbound success?
- What are the inbound best practices?
    - Use buyer presonas, use the buyer's journey, Create remarkable content, leverage your content.
- What is a buyer persona?
    - Semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about customer demogrphics, behavior patters, motivations, and goals.
- How do you create a buyer persona?
    - Conducting Persona research: Buyer personas must be based off of actual research, not assuptions.
- How do you go about researching buyer personas?
    - Persona Detail, Sample question to Ask.
    - role job title, organization industry, Goals, Challenges, Watering holes, Shopping preferences. Start by interview current customers.
- What are the components of a persona profile story?
    - Background, demographics, identifiers, Goals, Challenges, how we help, common objections, real quotes.
- What is the buyer's journey?
    -  Is the process the buyer buy.
- What are the stages that make up the buyer's journey? How are they defined?
    - Awareness, Consideration, Decsion.
    - Not educating your buyer personas on who you are and what you do! educate them on their problems and solutions to thos problems.
- What part does content play in inbound marketing and sales?
    - Your content is your marketing toolkit. Things like blogs, interactive tools, photos/infographics, videos, and eBooks/presentations work to attract, convert, close, and delight.
- In terms of inbound, what is context?
    - Context is who you're creating it for: you can't just write any blog posts, you have to write the right ones, tailored to who you're trying to reach and what they're interested in.
- What are the different ways to leverage content?
    - You can use your website pages, business blog, social media, landing pages, calls-to-action, and marketing email


###III. What does inbound look like?
- What is considered a shift from traditional to inbound marketing?
     -  customer centric.
- What makes up a good persona profile story?
     -
- What makes content the right fit for buyer personas?
     -   has to be grounded in the correct context.
     -   The content in that blog post and that email need to be tailored to who you're trying to reach (your persona) and what they're most interested in seeing(which depends on where they are in the buyer's journey).

# ATTRACT
## Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines
###I. What is search engine optimization?
- What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
     -  SEO is the process of improving your website so that it attracts more visitors from search engines.
- In what ways does SEO help your inbound marketing?
     -  Search engines need to find the most relevant, useful, trustworthy answers. They send "spiders" to crawl through te web searching for the content.
- How do search engines find, understand and rank pages to show in search results?
     -  They create a list of results, they rank the results in order of the popularity and authority of the websites.
- What is the difference between paid results and organic results?
     -   These websites are paying to show up on Google's search engine results page. Below the paid ads, you're looking at the top 1-10 unpaid, or organic, search results that contain the most popular, relevant answers. your goal is to be listed in the top organic results because



###II. SEO strategy and best practices
- In terms of SEO, how are keywords defined?
     -  Keywords are the words typed into search engines. They're the topics that searchers are typing more about.
- How should you go about picking the right keywords for your business?
     -  Make a list of keywords your buyer personas would search for.
     -  What are the common industry questions Luke might have?
     -  What questions might Luke have that your company provides solutions to?
     -  What questions might Luke have when deciding to buy your waterproof case?
- What are the different steps for doing keyword research?
     -  Problem-based keywords/Solution Keywords/Branded Keywords.
- How do your buyer personas and the buyer's journey factor into your keyword research?
     -  Mimic the language that your buyer personas use.
     -  use a set of keyword for every buyer journey stage.
- In what ways can you expand your list of keywords?
     -  searching the web for alternatives
     -  Type one of your keywords into a search engine and see what the results are.
     -  You can also look for alternatives under the different search options in Google, like image search or video.
- How can you determine which keywords people are using to find your site?
     -  Using google Analytics
- What is the difference between short and long-tail keywords?
     -  More specific keyword phrase is called a long-tail keywords. A long tail keyword is a primary keyword usually 2-3 words, that expanded upon with additional context.
- In what ways and where should you optimize your pages for search engines?
     -  1)  be specific about the subject in which you're referencing.
     -  2) when you optimize for a long-tail keyword you're also optimizing the page for similar keywords these are all keyword phrases that a search engine is able to fish out.
- How should you properly optimize a website page?
     - want to aim for keywords that have a higher search volume
with less competition.
- What types of links should you include in your content and why?
     -  add your primary keyword to the URL,If using a long-tail keyword, use dashes to separate words (companyname.com/long-tail-keyword-phrase). If editing a live page, any change that you make to the URL will create a new page.
- Why is promoting a good user experience important for SEO?
     - Search engines are also looking at the experience that people have on your site when determining how to rank you.Make sure your website is intuitive and easy to browse
- Why should you optimize for mobile?
     -   Over 80% of internet users own a smartphone and most are on it searching online more than their computer
- Why is promoting your content important for SEO?
     -  The more that people see, share and link to your content, the more popular your site will grow and the more trust you'll gain with search engines. Well, much of this will come from your great optimized content, but some of it also comes from the number of links that are pointing to you. This is a part of what's called off-page SEO.
- What's the relationship between links and SEO?
     -  but some of it also comes from the number of links that are pointing to you. This is a part of what's called off-page SEO.
- What are inbound links?
     -  Links coming into your website are called inbound links. Search engines view inbound links as a vote of confidence. If a trusted site is linking to you, your website becomes more trustworthy.
- What strategies can you implement to earn links?
     -  High-quality links come from existing authoritative websites that are
relevant to your business or industry.use a tool like the Moz Open Site Explorer or
HubSpot Links to see all of the websites who are linking to you and their authority.
- What are online directories and why are they important for SEO?
     -  Directories are websites like Yelp,
Yellow Pages, and local chambers of commerce. Having a page on a directory will increase the number of links and citations to your website. Citations are online mentions of your business name and address, even if those outside websites don't link to you. Both will help with your offpage SEO.
- How can you optimize for getting found in local searches?
     -   if your business is location-specific, create a Google+ Local Listing Page. This will help tie your website to a specific location, which Google will use in its search results. If your business is in a single location, link to your homepage. If your business has multiple locations,link to dedicated location page for each (ie - yourwebsite.com/boston)


###III. What does a successfully optimized website page look like?
- How can you tell if a business has picked the right primary keyword for a page? (146)
     -  They're addressing a common topic that their buyer personas might want to learn about.
     -   they're mimicking the language that their buyer personas would actually use in their searches
- How can you tell if they've optimized the page around the keyword?
     -  hey've created content that uses natural language and variations on the long-tail keyword, instead of using the same exact phrase over and over
- How can you tell if they're linking to other sources?
     -  They are- both internal and external sources, in fact. And
their hyperlinked text that contains relevant keywords that they'd like to rank for.
- How can you tell if they're offering a good user experience?
     -   Their website is intuitive and easy to browse - the navigation is clear. And they're providing clear next steps, providing visitors a free account,which will help to convert those visitors into leads, and logging in, which will help their customers get to where they need to be.
- How can you tell if they're promoting their content?
     -  We can see that they have prominent social sharing buttons, which means that visitors can share the article themselves. They've also promoted this content on their Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook profiles.
- How can you tell if they're earning links?
     -  Look at related articles from outside sources in a Google search of company name. It looks like they've got CrunchBase and Geekwire writing about them.
## Creating Content with a Purpose
###I. Why is content important to inbound?
- What is content?
     -  is the message your inbound strategy delivers
- Where does content fit into the Inbound Methodology?
     -  Content has the very important job of pulling people from one stage of the inbound methodology to another. It plays an integral part in each and every stage.

###II. How can you create remarkable content?
- What are the different steps to the Content Process?
     - Plan -> Create -> Distribute -> Analyze -> Repeat.
- What are the three things that content can defined by?
     - Purpose / Format / Topic.
- How do you determine the purpose of a piece of content?
     -  essentially your goal, The purpose of these pieces of content is to attract strangers to your website.
- What are different formats of content? What's the difference between these formats?
     -   A piece of content can be a case study, a video, infographic, a whitepaper, a calculator or worksheet, an ebook, a template, research report, checklist, webinar, slideshare deck, or whatever else you can come up with.
- How do you pick the best format for a piece of content?
     -   the best format for your content is all about your buyer personas.
- What two things should you always keep in mind when determining the topic for a piece of content?
     -   - your buyer personas (who you're trying to reach) and the buyer's journey (what content will be most interesting or helpful for them).
- What are different ways to identify content topics that matter to your buyer personas?
     - keyword research - what you want to rank for, internet forums, popular industry news, sales and support frequent y asked questions, your buyer personas' goals and your buyer personas' challenges.
- What's the buyer's journey? What are the three stages and how are they defined?
     -   The buyer's journey is made up of 3 stages - awareness, consideration and decision.In the awareness stage, they first identify a problem or opportunity, then they investigate solutions, and finally, they decide on a way to solve their problem.
- What are the best practices for content creation?
     -   simply identifying what your buyer persona is looking for in each stage of the buyer's journey will help keep you aligned and consistent with your content creation.
- How does distribution fit into the Content Process?
     -   Delivery makes content relevant,While a piece of content is finite, the promotion of that content is infinite
- What are the different ways to leverage content with distribution?
     -   website pages, blogs, Landing pages, Social Media.Call to action, emails, etc.
- What are the different metrics that can be used to measure content efficacy?
     -   Number of visits - how many views did your content have
     -   Leads generated, Social proof or share-ability.
     -   Inbound links.
     -   Authority
     -   Performance by author or topic or format.
- What's the value in repeating the Content Process?
     -   Repeat what's working well for you and stop doing things that just don't seem to be clicking

###III. What does remarkable content look like?
- How do you determine where a content offer fits into the buyer's journey?
     -  Awareness is focused on problem, consideration is more focused on solution.Decision is more about product/service.
- How do you effectively take someone through the buyer's journey with content?
     -  content that educates them and helps them make more confident buying decisions.

## The Fundamentals of Blogging
###I. Why does blogging help your inbound marketing?
- How does blogging help to attract new visitors?
     - Think about a stranger searching for information online. They have questions or problems that they're looking to solve. If your blog posts provide those answers, those strangers will find your posts, and will want to click through and read them, turning them into visitors. This is the attract stage of the Inbound Methodology.
- How does blogging help to convert new leads?
     -  Your blog can strategically promote offers from your business - anything from your latest ebook to a free consultation. If your visitor wants to learn more, you can provide them with that next step.
- How can your blog help you to build trust with your prospects? Why is this important?
     -  Finally, your blog can help you stand out as an expert in your industry. The more you blog, the more that people will start to look to you as a reliable, trustworthy source of information. And building that trust with your prospects will help them turn into customers down the line.

###II. How do you create a successful blog?
- What are the blogging best practices?
     - write educational content.
     - make sure to write about your industry, not yourself.
     - brainstorm a list of specific topics that you could blog about.
     - When picking your topics, do keyword research
     - pick one topic to focus on per post
     - make a list of topics that support specific conversion
     - include a long-tail keyword in the title
     - When you blog, white space is your friend
     - include images to visually break up your text.
     - optimize the page around your long-tail keyword
     - include relevant internal and external links within the post
     - relevant calls-to-action throughout the post in areas like the blog sidebar and at the bottom of the page.
     -  include a CTA at the end of each post.
     -  blog sidebar to promote your recent or most popular posts, and add your blogto your primary website navigation.
     -  Commit yourself to a blogging schedule.
     -  look at the number of views for each blog post
- How do you pick an appropriate blog post topic?
     -  you need to answer the questions and problems that they're searching for answers to.
- Why should you write about educational content rather than your business?
     - you need to answer the questions and problems that they're searching for answers to.
- What are ways to brainstorm different topics to blog about?
     - then ask your sales and marketing teams - what are the most
frequently asked questions? What do your buyer personas need help with? What do you wish people knew about your industry? What are industry bloggers, social media, and even your competitors talking about? do keyword research.

- Why is it important to do keyword research around your blog topics?
     -  They're the topics that people are trying to learn more about. Which keywords,your buyer personas use? Which are associated with your industry? Write about those topics to get found and start ranking higher in search results.
- How many topics should you focus on per post, and why?
     -  pick one topic to focus on per post.
- What is a working title and how is it different from your topic?
     -  A topic is general and title is specific
- Why should you include a long-tail keyword in the blog post title?
     -  Your title should help readers and search engines understand what your post is about.
- How long should your blog title be, on average?
     -  2 o 3 words plus 2 o 3 to expand additional context. 50-60 characters of a title in search results.
- Why is it important to format your blog post properly?
     -   format and optimize the post so that both people and search engines can easily read and understand it.
- What is white space and how does it affect your blog post?
     -  Whitespace is the empty space on the page. It allows the visitor to focus on the content, not the clutter. Don't write long paragraphs that form into huge blocks of text - this will make your information look dense and hard to read.
- Why are images important to include in blog posts, and where should they be placed?
     -  include images to visually break up your text. Images grab attention and help your readers understand the post at a glance. Place one at the top of every blog post to entice your visitors to read further.
- Why is it important to optimize a blog post for search engines?
     - search engines understand what you're trying to communicate,
- Where should you place your long-tail keyword within your blog post?
     - optimize the page around your long-tail keyword, placing it in the page title and the blog post title, which are typically the same thing; in the URL, the image alt-text, the body and the headers.
- Where should you include links within the content of your blog post?
     -  Link to related blog posts or your site pages when appropriate. And while it may sound counterproductive, link to outside resources, link to one or two sources per paragraph at the very most.
- How can you use your blog and blog posts to promote your other offers?
     - A call-to-action, also known as a CTA, is a button that promotes your offer. These should appear on every post.  blog sidebar to promote your recent or most popular posts, and add your blog to your primary website navigation. And, if your blogging platform provides the option, add a blog feed to relevant pages.
- What are the different ways you could promote your blog posts?
     - share those posts on social media.promote posts through email.
- Which metrics should you analyze to track the performance of your blog?
     -  look at the number of views for each blog post. filter your most popular posts by topic, author, or even the channel
- What does each metric tell you, and how can you use that knowledge to improve performance?
     -  Learn what topics you should continue to write about, reward the popular authors, and determine the best way to promote your blog posts. Knowing what content is popular can help you decide what types of posts to write next.

###III. What does a successful blog post look like?
- How can you tell if a business picked a good topic to blog about?
     - educational subject- enhancing,about their industry,assume that this is a topic that their buyer personas wants to hear about
- How can you tell if they picked a compelling blog post title?
     -  long-tail keyword in the title, it's short enough
- How can you tell if the blog post has been formatted properly?
     -  has good whitespace, use section headers to make it easy to scan,have a nice image of some paint brushes.
- How can you tell if the blog post has been optimized for search engines?
     -  got the long-tail keyword,in the page title, URL, body, and though you can't see it, it's behind the image in the alt-text.
- How can you tell if the blog or blog post is promoting other offers, and if the calls-to-actions are appropriate?
     - call-to-action that's relevant to the topic at the bottom of the post, leveraging their sidebar, calling out ''subscribe to get email updates'' as well as providing information on how to get in touch with them at an upcoming even
- How can you tell if a business is promoting their blog posts?
     -  have social sharing buttons at the top of the post, meaning that the reader can share this post with their personal networks. Have links to popular posts in their sidebar, in case their readers want to browse.

## Amplifying Your Content with Social Media
###I. Why is social media essential to inbound?
- How does social media fit into inbound?
     - Social media can be used at every stage of the inbound methodology
- In which stages of the inbound methodology can social media be used?
     - Use it to attract visitors by sharing remarkable content across channels. Convert new visitors into leads by offering opportunities for visitors to subscribe and receive updates or special offers. Close by acting on insights that you gather through social monitoring and provide value to prospects online. Delight customers by being a warm personality and creating unique ways to engage with audience members.

###II. How to amplify your content on social media
- What are SMART goals?
     - Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely
- How do you set a SMART goal for social?
     - This goal is specific because it clearly defines the type of growth that is expected from social media efforts
     - It is measurable because there are numbers that will help to quantify results
     - This goal is attainable if the company has achieved similar results in the past and has decided to allocate
     - This goal is relevant to the social media team and the entire company because increased site traffic is a primary focus for everyone
     -  timely because it has an end date, meaning that there will be a finished line for them to cross resources to help achieve this new goal.
- What is a social media content plan?
     -  A social media content plan outlines the pieces of content you will promote and the social media channels you will promote them on.
- What should a social media content plan include? What are the components?
     -  content plan may include blog posts, ebooks, webinars, and videos that you would like to amplify on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter
- What social media channels should brands be using?
     - The best way to discover the social media platforms that your company should be active on is to identify the platforms that your personas are active on.
- How do buyer personas fit into a social media strategy?
     - You can do this by surveying your audience members or doing research on how your industry is currently using a specific platform
- How can you find the right social media platform for your business?
     - Consider monitoring brand terms like your company or product name
or brand adjacent terms used by buyer to describe your business. Also monitor for customer needs, pain points, or challenges. This will enable you to respond to customers quickly and delight them publicly for everyone to see
     -  Another way is to run an experiment by creating a profile on a network and testing how well your audience engages with your company through that channel.
- What are the key ways to use optimization?
     - The first is Platform. Next is Message. Then Visuals. And finally Results.
- How are visuals used in social media?
     -  pay close attention to the recommended dimensions for each platform.
     -  Stay away from images that are pixelated or grainy and instead use clear photos that are easy to distinguish
     -  get creative and make your own unique social images on platforms
- How can you tie social media efforts back to ROI?
     -  You first need to quantify how many resources, like time, effort, and money, you are investing in social media and then determine how much value you get in return by connecting the results back to the overall goals of the business.
     -  Important social media metrics that can help you calculate the value of your efforts on social media are Reach, Engagement, and Audience Growth
- How can you measure reach?
     - Reach is used to measure the size of your potential audience. This includes people who are directly and indirectly in your social network.
- How can you measure engagement?
     - Engagement measures the number of interactions with your brand, such as likes and shares.
- What is audience growth and how can it be measured?
     -  Audience growth refers to the number of new audience members you attract.

###III. What does content amplification look like?
- What type of inbound challenges can social media help solve?
     -   brand awareness
     -   lead generation machine
- How does consistently publishing to social media help with content strategies?
     -  established a strong and active presence which makes it easy for audience members to engage with them.
- How can you tell if a business has properly optimized their social posts for relevant content across platforms?
     -  maintain an active presence across the four channels their buyer personas engage in the most. They have also done a great job at optimizing each post by including links that direct audiences to blog posts and landing pages
- What does it mean to 'meet your audience where they are'?
     -  should be active on is to identify the platforms that your personas are active on.
     -  use the social media that your buyer persona uses.

# CONVERT
## Enticing Clicks with Calls-to-Action
###I. How do you use a call-to-action (CTA)?
- What is the conversion process?
     - is the process to convert visitor to leads. typically begins with a CTA.
- What is a CTA?
     - A CTA is a button that promotes an offer and links to a landing
page.
- How does a CTA help to convert visitors into leads?
     -  When a visitor clicks on a CTA, they're brought to a landing page where they fill out a form with their contact information - turning them into a lead! After that, the lead is directed to a Thank-You page where they receive the offered content.
- What role does a CTA play in a conversion process?
     - Since CTA kick off the conversion process, they're a critical first step.

###II. How do you create successful CTAs?
- What are the CTA best practices?
     - call-to-action should be action-oriented
     - Don't make your visitors think too hard about what they need to do next
     - Clear, direct action verbs make for a great call-to-action.
     - CTA won't take up too much room on a page or in an email. It's always going to be secondary to the rest of the content.
- What kind of words can you use on a CTA to get visitors to take action?
     -  action-oriented words, consider the offer and your buyer persona and try out different action verbs like request, sign up, download or receive
     -  use keywords that are consistent with your offer and landing page.
- How do the keywords of your offer and landing page impact the CTA?
     -  Using the same keywords and phrasing for the entire conversion process helps your visitors understand what they are going to get as they navigate from CTA to landing page to thank you page.
- How can the visual aspects of a CTA, such as the size or color, help to grab your visitors' attention?
     -  it needs to stand out so that visitors will know to click on it. Visitors recognize clickable elements like buttons and links. Consider your buyer persona's tastes when designing a call-to-action
     -  Use highly-contrasting colors or an accent color that aligns with your company's branding. This will help your CTAs stand out, visually.
- Where should you place a CTA in an email? In a blog? On a website page?
     -  in a blog it's logical to place a call-to-action at the end of a blog post.
     -   pages, this may mean featuring a call-to-action above the fold --in other words, before a visitor has to scroll. This way, your CTA will be one of the first things they see when they land on a page
     -   place a CTA in the sidebar of your blog to promote your latest offers or an upcoming event.
     -   CTAs in an email, those can be placed at the end of the email, paragraph, sentence, or really anywhere that grabs attention without being distracting
- What is a good click-through rate goal to aim for with a CTA?
     -  a successful CTA would result in 1 or 2 visitors clicking on the CTA out of 100 people.
- What is a good clicks-to-submissions goal to aim for with a CTA?
     -  clicks to submissions, ten percent is a great goal.

###III. What does an effective CTA look like?
- How do you measure the effectiveness of a CTA?
     -  click through rate
     -  clicks to submissions
     -  For those that clicked on the CTA and made it to the landing page, how many of those people submitted the form and became a lead?
- What different ways can you test and analyze a CTA?
     - make these small changes one at a time and analyze if your change has improved the click through or submission rate

## The Anatomy of a Landing Page
###I. How do you use a landing page?
- What is a landing page?
     - Landing pages are essentially website pages that are designed to convert visitors into leads.
- How does a landing page generate information about your website visitors?
     - all landing pages use a form to gather information. Without a form, the process of converting a website visitor into lead simply can't happen
- Where does a landing page fit into a conversion process?
     - in the conversion process the landing page convert visitors to leads

###II. How do you create successful landing pages?
- What is a good conversion rate goal for a landing page?
     - 20% of the total people who get to the landing page eventually fill out the corresponding form
- What are the landing page best practices?
     - First write a clear, concise, action-oriented headline.
     - explain the value and importance of the offer to your personas
     - use numbers, bullets and bolding to create easily digestible bites of information
     - remove all of the website's navigation menu and links.
     - submit button is highly visible and easy to click
     - form on the landing page should mirror the value of the offer
- What kinds of words need to be included in a landing page headline?
     - clear, concise, action-oriented headline
- What are some ways to place emphasis on the offer you're promoting with your landing page?
     - use numbers, bullets and bolding to create easily digestible bites of information
     -  remove all of the website's navigation menu and links.
     -  explain the value and importance of the offer to your personas
- How long should the form on the landing page be?
     - form on the landing page should mirror the value of the offer
- What kinds of questions should you ask on a form?
     - information that you ask for in the form fields and in the length of the form should mirror the value of the offer
- What can you place on a landing page to visually communicate an offer?
     - include a relevant image, animation or short video.
- What is the benefit in including social sharing icons on a landing page?
     - Add social media sharing icons to allow your visitor to spread the word with others in their social networks

###III. What does an effective landing page look like?
- What is a blink test?
     - a visitor should be able to understand the nature of the offer and why it's
valuable to them, in just a couple of seconds.
- What is the purpose behind performing a blink test?
     -   A blink test is a great way to simulate your visitor's experience.
- How do you measure the effectiveness of a landing page?
     -  After two weeks, if your landing page isn't converting at a rate of 20% or higher, take some time to analyze the landing page, and see if there are any best practices you can add

## Guiding the Next Step with Thank You Pages
##I. How do you use a thank you page?
- What is a thank you page?
     - thank you page allows you to present the next step to the newly converting lead, moving them even closer to becoming a customer.
- Where does a thank you page fit into a conversion process?
     - converted lead is taken to a thank you page where the offer is delivered
- How does a thank you page differ from an inline thank you message?
     -  redirect your visitor to a thank you page instead, so that you can thank them while providing additional information.
##II. How do you create successful thank you pages?
- What are the thank you page best practices?
     - Deliver the offer or set some expectations about when your lead will receive the offer
     - let the lead know what to expect.
     - try using a specific timeline when possible.
     - thank you page should display the site's navigation menu.
     - Use this opportunity to show them another offer that might be of interest and grab their attention with
     - include social options.
- How do you set proper expectations of what happens next on a thank you page?
     - The expectation is specific, with little room for misinterpretation.
- Why does displaying the site's navigation menu on a thank you page help your thank you page?
     -  give your leads every opportunity to look around after they've converted and reached your thank you page. If they want to read more about your company and explore your website after converting, make it easy for them to do so!
- Are you required to use a CTA on a thank you page?
     - Choose your CTA very carefully and if you feel like the call-to-action might be too aggressive or unnecessary for your new lead, then you don't have to include it.
- How can you move leads further into the buyer's journey using a thank you page?
     - call-to-action
- How can a thank you page extend your social media reach?
     - the lead shared the original offer across their own networks.
     - allow the leads to connect with you on social media by linking to your company profiles
##III. What does an effective thank you page look like?
- When examining a thank you page, are you able to understand how to get the offer or what happens next?
     - yes
- Can you identify what types of additional content to offer on a thank you page?
     -  It's a good idea to offer additional content
- How can you examine a thank you page to make sure it directs a lead further into the buyer's journey?
     - add a CTA here so the lead can move a little further into the buyer's journey and get a little closer to becoming a customer.

# CLOSE
## Sending the Right Email to the Right Person
###I. Why is email marketing still important?
- What are some reasons why email works?
     - There are more than 4.3 billion email accounts today
     - 95% of online consumers use email, and 91% report that they check their email at least once a day
     - Email is a channel that you own
     - 77% of consumers prefer email for marketing communications.
     - Email lets you be highly personal.
     -  we still use email because it has an ROI of 4300%|
- How can email help you close leads into customers?
     -  Providing your leads with helpful, relevant content helps you build a relationships with them. It allows you to position yourself as a consultant, ready to help them with their challenges. Inbound is all about that combination of context and content
- How can marketers use email to delight customers?
     -   the occasional check in, or perhaps sending helpful resources and special
customer-only extras.

###II. How do you send the right email to the right person?
- What does content and context mean to your inbound marketing strategy and how does this help email marketing?
     -  inbound marketing is all about this marriage of context and content. When you divide your contacts into smaller groups based on similarities, it lets you use context to make your content more relevant and engaging.
- Why are buyer personas and the buyer's journey important to sending great emails?
     - Use Buyer Personas and the Buyer's Journey to guide you in slicing and dicing your contacts into the right segments.
- What different types of data can you use to segment your email sending recipients?
     -  segment people by geography using criteria such as IP country, time zone, area code,and address.person's company - such as its size, the nature of their business -- B2B, B2C, Non-profit, etc. -- and their industry, You can also segment your leads by their role, seniority, what department they belong to, or their specific function within a department.
- The average email list decays at 25% a year. What are some reasons that this happens?
     - As people change jobs, change emails, or hit the unsubscribe button, your list quickly loses its punch.
- How can you avoid having your emails marked as spam? What is the impact of your emails being marked as spam?
     - buying lists and emailing people who didn't opt in. it actually decreases the value of your brand, That hurts your deliverability and credibility.
- What type of content is appropriate to email leads during the awareness stage of the buyer's journey? The consideration stage? The decision stage?
     -  In the awareness stage, keep your content easily consumable. Videos, blog posts, slideshares, free tools, and high level guides are great at capturing interest and educating prospects, which helps move them further down the buyer's journey.
     -  In the consideration stage, you're answering the unasked questions that you anticipate are running through your lead's head. Some suggestions of content to email during this stage are webinars, case studies, FAQ sheets, product whitepapers, and third-party reviews.
     -  And how about the decision stage? This is the time to send those free trials, ROI reports, product demos, consultations, and estimates or quotes, depending on your industry. You want to be upfront with what you can offer, and it's time to let the lead get up close and personal to your product.
- How is the success of your email marketing tied to the rest of your inbound strategy?
     - It often takes a series of emails to build trust and earn business
- What is lead nurturing?
     - Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with prospects with the goal of earning their business when they're ready.
- What different ways can you optimize your email for mobile?
     - First, use responsive templates.
     - bigger is better
     - If you are using a CTA or a button, make sure there is plenty of surrounding space and it is big enough to tap with a finger
- How does email personalization impact the success of your email sends?
     - Leads who are nurtured with targeted content produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities. 40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience across channels.Personalized emails improve click through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%.
- What are the different ways to add personalization to your emails?
     - You can personalize any contact property - first name, last name, email, company name. Whatever helps you better target your contact database, use it!
- What is actionable language, and where can it be used in your emails?
     -  I'm talking about VERBS!!
     -  You can also let your lead know what they can do by clicking your email's in-text-CTAs or buttons
- What components of your email can you make a CTA?
     - Consider adding a P.S. to your signature that contains an enticing CTA.
- What does delivery rate measure? Open rate? Click rate?
     - Delivery Rate:Both hard and soft bounces are good indicators of the shape of your contact database
     - Open Rate: Yes, it's nice to track the open rate. But note that this metric only tells you the effectiveness of your subject line, not your offer.
     - Click Rate: Simply put, this metric will track people engaging with your emails? Remember that clicks aren't valuable just because someone clicked. It's what lies on the other side of the click that matters.
     - contact churn - these are people who unsubscribed after receiving an
email.
- Why is it important to A/B test your emails?
     - Use it to learn more about your emails/audience. You can improve your total clicks, too, by testing the email and then sending the winning version.
- What is the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?
     -  hard bounces means fake or out-of-service email addresses
     -  soft bounces means your email is making it into the inbox but getting caught in a spam filter
- How can you optimize your emails to look good on mobile devices?
     - Be aware that some people will be reading your emails on smaller screens.  If you are using a CTA or a button, make sure there is plenty of surrounding space and it is big enough to tap with a finger

###III. What does a great email look like?
- Where are some appropriate places to put a CTA in an email?
     - there's a traditional CTA, but the copy as well as the image have been linked to the offer's landing page.
     - The email signature has yet another CTA to drive further engagement
- Is it ever appropriate to have more than one CTA in an email?
     - You'll want to make use of every component of your email and use them all to achieve your goal by turning them into a CTA
- What are some different ways you can you expand the reach of your emails?
     -  allowing your recipients to share the content in your emails.
- What are the components of a good email signature?
     - your signature that contains an enticing CTA.

## The Power of Smarketing
###I. Why is smarketing critical to the success of an inbound company?
- What is smarketing?
     -  Smarketing is the process of aligning the marketing and sales teams around
common goals within a business or organization, with the goal of improving revenue.
- Where does smarketing fit into the Inbound Methodology?
     -  its location in the close stage of the methodology
- How does smarketing increase bottom line revenue results for organizations?
     - it turns out that companies with strong marketing and sales alignment hit twenty percent annual revenue growth.

###II. How does smarketing result in alignment?
- What are the smarketing best practices?
     - Markting and Sales, both teams must have the same organizational goals.
     - visitors and leads goals should be tied to the sales quotas.
     - marketing and sales must have visibility into each other’s goals and progress.
     - base compensation on shared marketing and sales goals.
     - don’t forget about your personas.
- Why is it important for both teams to have the same or interdependent goals?
     - align both marketing and sales around the same goal. In a business setting this goal is typically focused on revenue. A shared goal for an EDU could be the number of enrolled students. A nonprofit’s goal might be focused on donations or gifts.
- What are the benefits of tying the marketing pipeline to sales quotas?
     - Sales can’t rely on marketing to deliver leads, the teams aren’t working together and the level of success (or lack thereof) will show in the bottom line results.
- How does visibility into each other's goals create better alignment and bottom line revenue results?
     - each team is clear about how everyone is doing and can make adjustments in real time accordingly.
- How is compensation around goals related to smarketing alignment?
     - Money can be a valuable lever for jumpstarting organizational alignment.
- Why are personas important for successful smarketing alignment?
     -  Your marketing and sales teams are communicating with your target customer on a regular basis, so expect details about your personas to be uncovered and discussed regularly
- At what size company does smarketing work best?
     - Smarketing can happen at any scale. In a small business it can center around the marketing and sales VPs, but as the company grows you can pick leaders in the marketing and sales divisions to scale the alignment.

###III. How do you integrate smarketing into your organization?
- What are the five steps to integrate smarketing?
     - 1. Speak the same language
     - 2. Implement a service level agreement
     - 3. Set up Closed loop reporting
     - 4. Rely on Data
     - 5. Maintain open communication
- What are the six stages in the marketing and sales funnel and how are they defined?
     - Prospect/visitor: website visitor who you've gathered minimal data on or how have signed up for a blog or an email newsletter.
     - Lead: referring to a contact who has submitted a form in return for a content offer.
     - MQL: Marketing Qualified Leads - identified themselves as more deeply engaged.
     - SQL: Sales Qualified Leads - are MQLs that your sales team has determined to be worthy of a direct follow up after thorough examination.
     - Opportunity:  An Opportunity is an SQL that a sales rep has communicated with and logged as a legitimate potential customer.
     - Customer: The final step is closing the sale and marking the opportunity as a customer.
- What is the most generic term for anyone in a marketing and sales funnel?
     -  contact
- What does it mean when someone says ''the marketing and sales funnel is not always linear?''
     -   For example, imagine that a lead requests a demo and is thus marked as an MQL and passed to sales. But after sales accepts the lead as an MQL they find out the contact isn't ready to buy. In this case, it's probably best for sales to mark the contact as a lead, again, so marketing can continue to nurture their interests."
- What constitutes a marketing qualified lead (MQL)?
     - Marketing Qualified Leads - identified themselves as more deeply engaged
- What is a service level agreement (SLA) and why is it critical to integrating smarketing into your organization?
     -  A marketing and sales SLA defines what each team will commit to accomplishing in order to support the other in reaching the shared revenue goal.
     -  An SLA is great because it crystallizes that alignment around goals. Whether you're a one-person team that owns both marketing and sales or a ten thousand-person company, SLAs formalize the marketing and sales goals to ensure the company is set up to reach its revenue goal
     -The sales SLA to marketing requires the sales team to commit to a specific number of MQL follow-ups. Depending on the number of sales reps and their individual quotas, they’ll only have a certain amount of time to commit to calling and emailing MQLs. You’ll want to address the number of customers that they need, the number of leads that they need to get there, and the quality of those leads. All of those things factor into what marketing commits to sales.
- What is closed-loop reporting?
     - Closed-loop reporting completes the feedback loop between marketing and sales. At its core closed-loop reporting allows you to pass more lead intelligence and data over to the sales team and get more feedback from sales to marketing about which marketing efforts are translating into customers.
- What are some questions to ask yourself to identify if your organizations needs closed-loop reporting?
     - Do you send leads to sales and never hear about them again?
     - Do you end up creating and trying to manage duplicate leads?
     - Do you send leads to sales with the basic contact information, but without intelligence about what content those leads consumed?
     - Or are you unsure of the impact your marketing efforts are having on revenue?
- What are some benefits of closed-loop reporting for marketing and for sales?
     - The major benefits for marketing are: Getting up to date contact info and status updates, learning which marketing programs are working and which aren’t, and gaining visibility into ways to increase Marketing ROI.
     - The major benefits to sales are de-duplicated contacts, the prioritization of contacts, more educated contacts, and an increase in close rate and Sales ROI.
     - 1. Analyze which marketing sources (organic, social, referral, etc.) are producing the most customers.
     - 2. Allows you to use conversion assists to help you understand how each individual piece of content you create contributes to closing customers. This will provide you insights as to which content to surface to contacts to turn more of your contacts into customers.
     - 3. Provide a timeline of all of the interactions a contact took prior to becoming an MQL or a customer such as the content they download, the emails they click, and other changes
     - 4. Pass information to sales that can help aid them in connecting and engaging with contacts within the first 24 hours
     - 5. Send automatic updates to your sales team when their leads revisit the website or take other key actions, to make sure to follow up at the best time.
- Why are dashboards a great way to display data? What are the different types of dashboards?
     -
- Why is it important to rely on data not emotions when integrating and running smarketing?
     - provide frequent, public, and transparent updates as to how marketing and sales are performing. This allows the team to quickly change course when problems arise, instead of waiting until the end of the month or quarter.
- What are the different ways to maintain open communication within your company?
     - In addition to the marking dashboard, you can also create a whole set of sales dashboards
     - In addition to the daily reports, a monthly marketing report provides the necessary time to analyze why you did or did not hit your targets and what to improve on for next month
     - In addition to meetings you can use emails to communicate important information across teams.
     - Another incredibly valuable type of email communication is product updates.
- What should take place in a monthly management meeting regarding smarketing that is different from the weekly smarketing meeting?
     - weekly smarketing meeting. This is your opportunity to get the entire marketing and sales teams on the same page. This meeting is the perfect time to highlight smarketing wins and share relevant updates about products or services that you're selling. Be sure to include a weekly update on the dashboards you’ve created, and provide visibility on how each team is delivering the service level agreement.
     - "Once a month, meet with your management team to discuss the data you've gathered from your dashboards." This meeting is a great way to resolve issues and to discuss new opportunities.  Remember to rely on data as much as possible to drive the discussion and don’t let feelings get in the way.

## Taking Your Sales Process Inbound
###I. What is inbound sales?
- Why have buying habits changed?
     -  the buyer has the power to research, so acting as an information gatekeeper doesn’t help you win more sales.
- What's the difference between the traditional and inbound way of selling?
     -  Traditionally, a sales team used to do cold-calling day-in and day-out using a static pitch, no matter who they were talking to. Sales reps acted like information gatekeepers, holding power over the entire process. This method of sales is referred to as seller-centric.
     -  Traditionally, a sales team used to do cold-calling day-in and day-out using a static pitch, no matter who they were talking to. Sales reps acted like information gatekeepers, holding power over the entire process. This method of sales is referred to as seller-centric.
- What is inbound sales?
     -  buyers have so much information available to them that they typically have already made 60% of their purchase decision before even talking to a sales rep. Giving them a relevant, personal, “delightful” experience, driven by their needs, on
their timeline is what an inbound approach to sales is all about.”

###II. How can you transform the way you sell?
- What are the best practices for effectively transforming the way you sell?
     - transforming the way you target accounts
     -  transforming the way you prospect accounts
     -  transform the way you connect with accounts.
     -  to transform the way your prospects perceive you as a salesperson.
- How can you transform the way you target accounts?
     -   focused on your buyer personas. You want to make sure you are targeting the right people.you ensure that the only people entering your sales process are the ones who are most qualified.
- How can you transform the way you prospect accounts?
     - The first thing you need to do is thoroughly research your leads, starting with company information.
- What things about your lead should you thoroughly research?
     -   monitor the lead’s engagement with your company.
     -   What did they download? What pages are they looking at? What is really resonating with them?
- How is the goal of a call determined?
     - Based on the information you've gathered in your research
- How can you transform the way you connect with accounts?
     -  build rapport with our leads.
     -
- What are the guidelines for transforming the way you connect?
     -  be completely unbiased and try to put the education of your prospect before your own personal initiatives
     -  People don’t remember the sales process – they remember the experience!
     -   know your audience.
     -   When it comes to inbound, the point of contact is rarely the decision maker
     -   speaking the prospect’s language.
     -   be helpful
- How can you transform the way your prospects perceive you as a salesperson?
     -  In order to put yourself in the position to educate your prospects, you need to become the ultimate listening machine and truly understand your prospect’s pain points
     -  As a salesperson, you need to become a trusted advisor.
     -  By putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes, you can better understand their perspective

###III. What does a day in the life of an inbound sales rep look like?
- If you needed to research a lead, where would you start?
- If you needed to research a lead, what information would you gather?
- What is a positioning statement?
- What are the three parts to a positioning statement?

# DELIGHT
##The Pillars of Delight
###I. Why customer delight is so important
- In which stages of the Inbound Methodology can delight be used?
- When should you be focused on delighting people?
- Why do people stop doing business with a business?

###II. How to delight your customers
- What are the three pillars of delight?
- Which interactions will build or destroy trust?
- What are the components to the customer delight checklist?
- What tool can help you solve customer issues quickly and exceed customer expectations?

###III. The seven customer delight guidelines
- What are the seven customer delight guidelines?
- Who is responsible for delighting customers?
- Why do you need to build a repeatable, consistent hiring process so you hire for character, train for skill?
- Why do you need to make sure you properly train your team so they understand why developing trust is key to delighting people?
- Why should you be measuring and tracking as many of your customer's interactions as you can?
- How can you educate your team members?
- How can you exceed people's expectations during more interactions?
- Why is following-up so important to delight?
- What steps should you take when trying to solve a person's problem as fast as possible?
- What's an effective way to empower your team while not micro-managing them?