Inbound Marketing is an interesting topic to talk about this week. Hope you like the previous week article on set up site search where I explained a practice of Google Analytics settings to track every search made by users on your site. Today, I would like to talk about Inbound Marketing. We will learn some insights of Inbound Marketing and benefits of it. Also I will try to share some case studies and best practices which could help you in designing better Inbound Marketing Strategies for your Business.
These Inbound Marketing Principles would help you to understand the process. So before getting into the tips and tricks let’s understand what actually inbound marketing is and how it works.
Inbound Marketing
According to Wikipedia, Inbound marketing is a technique of content marketing which includes social media marketing and Search Engine Optimization along with Branding to drive customers towards products and services. It is simply a method of enhancing your content to attract a stranger, Convert it into a regular user, Close the conversion and Enjoy the success. We are living in a customer driven market where it’s important to stay one step ahead of competition. You can not stand out of the crowd if you don’t have a better marketing strategy for your business.
This is a great method for achieving your goals. Every buyer or potential buyer has enough information about the product or service. There are thousands of internet platforms available where they could find relevant information. In this situation, it is very hard to beat the competition and achieve growth.
Basic Principles of Inbound Marketing
While practicing different marketing strategies and methods, I have collected few insights of Inbound Marketing and given below are few basic principles of Inbound Marketing which could help you to deliver the best outcomes and achieve your goals.
Attract
It’s very important for every business to reach out to maximum number of people and attract the right audience for their business. More likely attracting customers is the first step for any business. In order to start with this, you should have a website which is well optimized. It should be easy to use and have capability to represent your content in a good manner. You have to work on your website SEO. You could either do it yourself or hire a Digital Marketing Expert. Website should have industry keywords, accurate meta data, Headers, Pointers, right images and videos.
Content Creation
You can only optimize your website if you have relevant content available on it. Creating meaningful content which is related to your industry would help visitors to stay on your website. Sharing real time case studies would be the best options to generate meaningful content. Your web visitors are more interested in your achievements and the way you have achieved it.
Another good options of creating neat and useful content are:
- Blog posts about Industry Trends
- Writing answers for Frequently Asked questions
- Creating Video on industry topics
- Creating set of How to Steps
Use of Social Media
Before talking about Social Media let’s have a quick look over worldwide digital population as of July 2020. Given below are the numbers in billions till month of July 2020.
- Active Internet users: 4.57 Billions
- Unique Mobile Internet Users: 4.17 Billions
- Active Social Media Users: 3.96 Billions
- Active Mobile Social Media Users: 3.91 Billions
There is a huge number of people using social media. If you can use social media correctly, you have opportunities to achieve new heights. According to Hubspot, 80% of marketers & 60 % of sales professionals have found qualified leads on social media. Creating social media content such as infographics and posts would really help you to achieve positive numbers. However, sharing your web content such as blogs and promotional offers on social media is highly recommended.
Work Towards Conversion
Once a prospect lands on a site, the goal is to convert them into a lead. To be able to to convert them into a lead, it is important to have a call to action such as: click here to get this ebook free. Once the prospect clicks on the the call to action button, they will be directed to a landing page where they will get more information on the ebook. At this point prospects will be asked to enter their name and email address. Once this occurs, they will be directed to a thank you page.
Whenever a user lands on your website, you never know whether the user has potential of buying or not but one thing you could do is, prepare your website keeping your conversion goals in mind. You could follow the basic rules of generating leads.
- Implementing call to Action Button
- Having call to action buttons are important to make it easy for visitors to generate query easily. You could place buttons such as Call Back, make a Call, Contact Here, request a demo or make an inquiry. You could enable tracking on these buttons using Google Tag Manager and see which button is performing and helping in generating leads. According to performance, you could switch the button placements.
- Landing Pages
- Whenever user clicks on a link or button, it lands on a page. Make sure the page you design should have all the elements which can convert a user into potential buyer. Place the button on page and help user to under what to do. It should be action oriented not instructions like click here or visit here. As you can see in this blog, there is a form which says contact us. All you need to do is, fill this form and hit send. Landing pages are your digital sales representatives which are designed to convert users into leads. Also, you could collect user information by using landing pages.
- Implementing forms
- Forms are important as it works as a bridge between sales and enquiry. You should design the form according to your event or promotional offer. Pro Tip: Ask for necessary information only instead of full details. If it is a call back form, then asking for mobile number is enough. Create form of two columns only for this. However, if it is a product enquiry, you could add the relevant fields but make sure to make an easy to fill form.
- Thank you Pages
- Greeting your visitor with a Thank you message leaves a good impression. It also helps you in tracking the conversion. You could use thank you page to share additional information about your product or services with users. It is obvious if someone has made a purchase on your website, he is interested in your product and services. If you are showing additional services on thank you page, you are showing his interest items. Use this as an opportunity and take out the best of it.
Closer
At the final stage, sending an email after completing the conversion is important and is highly recommended. People check their emails regularly and emails could help you to generate better brand awareness. By sending an email, you can also delight your customers. Email is also one of the most economical options of attracting users. Emails would add very less cost in your marketing budget.
This is what I have learnt about inbound marketing during these many years. If you have insights to add then feel free to comment below. I will be more than happy to feature the additional information.
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