In recent years, it is observed that inbound marketing has proven much more impressive as compared to the traditional outbound techniques. Hence, numbers of investors are now moving to adopt and bring in inbound efforts. With such efforts, they can now easily get updated with the developing technology and continuous evolution of search engines.
Inbound marketing, also referred to as pull marketing, is among the most powerful and effective methodology in all forms of businesses including B2B, and B2C. The main aim of such marketing strategies is to create a positive and healthy impact on the customers and business, which further develops a valuable experience.
Inbound marketing can be viewed as a way of attracting, engaging and delighting people in order to make them believe that their business will surely get a prominent value and create trust as well. It always focuses on introducing some useful tactics to market, to sell and to serve your customers in a better way.
With an inbound approach or methodology, you can offer a unified experience to your customers. You can make your customers happy which will automatically contribute towards the growth of your business. The overall goal is to create a long-term relationship with the customers.
The tools and techniques that can be implemented to attract customers include advertisements, videos, blog posts, social media, and content strategy. To engage and delight customers, you can tactics like email marketing, lead management, conversational chatbots, and marketing automation.
Content marketing is one of the significant factors in the world of inbound marketing. You should regularly update the content; publish some educational as well as authoritative content. This will surely help you at every stage of sales funnel.
“‘Cause inbound marketing is just a list of great and working task that will make you able to convert #strangers into leads, headed to be customers then ambassadors. Cool, no?”Tweet
At every stage of funnel including ToFu (Top-of-the-funnel), MoFu (Middle-of-the-funnel), and BoFu (Bottom-of-the-funnel), you can observe (from figure 1) that through content; you can create awareness to attract customers using blogs, webinars, and guides etc. The customers can be acquired using demo videos along with case studies. Product descriptions, testimonials, and reviews help in improving the overall sales process.
MoFu plays an important role in such a process. Do you know that 10% of the overall website traffic comes from shoppers, which are also known as visitors? They are the one who makes up the middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu).
Some common examples will give you a better understanding of MoFu content. It includes a list of advanced content types which is as follows:
- Data sheets: It is generally used to provide the necessary details to customers such as cost-in-use, energy usage, and size.
- Checklists: Checklists are considered the best way to do something. For example, “5 things that can tell you it’s time for Better Supply Management Software”.
- Case studies: It includes examples of your achievement. You can give some real-life examples like how you have changed the life of one of the customer. You can mention how they have improved productivity, and removed their issues.
- How-to content: It is a very eye-caching type of content. You can use it to increase the traffic to your website or business so that the leads can be generated for the sales team. Consider some common examples like, How to reduce the risk of getting hacked, How to minimise the expenses for an enterprise etc.
- Now, we will highlight some common practices towards inbound marketing. So, let us discuss the best inbound marketing practices.
Email Marketing
Do you know that “Every single dollar spent on email marketing returns an average $38 to its investor?
If not, then it is important for you to know about this in detail. Email marketing is a core part of inbound marketing. It highly depends on email for generating high revenues. If you are looking to increase the work flow, then implement this feature.
Make sure that the content you deliver to your clients through email must concentrate on relevant questions or concerns. You can also create your own newsletters, which will attract more customers and provide useful content for them. Also, try to personalize each email. As much as you personalize, the more you are likely to get responses and generate leads.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is still the most dominant factor in the revenue-generating channels. With the time, the important and value of SEO is increasing. You can improve the presence of your website in SERP (search engine result pages) with the help of SEO-friendly content.
You are required to keep your SEO updated on a regular basis because the SEO algorithms are changing at a rapid speed. For example, according to a study done by Google in 2016, the following observations were noticed:
- 9,800- live traffic experiments
- 18,015- side-by-side experiments
- 130,335- search quality tests
With the developing technology, you need to constantly review your site performance, where it lags, and check why user experience is not so effective. Ensure that the content has good keywords. A good keyword is nothing but just a combination of high search volume, low difficulty, and high opportunity.
Understanding the audience
In order to get the taste of inbound marketing success, it is important for you to understand your audience. It is crucial to focus on the content and improve its relationship with the audience.
Your content should be appropriate and according to what the audience wants to read and explore. Try to write in such a way that it must address the concern of the people through their preferred channel of communication.
Social media
Social media has now replaced the traditional methods of advertising. There are billions of people connected over social media channels. Connect with different communities, groups and follow them in order to keep yourself aware of new technologies which are being implemented in highly organized enterprises. Most of the businesses are now using social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat to market their products and services.
Well-renowned companies including B2B and B2C are now also using such platforms to get the attention of skeptical customers. You should know that social media channels have the ability to generate 6 times more traffic as compared to other channels, to your website, which further increases the chances of growth of your organization. So, you should interact with as many people as you can over such platforms.
Blogs
Blogs are the effective and powerful way of presenting content about any specific topic to the audiences. It is viewed as the best strategy to attract and engage customers. It also helps in improving your search presence. It is important while writing blogs that you should focus on the relevancy of the topic, instead of individual keyword rankings because the main purpose of writing blogs is to provide information. You can also include several types of media format such as images, videos, graphics, gif, tweets etc. This will make content more engaging.
While writing blogs, try to focus and ensure that content must drive towards specific personas. In addition, it is also important to timely update, rephrase or re-optimize the old posted content. Companies are getting more leads through good quality content written in blogs.
Video content
If we talk about the newest and hottest content format, then video content is probably the topper among others. It is widely used for marketing purpose. People often watch the video as text content appears little boring to them. Now, video content is all about developing the marketing game plan.
For example, consider you are working in a manufacturing company, and you are asked to advertise what your industry does. Then, probably the best way to advertise is through video as text content cannot illustrate what the manufacturing industry does. You require video assistance for such purpose.
However, these days not only manufacturing but other companies are also following the same path. They are taking the help of videos and animations.
Ads
Do you know that in 2017, the paid media spend on social was increased up to 61% including more than 2.3 billion smartphone users. It is clearly viewed from this fact that mobile devices are being used as a primary pitcher for social ads.
It is a part of the inbound strategy in which the users are redirected to the intended destination. You can effectively increase the data traffic to your website. In this strategy, you can choose any medium or site where you want to post an ad. Later, whenever a user clicks on that link then, they will be redirected to the intended website. This further results in lead generation also.
So, with the help of all the above-mentioned practices, you should get ready to receive higher inbound success. Keep on trendsetting, experimenting, and sharpening these practices on a daily basis to receive good revenue. Inbound marketing is functional and productive only in the case when you have ensured a regular and continuous flow of fresh and engaging content.
Remember: every content marketing activity need to be scheduled.
Where? On your Editorial Calendar. Download our free template!
