Launching a paid per click campaign is not as simple as paying an agency to do it or getting a member staff to simply spend a couple of hundred bucks on it and off they go.

Before you launch a PPC campaign there are certain aspects that you need to cover, we split this into 4 key areas:

1. Required PPC settings for your websites
2. Required settings for your Landing Pages to guarantee PPC campaign success
3. Required assets and materials before you launch a PPC campaign
4. How to monitor and track responses of your PPC campaign 

This is a guide that will tell you exactly what to do at each of these 4 stages, if you follow them you will ensure that your campaign is successful and more importantly, trackable.

It is a fact, there are event and media organisations that are having a difficult time with HubSpot and think that "HubSpot does not work, and that inbound marketing is a big scam".

After running more than 50 inbound and content marketing implementations in events and media, most of them with HubSpot, we have looked at a variety of factors as to why it works for some companies and not for others?

These are the reasons WHY:

I’ve just managed to get on top of my inbox. It took quite a large chunk of time (I won’t say how many hours). I’ve responded to those ‘I’ll reply tomorrow’ flagged messages, the forgotten-about starred memos and the mass of unread (and now deleted) marketing messages. Although I feel pretty triumphant, I know it will be overflowing again by next week.

Email has become a large part of every professional’s daily routine – whether we like it or not. A mountain of 123.9 billion business emails whizz around the web every day, with the average professional sending and receiving 131 emails every 24 hours, according to a study by Radicati.

Email can be a powerful marketing channel when used correctly. An Adobe report has revealed engagement via email is still the most desirable form of communication between businesses.

Marketing automation has many advantages. But none of them are particularly easy to realise, not least because many marketers underestimate the upheaval required to make their MA systems do what they want.

Beware the common pitfalls, and learn to recognise when it might be time for a change of tack. Here are four telltale signs that something's gone wrong:

1. Your leads are being rejected

One of the main bullet points on the box your MA platform came in was: more effective lead management. Marketing automation means marketers are able to pass only the hottest leads over to sales, and myriad inter-departmental benefits cascade down from there. But this nirvana is far from automatic.

If sales are rejecting a large chunk of MA-approved leads, it’s very likely that the agreed definitions and scoring models in place are wrong. Yes, the system has spat them out and labelled them ‘ready to buy’ but that’s only because you’ve set the parameters by which it decides what’s what. It pays to regularly monitor the attributes of prospects that close and those that don’t. Subtle adjustments to lead scoring rules can make all the difference. 

2. You’ve got no time to think

Relatively few marketing departments are blessed with spare time. I’m yet to meet a marketer boasting about their super-manageable workload. But there is a difference between someone who’s busy and someone who’s run ragged. And misaligned MA set-ups can certainly create the latter.

A hell of a lot of work goes into setting up successful marketing automation campaigns; this shouldn’t be forgotten. But the trick to making sure it doesn’t leave you pulling your hair out is to focus down on key groups and key messages. It’s tempting to run before you can walk with MA, but baby steps – and a laser-sharp focus on which sections of your audience to target –  will help.

Ex-Euromoney MD Luke Gibson lifts the lid on inbound marketing for traditional events businesses and explains why they're so glacially slow at adopting the new inbound marketing methods. Luke talks tough at times and certainly doesn't sugar coat his messages to marketing directors and others seeking investment in inbound marketing for their events.

Catch a few highlights below or watch the full interview here:

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Content marketing is one of the most important aspects I discuss with B2B marketing professionals and business owners before they start developing their project strategy. In my view this will be the only way for the companies to differentiate themselves in the future.

It is important to outline these fundamental truths as content marketing is a set of tactics and a particular approach that is going to take time. The journey will be successful and hugely rewarding only if the right steps are followed.

You've spent months, if not years, carefully honing your inbound marketing machine. You've painstakingly tweaked your content, A/B tested your workflows and invested countless hours building trust and relationships with prospects and qualified leads who are now truly worthy of the name.

Then you decide to run an event and risk ruining it all... Find out why and what to do to avoid it.

So, you've finally convinced your boss to switch some of your focus from outbound to inbound channels, you've been given the go ahead and created some sweet content and made a good sounding plan. The only problem is, that results just aren't there. 

After the initial screaming and holding your head in your hands part, you're likely next thought is "what the heck do I do now?" What do you do when content marketing doesn't work? Here's our 3 point, no-panic action plan....

In our latest edition of B2B Inbound Marketing Stories, we spoke with Kelvin Newman, founder of BrightonSEO, the UK's largest SEO conference and MD of Rough Agenda, one of the new breed of B2B events companies shaking up the conference scene. In the interview, Kelvin reveals the secret sauce behind selling out his event in just 60 seconds and shares some pointers on how larger, traditional events businesses can incorporate a start up mentality to steer them to revenue success.

Watch the full interview, or pick up the key highlights below...

Our series of Inbound Marketing Stories continues with John Whitaker, Head of Marketing from dmg events - a global events business that manages over 80 events in over 25 countries. John shares his experiences and learnings with his inbound marketing journey so far. 

In our new series of Inbound Marketing Stories, we interview B2B organisations and explore their inbound marketing journey so far. 

Our first story comes from Andrew Ferguson, Co-Founder at BrainXchange who lifts the lid on his unique business model and shares the reason why he believes inbound marketing for event and conference organisers is so essential for any future success. 

• Want to know how you can secure a 80-90% rebook rate from your event sponsors?
• How about the secret to being able to charge double what your competitors do?
• Or reliably booking a handful of delegates every single week without touching the phone?

You can listen to the full interview at the bottom of the post, or just digest some of the highlights we've pulled out here...

We are very pleased to announce that BrightBull has officially formed a joint venture with leading European inbound marketing agency Increnta. Increnta is a platinum HubSpot partner and Oracle Gold Partner with clients in 14 countries, specifically in the areas of Publishing, Training and Education, Financial Services, SaaS, Services, Healthcare and Tourism with a portfolio of 300+ clients.

Inbound marketing is without doubt the future for event marketing as a discipline. Audiences are fed up with a torrent of selling emails and they are getting much more discerning in turning off the flow when it suits them.

Successful inbound marketing allows you to maintain a positive relationship between your prospect and event brand at every stage of the buying process, but you need to understand the rules so as not to make mistakes and turn them off forever. Here are our 5 most important inbound marketing insights to consider...   

From talking to organisations looking to get into the inbound marketing or content marketing game, it seems clear to me that many are considering what appears to be the easy option – hiring a recent graduate to manage their entire program, and kick-start this step change.

You may have already read my summary of a recent 2015 social media marketing report, which covered the areas of social media that marketers are most comfortable using, the platforms they don’t plan on adopting anytime soon, and the amount of time they are dedicating to their social media activity, among other topics.

So here let’s look ahead – what does the future of social media marketing for events look like?

There comes a time in every organisation’s lifecycle when a website redesign is staring them in the face, and it’s an occurrence you simply cannot afford to ignore.

This could be for a multitude of reasons such as a rebrand, a strategy overhaul, or just that it looks increasingly dated.

Don’t sigh with despair when this issue arises, grab the bull by the horns and make your website work harder for you; turn it into an unstoppable inbound marketing machine.

Here’s how to in just ten steps:

Often companies look at competitors to see if they’re falling behind, or where they’re leading the way for the rest of the industry – but we forget that there’s a lot to be learned from other industries entirely. In this case I’m talking about media publishers. Struggling to generate high quality leads, surely it makes sense to take a little knowledge from the experts! If there’s one thing event marketers do well it’s lead generation – and I’m about to let you in on the top secret business of how they do it:

If the qualitative and quantitative evidence that we’ve provided in other blogs isn’t enough to get the support of your team, or your CEO’s buy-in, the cherry on the cake in your argument will be demonstrating the effects of an online community at every level of the value chain.

There are several groups who will thank you for your efforts in your B2B online community – in terms of both monetary rewards and delegate fandom.

Hubspot publishes every year ‘The State of Inbound’ report and it is full of fascinating insights, statistics and findings, but just in case you don’t have time to read it yourself, here are the top takeaways in easily digestible summaries. Not only is this a real time saver but we’ve also unearthed what these insights mean for the event industry – and how you can use them to your advantage.

1. Budgeting

As a marketer, you’ll be well aware that the size of your budget depends on and relates to so many different factors it can seem impossible to ensure all of them lead to an increase – but it is achievable. Factors such as the economy, a change in management and a past failure with inbound marketing typically led to a lower inbound budget being granted – however demonstrating success with inbound accessed significantly higher sums of budget.