Companies across a wide range of industries can use Inbound Marketing to attract prospective customers.  That was the topic of my presentation at the Social Media Dames Fall 2013 conference. You can find my slide deck below.

How we used Inbound Marketing to Sell Beans

Beans aren’t necessarily a glamorous product, so how do you get customers interested and even excited? You do it by showing them how to use the product. We used inbound marketing strategies to connect with prospective customers. For

For Randall Beans we started delicious recipes and beautiful pictures. Since no one on the Roundpeg team, except maybe Rebecca can actually cook, we hired professional recipe developers to create interesting dishes. Then we shared the recipe and the photos on social media and in email newsletters. We discovered It was the photos which drew people in on Facebook and Pinterest.  In email newsletters, however, the real key was the list of ingredients. If we selected ingredients which seemed like things people would already have in their pantry, they were more likely to click through to find the instructions.

The content drew more organic traffic from search and referral traffic from social media and the newsletter. Once we had a steady stream of traffic, we wanted to keep visitors coming back, so we created compilations.  We promoted these collections as mini cookbooks which people could download if they gave us their email.

After a reader downloaded the cookbook we sent them a coupon so they could purchase the beans to make the new dishes.  We also added them to our newsletter list and sent them monthly recipes and periodically a link to a new cookbook,  creating a perpetual cycle.

The results?  We have increased their newsletter list 300% and grown web traffic every month. If it works for a bean company, it will work for you.  Read more about the Randall Beans project here.