On the internet, many businesses are aiming for the same pool of audience. Inbound marketing is what gives you the power to attract those potential customers without using advertisements. The strategy involves several methods that include: using the modern trend as a start, publishing a compelling content, using the prominence of search engines, using the influence of social media, using A/B testing, and others.
Inbound marketing strategies can make you internet marketing efforts more effective because it include case study data, expert analysis, statistics about tactics, and many more.
Before doing anything, you should first know what's the current trend. To understand this, you need to do a thorough research to observe what drives people the most. By knowing what's what, you can then curate your own strategy to make the most out of your ability.
For example, in a statistic, many consumers have responded that they tend to use search engines to get more insights about a specific products/services. They also stated that social media makes their decision in purchasing things better, or worse, by knowing the review of the products/services.
Responding to this trend, many B2B marketers responded by making their companies easier to find on the internet. They do this by making contents that are potential in driving potential consumers to the exact spot where they can purchase their products/services.
In short, inbound marketing is more like doing the things so people on the web will see you even without them expecting.
Below is a list of some key strategy where you can apply your inbound marketing.
Using Contents To Achieve Goals
People love contents. Contents on the web can be literally anything. Ranging from text only information, social media posts, infographics, videos, plain pictures, simple photographs, links to uploaded files and a lot more.
The main reason that most people are online is because they want something, and that something is contents and more contents.
Here comes the debate between inbound marketing and content marketing, and where do the two meet. Content marketing is a vital part of inbound marketing in which it involves in creating the materials in the first place. It's job is to create a compelling content that is able to attract and retain visitors to your business.
Good content marketing takes time to develop results. To wait for the moment to come, you should continue your efforts by opening your business to more marketing opportunities. Each and every marketing strategy, if done in the correct way, will benefit one another.
Further reading: The Importance of Content Writing
SEO To Be Visible
Search engines is nonetheless one of the most visited web services on the internet. The reason for this is because it can give many references about something, and an almost unlimited possibilities to get to what you want: more information.
Almost everyone that use the internet to purchase something, have used search engines to see where local businesses are, how they perform, and how are the reviews of their products/services.
Search engine optimization here is to help your website, and your business, to have its contents easy to find by the most relevant prospects. It's necessary to design your website to be at its very best so it can rank well on search engines, making it attractive to even more potential visitors.
The top three goals of SEO are: getting more website traffic, increase brand and product awareness, and increase lead generation.
SEO involves a broad aspect, far beyond on-page SEO that involves textual content, images, videos, slideshows, etc.. SEO is for your site to virtually make it perform well in everything it has to give. What you have may attract or repel search engines, and SEO here is to make sure that search engines like you.
Further reading: Working with both SEO and Content Marketing in a Hand in Hand Strategy
Social Media To Add Value
There are a lot of social media networks online, and what you need is to find what's best for you. From the prominent Facebook, to the popular microblogging site Twitter, professional-aimed LinkedIn, and a lot more.
Connecting to your audience, in a more relaxed and casual way, can be a huge benefit for you, your brand, and your business. Social media can also be an excellent place to re-purpose your contents. You can start discussion, Q&A about specific topics, or almost anything else you have in mind.
Social media has a huge role in marketing, and the main purpose of it is to benefit your business in the eyes of your customers.
Social media can do that by increasing brand awareness, brand reputation, and improving public relations.
Other advantages of using social media networks are the ability to make more call-to-action strategies using your contents. The strategy includes, but not limited to: mentioning new contents and sending links to people, adding social buttons for easy sharing, adding social features to create a sense of community, and highlighting your contents.
Furthermore, social media can be a perfect place to get information about how your products/services perform by analyzing votes and comments people have given you.
The flip side of social media is that it shouldn't be your first stop marketing strategy. Social media networks do have huge influence, but without anything to support what you have to say, social media marketing can be next to useless.
You cannot have a good social media strategy without first having a good content marketing strategy. You're not going to make people interested in you on social media without having something interesting to say first.
Further reading: Inbound Marketing with Social Media
Landing Page To Convert Traffic
With all the previously mentioned strategy working as planned, the next thing you need is to make your web visitors to turn into actual buyers. Inbound marketing can build your reputation up from zero to massive popularity. But there's no point in doing all that if you cannot turn those visitors into something that benefits your business.
One of the very important thing about converting traffic into buyers, advertisement clickers or others, is to build a compelling landing page.
Landing page optimization is meant to turn traffic into leads, and converting leads into sales. Page optimization can increase the ratio of these rates.
You can also increase the performance by using A/B split testing in areas such as: on-site content promotion, purchase and lead-capture forms, social sharing buttons, traffic landing pages, and many others.
To make this strategy successful, you need to follow an order of operations to effectively increase your landing page's conversion rates.
First, you need to establish a great value proposition by telling there why they would want to become buyers. The second is to optimize the page's design and appearance to increase that conversion. And the third is to optimize all the channels you're using to drive traffic to the page that have the call-to-action feature.
If you have a well-designed website that is having a large amount of traffic, you have succeeded in achieving your first goal. But if your popular website can't convert those massive volume of visitors, all your marketing strategies are deemed to be useless.
Further reading: Creating a High Conversion Landing Page