The marketplace is full of information for consumers. The digital world is over-saturated with media, blogs, and people selling information or products. To make headway in this new economy, business owners must check themselves to be sure they are making an impact. A good inbound marketing strategy helps a lot in this case. Having a good strategy will save money and time down the road and will ultimately net you more customers. Find out how to get started with these 3 tips.
Do the Research
Business owners hesitate when research is mentioned because reading through loads of information is the first thing they think about. Marketing is much simpler than that. Inbound marketing research is ultimately focused on knowing your business, industry, and customer. With these three things in mind, you are already on your way to building a great inbound marketing strategy. Here’s how to get started:
- Define your business and what your goals include
- Check performance measures against what you hope to build
- Look at the sales process, prospect education, and strategy to reach people
- Notice updates in processes and innovations others are using to stay ahead of their game
- Develop realistic industry stats that will help make sure your goals are realistic and feasible
Finally, the last bit is to understand your customer. Customers are the ones in contact with potential customers, meaning they hold a lot of insight into what customers want. If you know your demographic, messaging, and difficulties your customer faces, you can better engage with developing a marketing strategy to target their needs.
Know Your SEO
At first glance, SEO sounds complex. It is very simple when you know what to hone in on. Think about all the factors in a website that influence search engine rank. If you want to ‘know your customer,’ your SEO will help with the right keyword searches online. SEO optimization is the best way to make sure your webpage attracts the right customers. You should think about including the following in your SEO content strategy:
- Include keywords in the header and page text
- Use keywords in the URL and meta description
- Put keywords in the name of the image and use a tag with keywords
- Link keywords in content to other pages on the website so they ‘speak’ to each other and distribute SEO across your domain
Content is King
Blogging is about growing business, but it is also about delivering quality content. Premium content is the universal anchor for inbound marketing. Results are not just going to happen, they start with being consistent with blog posts, creating content that informs, engages, and inspires, and delivers results end of the day. The best content will:
- Include some form of media (pictures or video clips)
- Hyperlinks to relevant content in your webpage
- Distribute social media evenly across multiple platforms to engage different audiences
One of the hardest things to do is navigate around a page that is cluttered or filled with irrelevant information. Keep it current, up-to-date, and make it content that engages people who visit the page to desire more of what you are selling. The better the content, the more likely a sale will be.
When you promise to deliver the best content, you must own up to that if you want customers to come back to your brand and company. To do this, you will need to pay attention to what others are doing and make sure you are ahead of the trends. Know your niche and what you want to accomplish. Don’t expect people will ultimately desire your company over another. Be sure you put together the whole package for inbound marketing to work in your favor.
Read more relevant blog post: Best Practices in Social Media Marketing