3 Steps to Making Inbound Marketing Work for You
by Christina on Monday 10th October, 2011 at 10:10 COMMENTS (0)
Inbound marketing is all about getting the right customer to come to you. Traditional methods such as TV, radio, print etc are still used, but they interrupt the consumer, whereas inbound marketing is about being there when the consumer is looking for your product or service. This works because consumers are no longer passive recipients to your marketing messages. They are out there looking at products and services; investigating and researching before they make contact with you. The economy is also getting tougher so the consumer is really thinking hard before making their purchase.
Inbound marketing allows the consumer to be in charge. For you to retain some measure of control over converting them into a sale you need to become visible, by having your content answering the consumer's questions and moving them through your website the way you need them to and persuading them to click your sales button.
Below are 3 components of inbound marketing. If you have not already implemented these, you should start now.
SEO
Search engine optimisation needs to be incorporated into your website to ensure your site is search engine friendly, and appropriate keywords are being used per page. This helps the search engines place you in the correct search engine results and helps your rankings improve. You can also target longer tail keywords, which will have less traffic but will be far more targeted and will have a better conversion rate. Search engine optimisation places you in front of your customers who are already out there looking for your product or service.
Link building is also apart of search engine optimisation, its all about building links from other quality websites into your site. Each link is still considered a vote of confidence in your business and sends a signal to the search engines that you can be trusted. It also helps consumers find you in different places helping to drive more traffic to your business.
Link building is also good for getting recognised for targeted keywords, by ensuring your keyword is within the anchor text.
If you have just designed a website and submitted it to the search engines without incorporating search engine optimisation you will be invisible to your audience.
Social Media
Social Media allows consumers to express their opinions about companies, products and services. This allows you to target your audience on a one to one basis, creating brand loyalty and brand advocates. Face Book likes and Followers within Twitter are people who are actually happy for you to talk to them, as soon as they like or follow you they are giving you permission to tell them about your business.
There are two negatives to social media, the first is getting the balance right, do too little and your audience forgets about you, do too much and with one click of the mouse button you are unliked or unfollowed. The second negative is the time and dedication you have to put in.
Determine a strategy that fits your business and your customers. Choose the right social media for your business. FaceBook tends to be business to customer, LinkedIn is Business to Business and Twitter is where you can actually pick the companies you want to target and start talking to them and driving them to your website as soon as they follow you.
Social Media is the one area you can not copy the competition as you need to find your own voice, your own goals and develop relationships with your customers.
Social Media is also an area where links can be built into your website, although they do not use your targeted keywords.
Content Marketing
Content marketing includes website content, articles, whitepapers, infographics, videos, blog posts etc. Your content has to show off your industry expertise, building trust and becoming a valuable resource. The more relevant, problem solving and engaging the content the more benefit it will bring to your customer as well as to yourself.
As an example a builder could help homeowners save money during this prolonged economic decline, by producing a blog detailing which task's the homeowner can do themselves, and how they would go about doing the work and at which point they should call a builder in.
You need to be producing a steady stream of content to keep visitors coming back to your website. The easiest way to start creating content is to answer the questions your customers often ask your sales team, or think about what you would want to know if you were not part of your industry and wished to use your services or product. The more questions answered before the customer makes contact the faster they will turn into a paying customer when they contact you or allow you to contact them.
Your website should be considered the hub of your business marketing efforts. The more channels you employee to bring traffic to your website, the more landing pages you have selling your products or service the more likely you are to generate leads.
The EssexSEO Team
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