What are the two things to consider when determining a topic for a piece of content?
Knowledge on the topic and what topic you want to be considered as a thought leader.
Buyer personas and where they are in the buyer's journey.
Amount of available time and resources.
When converting visitors into leads, you should only utilize consideration stage content.
Focus on the design of a piece of content first, worry about the informational part second.
Fill in the blank: It's not until the ________ of the Buyer's Journey when your product should be mentioned.
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
You perform an audit of all of your website content (content offers, website pages, and blog posts) and realize you don't have much content that would fit into the consideration stage of the Buyer's Journey. You decide to create a new consideration stage content offer. What should the topic be focused on?
How your product/service and help solve your buyer persona's problem
Your buyer persona's problems
The solution to your buyer persona's problems
Fill in the blank: Promoting your content offers on your blog can help you ____________.
Promote your blog posts
Increase traffic to your blog
Gain social shares
Generate new leads
You read through a blog post from a coworker that’s about two different topics. Is this good or bad?
Bad - pick just one topic per post to make it clear for readers and search engines
Good - the more topics that one post can cover, the better for SEO
What is the long-tail keyword in the title “An Easy Guide to Training Your Cat”
Guide to Training
Easy Cat Training Guide
Cat Training
Cat Training Guide
What can analyzing the most popular posts by promotional channel tell you?
Which domain to publish your blog posts to
Which authors are promoting the content on their personal social media accounts
Which topics you should continue to write about
Which channels are giving you the greatest reach for your posts
What is whitespace?
The space on the page with images on it
he space on the page with text on it
The empty space on the page
The white space on the page
What are the three stages of the Buyer’s Journey?
Research, consideration, decision
Awareness, consideration, deliberation
Awareness, conversion, decision
Awareness, consideration, decision
What are the four stages of the Inbound Methodology?
Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight
Awareness, Consideration, Close, and Decision
Reach, Engage, Convince, Sell
All of the following are best practices of inbound, EXCEPT:
Leverage content
Create remarkable content
Use the Buyer's Journey
Use buyer personas
Focus on finding customers
Fill in the blank: _________ is your marketing toolkit, like blogs, videos, and ebooks; _________ is who you're creating it for.
Content, content marketing
Context, inbound strategies
Context, the Buyer’s Journey
Content, context
Buyer persona stories should contain information about:
A persona’s demographics and common traits
A persona’s main goals and challenges
A persona’s role at their organization or in life
All of the above
What is the nickname of a bot that search engines use to crawl the web?
Monkey
Penguin
Panda
Spider
True or false: Search engines can read both text and images.
True - this is why it’s important to include an image on every page
False - this is why it’s important to include optimized alt-text behind each image
True or false: Search engines count all links as equally important when crawling and ranking your page.
True - it’s the quantity of links that counts. The more links, the higher you’ll rank.
False - it’s the quality of links that counts. The more authoritative the links, the higher you’ll rank.
What should you begin your keyword research with?
Building relationships with industry thought leaders
Turning short keywords into long-tail keywords
Understanding what your buyer personas are searching for
Looking up the difficulty and competition around your keywords
Which is easier to rank for - the short keyword “teamwork” or the long-tail keyword “promote teamwork between employees”?
“Teamwork” - short keywords are more broad, so more people are searching for them and there’s less competition
“Promote teamwork between employees” - long-tail keywords are more targeted, so fewer people are searching for them and there’s less competition
How is social media used in the attract phase of the Inbound Methodology?
To promote content that will convert leads.
Social media is not used in the attract phase.
To analyze the success of previous social media content.
To publish content that will increase your exposure.
Social monitoring is a great way that marketers can gather information about their buyer personas.
Paul just started a new job as Director of Marketing at Fifth Season, the adventure travel company. After conducting a marketing audit, Paul finds that Fifth Season does not have an actionable social media strategy. What is the FIRST thing Paul should do to begin to developing a strategy?
Create content that is interesting and relevant to Fifth Season’s buyer personas and distribute it across every social media platform.
Create content and reach out to industry influencers and ask them to repost the content he creates.
Set goals that are SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely).
When calculating social media ROI, what four types of metrics should you pay attention to depending on your goals?
Click-through rate, average timing, engagement rate, and website visits
Facebook likes, Twitter followers, LinkedIn group followers, and Google+ followers
Content consumption, social sharing, lead generation, and revenue
Total amount of Visits, Leads, Customers, and Promoters
In a recent survey, Fifth Season’s primary buyer persona reported that she would buy more off-site team building packages if she knew more about the people responsible for delivering the team building exercises. What should Fifth Season do?
Publish a series of “Get to know your Team Building Expert” posts on Facebook
Publish a series of “Get to know your Team Building Expert” posts on Twitter
Publish a series of “Get to know you Team Building Expert” posts on LinkedIn
Publish a series of “Get to know your Team Building Expert” posts across all networks
According to the Inbound Methodology, in which stage do visitors become leads?
Attract Stage
Convert Stage
Close Stage
Delight Stage
If you wanted to promote a travel consultation offer on a blog post, where should the CTA be placed?
End of the first paragraph
End of the blog post
Top of the blog page
Fill in the blank: Using the same ______ for the entire conversion process helps your visitors understand what they are going to get.
CTA
Keywords
Landing page
Image size
The primary purpose of a call-to-action is to convert leads into customers.
The conversion process begins with a Landing Page.
A landing page headline should always contain which of the following:
The word “download”
When the offer will be delivered
The type of offer
A testimonial describing the benefit of the offer
A landing page uses a form to gather information about your visitors.
An optimized landing page should contain a link to get another offer.
You’ve been asked to create a landing page for a ten-page ebook of the ‘Best Beach Family Vacation Spots in Europe.’ Would you place a button to download the ebook directly from the landing page?
No, because the landing page needs a form.
Yes, as long as the download button is obvious to click on.
The form on the landing page should mirror the value of the offer.
Thank you pages are useful for each of these reasons EXCEPT:
Move leads further into the buyer’s journey
Close leads as customers
Extend your social media reach
Provide additional content to a lead
True or false: A thank you page should have a navigation menu that is different from the rest of your website.
True: Your menu should be shorter to direct people to particular areas of your site.
True: Your menu should direct people to related content offers.
False: Your menu should be the same as the rest of your site to be consistent.
False: Your menu should not exist on a thank you page.
If you are sending a follow-up email, you do not need to build a thank you page.
Fill in the blank: A thank you page is a way to say thank you, deliver the offer and ________.
provide more information
convert the lead
gain SEO benefits
begin the sales process
“Thanks! We will give you a call shortly to schedule a demo” is an effective message to place on your thank you page.
True
False
In 2004, PC magazine wrote an article called, “The Death of Email.” It asks, “Has email peaked and become more useless?” Is this true?
Yes. Email has become less effective as a marketing channel.
Yes. Email is used by less people, even though it is still an effective channel to communicate with those who DO still use it.
Yes. Email has been replaced by other ways of sharing information like social media.
No. Email is being adopted and used as a communication channel by more people every year.
Your boss asks you to write an email to drive registration to an important webinar your company is hosting. All of these would be effective places to add the PRIMARY call-to-action, EXCEPT:
In the copy of the email
As a call-to-action button between the copy
As an image that's hyperlinked
In a P.S. below the email signature
Next quarter, your marketing team plans to make an effort to increase the reach of your email sends. Which of the following ideas should you remove from your list of potential ways to increase your reach?
Adding a Call-To-Action to encourage readers to share the email with a colleague.
Send an additional email after each initial email send encouraging users to share the first email if they found it helpful or relevant.
Creating a web-based version of your emails so you can post them on your website.
Adding social sharing buttons to appropriate emails.
A high click rate for your email send is a good indicator of all of the following, EXCEPT:
A well-segmented list
Reader engagement
Brand awareness
An effective subject line
While doing a report of this year’s email trends, you notice that, compared to last year, more of your emails are marked as spam. All of these are potential explanations, EXCEPT:
Email marketing is decreasing in both use and effectiveness, causing an increase in reported spam complaint by businesses and consumers.
The frequency of the email sends was too often.
The content being sent was not relevant to the reader.
Your company did not express permission to email these contacts.
What is smarketing?
Smarketing is the process of splitting the marketing and sales teams in two. Then making two teams both half marketing and sales that compete against each other.
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.
Smarketing is the process of paying the marketers within an organization based on the leads they generate that close into customers.
Smarketing is the process of having one individual do both the marketing and sales for a specific persona.
The marketing and sales funnel consists of 6 lifecycle stages. What is the correct order starting at the top of the funnel and ending at the bottom?
Prospect (visit), Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Opportunity, Customer
Prospect (visit), Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Opportunity, Customer
Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Prospect (visit), customer
Prospect (visit), Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Opportunity, Sales Qualified Lead, Customer
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are contacts who have identified themselves as a good fit, highly engaged, or both. MQLs are defined by:
The software system(s) you use to manage your marketing and sales funnel.
The marketing team solely based off what they know about the buyer personas.
Just the sales team based on the type of lead they can most easily close into a customer.
Both marketing and sales and agreed upon as a lead worth researching more thoroughly.
Sales' Service Level Agreement (SLA) to marketing is dictated by the number of sales reps and their quotas. Based on the number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) marketing provides sales, sales can in turn identify how many follow-up attempts can be made for each MQL that is accepted as a Sales Qualified Lead(SQL).
Which of the following is NOT a step in keeping open communication?
Have weekly smarketing meetings with all of marketing and sales
Have monthly management meetings to discuss topics and resolve issues
Communicate information about marketing campaigns and product/service updates to both the marketing and sales teams
Share SLA data with the marketing and sales only once a quarter
Buyer personas aren't important once you get to the Close stage in the Inbound Methodology.
All of the following are things you can uncover as you thoroughly research your leads, EXCEPT:
Company size
Their role in the company
How you can solve their problem
What they sell
Your sales manager wants you to focus on explaining the value of your product or service to your prospect on your phone calls. Which of the following is the MOST effective way to accomplish this?
Ask close-ended questions
Use positioning statements
Use a static pitch about your product or services’ benefits
Ask leading questions
Which is NOT a guideline to follow when picking up the phone to connect with a lead?
Lead the conversation to match your sales goal
Be prepared with educational content to share
Build rapport with the lead
Know your audience
Speak the prospects language
When dealing with prospects over the phone, each prospect should always walk away having learned something from you - no matter the outcome of the call.
What are the components to the Customer Delight checklist?
Solve the problems, provide a recommendation, be yourself
Solve the problems, exceed people’s expectations, be fun and enthusiastic
Solve for the customer and train your team members
Find a solution, be supportive, be yourself
Your customer is experiencing a problem with your product. What steps should you take when trying to solve a person’s problem as fast as possible?
First listen, then acknowledge, then explore the problem
First explore, then acknowledge, then explore the problem more
First listen, then acknowledge
First listen, then explore, then explore even more
Which statement is true?
It usually costs more money to acquire a new customer
It usually costs more money to retain an existing customer
It doesn’t matter if you're in product, marketing, sales, or customer support. It's everyone's job to build trust with people. You need to make sure you properly train your team so they understand why trust is key.
Why should you be measuring and tracking as many of your customer's interactions as you can?
To help you better serve them with the right products, communication and education
To build more trust
So you can under-promise, over-deliver
What is the Buyer's Journey?
It's the process your buyer goes through when learning about your brand.
It's the active research process someone goes through leading up to the purchase.
It's the inbound methodology, but from the buyer's perspective.
It's the process that someone goes through after they've made a purchase.
Buyer personas represent the ideal customers your organization is trying to attract, convert, close and delight. Personas are most effective in:
B2B and B2C organizations.
Nonprofit, educational, and B2C organizations.
B2B, business-to-government (B2G), and e-commerce organizations.
All organization types.
When creating a buyer persona, you should ONLY interview your ideal customers.
Which Buyer's Journey stage does someone fall into if they are experiencing and expressing a problem?
At a high level, what three things should you keep in mind when creating buyer personas?
Research, make assumptions, and identify trends.
Identify trends, differences, and detractors.
Research, identify trends, and create persona stories
Make assumptions, identify trends, and ask sales for input.
Each prospect who comes to your website for the first time is always in the Awareness stage of the Buyer's Journey.
To ensure search engines understand the content on your page, you should:
Use natural language and variations of your primary keyword phrase throughout the page content.
Include your primary keyword throughout the page content as many times as possible.
Not use you primary keyword at all - there's no need, because search engines understand intent.
Repeat your primary keyword throughout the page content using the same wording and phrasing.
Include your primary keyword in all of the following EXCEPT:
Navigation
Body
URL
Page Title
Headers
What is SEO?
The Javascript on your pages that allows a search engine to understand it.
The number of website pages that are indexed by search engines.
The elements of your email that allow it to get processed by search engines.
The process of improving your website so that it attracts more visitors from search engines.
When picking a keyword to focus on for a new piece of content, which metrics should you prioritize?
Low search volume and low competition.
High search volume and high competition.
High search volume and low competition.
Low search volume and high competition.
Which is a main component for how search engines rank search results?
The number of keywords on the page.
The number of authoritative links to the site.
The number of visits to the page.
The number of social followers of the business.
Fill in the blank: The outlined Content Process steps are plan, create, _________, analyze, repeat.
target
publish
research
distribute
An adventure travel company wants to create a piece of content for their buyer persona. This persona is interested in building team trust, since they work in an industry with high employee turnover. Which would most likely be an effective Awareness Stage offer for getting this persona's attention?
A webinar that covers the adventure travel company's new travel package that helps with team bonding.
An ebook on how to build trust inside a team with trust building exercises.
A case study on how the company helped another business with their off-site team building experience.
A blog post on the top 10 spots for off-site adventure travel.
Content is defined by 3 things. What are they?
Purpose, format, and topic
Who, how, and why
Audience, creator, and distributor
If your content is focused on different solutions to your buyer persona's problem, where would that content fit into the Buyer's journey?
You have spent a lot of time planning and creating a great content offer. You are now done with the content process and should move on to create your next piece of content.
Which of the following is NOT a metric to consider when analyzing a content offer?
Open rate
Performance by format type
Number of leads generated
Number of social shares
In order to not get cut off in a Google search result, what is the maximum number of characters that your title should be?
90 characters
120 characters
60 characters
30 characters
Which of the following would be the most appropriate call-to-action to place at the bottom of an Awareness Stage blog post?
"Download the Team Building Checklist."
"Download Our Pricing Guide."
"Sign Up for a Consultation"
"Request a Free Quote"
Blogging increases the volume of traffic to your website in all of the following ways, EXCEPT:
More unique pages are associated with your website
Outside websites will link to your posts
Your posts will get shared in social media
Your posts will generate more conversion assists
All of the following elements will help readers easily digest the content of a blog post EXCEPT:
Calls-to-action
Whitespace
Images
Bolding
You work for a travel agency and need to write your next blog post. What topic should you write about to attract families that have never heard of you and are looking to take a vacation?
The latest trip that your agency organized for a family
Why your agency provides the best experience for families
The best family-friendly vacation destinations
The affordable pricing of your family-friendly vacation packages
Your boss wants you to blog primarily about your company, its services and various corporate events. What is your response?
That's a good idea - we want to attract the most qualified visitors with our posts, so we should help people understand our business. If we write about ourselves, they'll be more likely to purchase sooner.
That's not a good idea - we're trying to attract new visitors with our posts, people who haven't yet heard of our company. If we write about ourselves, they won't find us in their searches.
A company published an ebook about the effects of off-site team building. What social media marketing actions should they take to help generate leads for the offer?
Create a Facebook group for customers and promote the ebook to the group members
Include a link to the ebook in their Twitter profile
Publish the ebook to LinkedIn
Create tweets that include a link to landing page for the ebook
Fill in the blank: _______________ helps marketers establish a consistent tone on their social media networks.
A social media monitoring stream
A social media style guide
A social benchmark report
A social media publishing schedule
An optimized profile for every social media network should contain all of the following EXCEPT:
Your organization's logo
Your organization's phone number
Your company description
A link to your organization's website
You were just hired as the social media marketer and want to learn more about your Twitter audience. What can help you do this?
Analyze your follower count
Schedule out tweets consistently
Monitor Twitter conversations
Increase the volume of your tweets
True or False: Social media can be used at every stage of the inbound methodology:
True - Social media can be used to attract visitors, converts leads, close customers, and delight promotors.
False - Social media can only be used to attract visitors and monitor leads.
What elements should be tested on your CTA?
Color
Placement on page
Fill in the blank: A call-to-action (CTA) is a button that promotes an offer and links to a(n)_______________.
Thank you page
Website page
Email
You would like to increase the number of clicks on your current CTA. What is the suggested approach to making changes to a CTA?
Test multiple things at once to maximize the value of your experiment
Don't change the CTA - change the page that it's on
Give it a totally new look
Change one element at a time.
Landing pages should contain all of the following EXCEPT:
A headline
Website navigation
Social sharing icons
A video
Fill in the blank: Landing pages are designed to ________________.
Deliver a content offer to a lead
Close leads into customers
Convert visitors into leads
Be the page that a lead "lands" on, after filling out a form
A form on your landing page should only ask the questions that your sales team needs to have answered.
True or False: A landing page navigation menu should be different from the rest of the site.
True. Your menu should be shorter to direct people to particular areas of your site.
False. Your menu should be the same as the rest of your site to be consistent.
True. Your menu should direct people to related content offers.
False. Your menu should not exist on a landing page.
A landing page should connect to a thank you page
All of the following are reasons to place a call-to-action on a thank you page EXCEPT:
Keep leads converting on your website
Move leads further into the buyer's journey.
Encourage leads to stay on your site
Thank your leads for their interest in your offer
A thank you page optimized for lead engagement contains:
Testimonials
A link to a specific blog post related to the topic
An image
A link to your About Us page
A thank you page allows you to complete all of the following EXCEPT:
Delivering the offer to the lead
Emailing the offer to the lead
Promoting additional offers to the lead
Enabling social sharing
What is lead nurturing?
The process of sending individual emails to get them to purchase your product or service.
The process of building relationships with prospects with the goal of earning their business when they're ready.
The process of placing the right call-to-action in the right email and sending it to the right person.
The process of calling qualified prospects and engaging them with a consultative sales process.
What does the open rate of your email indicate?
That your email is getting to your contacts' inbox
That your subject line is effective
That your email has converted leads
That people are enticed to click on the offer in the email
At the start of the year, your company has 5,000 leads. Over the course of the year, you generate another 1,000 leads. True or false: you now have 6,000 leads in your database that you can email.
False: The average email list decays about 25% a year.
True: Purchased lists will allow a business to continuously add leads to their funnel with no adverse effects.
False: You cannot use email marketing to close leads into customers.
True: An effective email marketing strategy is self-sustaining and will always help to generate new business.
Fill in the blank: The subject line of your email should ______________.
never reveal the full value of the email.
not contain personalization.
be five words or less. Studies have shown subject lines over this number are not effective.
depend on the offer, industry, audience and device.
Which of these is NOT a best practice when optimizing your emails for mobile
Use clear and concise messaging. People are more likely to scan emails, regardless of what device they are using.
Use a responsive template. That way your email will conform to the device your reader is using.
Make your content comprehensive. Since people carry their phones with them everywhere, a captive audience is more willing to read a longer email.
Bigger is better. When it comes to text, images, and calls-to-action, be aware that people will be reading your email on smaller screens.
Fill in the blank: A _____________ is an email that has been returned to the sender because the email address is invalid.
Soft bounce
Hard bounce
Why is the Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) stage important for both your sales and marketing teams?
It will help your sales and marketing teams remain on the same page in terms of the quality and volume of MQLs that marketing is handing over.
It will help your marketing team better nurture Opportunities priory to sending them over to the sales steam to be more thoroughly researched.
It has no relevance to smarketing and is simply used for executive teams to track sales activity.
There is no difference between and SQL and an MQL, thus this stage has no relevance to smarketing.
According to the marketing and sales funnel, prospects are defined as:
Anyone that has downloaded a content offer
A lead that has expressed interest in purchasing your product/service
Anyone in the sales and marketing funnel who has request a demo or trial
Website visitors who have signed up for a blog or email newsletter
What is the most important reason for why marketing and sales should share the same goal(s)?
Alignment around goals makes it less expensive to run an organization
Alignment around goals reduces the number of employees necessary to hit revenue goals
Alignment around goals puts an emphasis on collaboration and holds marketing and sales accountable to each other.
Alignment around goals makes it easier for the company to manage employees.
True or False: Marketing is responsible for defining a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and sales is responsible for defining a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).
False: Both teams work together to come up with a common definition of the terms
True: Marketing and sales must use the same words, but it's OK for the definitions to be different.
False: As long as both teams understand what the other team is using as a definition, they can stay separate.
True: It's important for marketing and sales to have their own definition for the same words.
Fill in the blank: Marketing and sales should be aligned around the same goal. Typically this is a shared _________ goal.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Visit
Revenue
Persona
Your company has decided to use an inbound approach to sales. Which of the following does NOT align with your company's new inbound sales practices?
Building relationships with your prospects.
Leveraging the buyer's context on calls.
Utilizing content from each stage of the Buyer's Journey.
Using a scripted sales pitch on calls.
You are a sales rep who has decided to try out an inbound approach to sales. One morning when you turn on your computer you see you already have a new inbound lead in your inbox. What is the FIRST thing you should do?
Research your lead
Do nothing until the lead fills out another form
Send them an email
Pick up the phone and call them
What are four guidelines to keep in mind when connecting with your leads over the phone?
Build rapport, know your audience, speak the prospect's language, be helpful
Build rapport, sound happy, be helpful, schedule a follow up call
Be nice, know your audience, follow your planned agenda, be helpful
Sound interested, know your audience, follow your planned agenda, schedule a follow-up call
Which of the following is the best example of why the sales process has changed?
Buy habits have changed.
Sales reps were bored.
Buyers have difficulty finding the right information online.
Sales reps want to remain in control.
How can sales reps gain trusted advisor status in the eyes of the people they connect with?
Have a lot of LinkedIn connections
Build up their personal brand as a though leader in their industry
Be in their industry for ten or more years
Understand the prospects problem and identify quick wins for them
Your boss is questioning why it's important to train every team member on the pillars of delight. Your answer is:
It's not important because we should be focused on generating more leads.
It's important because a customer's experience is only formed by the first interaction.
It's not important because only the customer support team should be delighting people.
It's important because a customer's experience and their longer-term success is formed by every interaction.
What are the three pillars of delight?
Innovation, Communication, Education
Innovating, Connecting, Teaching
Invent, Communicate, Educate
Invent, Serve, Collaborate
Who is responsible for delighting customers?
Only the executive leadership team
Everyone at your organization
Only customer-facing teams
Only those that hold public relations roles
Which interactions will build or destroy trust?
Only pre-sale interactions
Only post-sale interactions
All of the interactions
None of the interactions
When should you focus on delighting people?
After they have used your product or service
From the very first moment someone interacts with your business
From the moment they become a customer to delight them into promoters
At the beginning of the sales process.
