What is Inbound Marketing?
The Strategies You Need to Know
Every business uses a form of marketing, but what is the most effective form for you?
Want to Enhance your inbound marketing?
Learn more about how to start your Inbound Marketing plan!
Do You Need an Inbound Marketing Agency?
What is Inbound Marketing?
In today’s marketing climate, inbound marketing is one of the most productive strategies. Unlike traditional outbound marketing, this approach to marketing makes the customer come to you. This strategy utilizes SEO, content creation, and lead generation to increase the success of your marketing plan.
The following strategies can help you optimize your marketing experience.
Why is Inbound Marketing Salable?
The current market is filled with information and the rate it is being created is accelerating. With access to the internet, buyers have access to reviews, prices, and competitors within a matter of seconds.
Similarly, social media encourages this process. Your audience has the opportunity to compare their experiences to a much larger crowd. These consumers are expecting you to keep up.
Inbound marketing gives you the power to give the consumer what they want, when they need it. Traditional outbound marketing tactics interrupts the buyer in the process; inbound marketing organically starts with consumer action.
Benefits of an Inbound Marketing Agency
Inbound marketing relies on content. This content can lead to numerous benefits when utilized effectively. Inbound efforts build upon themselves overtime. The beginning of the process starts when you bring attention to your company. As the content gains more exposure it will continue to bring people back to your brand. Some strategies to consider would include:
- Emphasizing quality content
- Optimizing SEO
- Nurturing Leads
Emphasize Quality Content
Inbound strategies cannot be forced, they require being found naturally. One of the most vital parts of this process is content creation. You need to create fresh and useful content to convert leads.
Your content should come in various forms with the goal of helping your audience answer a question or solve a problem. If your customer is searching for answers, you want to be the one to provide for them.
The key to creating quality content is that your content needs to stand out. Aim to educate and inspire with your content; it is how you will keep your customers engaged and maintain a place in their minds for when they are ready to make a purchase.
Optimize SEO
When choosing an inbound marketing company, your SEO and marketing software matter. SEO optimizes your search results and the process of inbound marketing is to bring the customers to you.
When customers search for your brand you want the ideal results to show. SEO is a critical part of your inbound strategy because if you can’t be found, then you’re not going to get business.
In content creation and in SEO your words matter; your word choices can affect your keyword search results. At CC&A we understand that SEO can be a difficult process to refine, however, we can help you start by identifying and utilizing the most important keywords to your leads. Once you’ve identified your keywords, it will begin to boost your overall marketing strategy.
Nurture Leads
Inbound marketing has the potential to bring new people to your site and your brand. However, sometimes those people won’t be ready to make a purchase. In either case, they are still leads that need to be nurtured.
Create an opportunity to promote your brand and convert leads. Inbound marketing strategies can drive more traffic, optimize your lead’s experiences by generating benefit for your leads.
Inbound Marketing vs. Content Marketing
A lot of companies treat inbound marketing and content marketing as synonymous, however, they are two different versions of marketing.
Content marketing creates high-quality, valuable online content that improves the relationship you have with your intended audience. This content can take form in blog posts, social media, infographics, and videos. Ultimately, the content will “nurture” your audience through the sales funnel toward the final decision to buy.
- The top of the sales funnel is intended for creating awareness and converting leads. This stage should cater content to the widest audience in order to create the highest number of conversions.
- The middle of the funnel is for the leads that have converted but aren’t ready to make a purchase.
- The bottom of the funnel content is for closing leads.
Inbound marketing should have meaningful and impactful content, but that is just one of many parts to this strategy. Inbound marketing encompasses a variety of strategies to gain attention from potential leads and convert them into paying customers. This form of marketing relies on landing pages, call-to-action prompts, and customer relationship management. Learn why choosing the best inbound marketing agency is imperative to success.
How to Get Started with Your Inbound Marketing Company
Inbound marketing will produce the most effective results the move time you invest in it. Creating content demands thought and due process to create a greater return.
- Collaborate with an organization with a proven track record to optimize your results.
- Identify your target audience and establish what they desire. Your content needs to educate and inform. Discover what engages your audience.
- Determine what makes your content the ideal choice for your target audience.
- Select what format will you deliver this inform to your audience. Will you use social media, blog posts, video, etc.?
- Identify how your content will move your audience through the sales funnel
- Initiate your inbound marketing plan
Make Inbound Marketing Work for You
The internet has vastly shaped customers and buying behaviors. People are more exposed to information and have access to more resources than in previous markets. Ultimately, your audience is more educated. As a result, your marketing efforts must be adjusted.
Outbound marketing efforts are no longer a reliable nor effective way to produce results. However, inbound marketing strategies need to be utilized in order to attract more leads and foster better brand preference.
Inbound marketing is the most effective way to increase your visitors, leads, and buyers. You’ll need to attract customers by understanding their deepest needs, aspirations, and struggles. Using that data, create quality content that draws them in. You’ll need to include SEO best practices so that customers can find you through search engines as well. Once you have the traffic, work to convert those visitors with content that drives leads.