Inbound marketing is the real deal when it comes to reaching out to your target audience at the right time and in the right place.
If you still rely on the traditional print marketing and advertising approach in this twenty-first century for sales growth, you risk losing out big time!
With people spending a big portion of their time online; shopping habits have drastically transformed.
And the truth is offline marketing is gradually losing its taste. Brace yourself for ten killer ways to learn digital marketing and make it work for you.
First things first, so, what is inbound marketing?
It simply refers to various forms of pull marketing, blogs, SEO, and social media with the aim of creating awareness and attracts business.
One good reason why you should learn “how to inbound market your business” is the benefits that come with it including sales growth.
How to use Inbound for Your Business
Of course, I do understand the online arena can look so intimidating to newcomers, and perhaps you are wondering how to get started.
Look no further, here is a brilliant " How to successfully use Inbound Marketing" strategy to get started.
I have provided a few pointers to guide you to develop a viable strategy and help your business grow.
Set a Goal
If you are looking for ways to attract more customers, get more recognition and even outdo competitors; the beginning point should be goal setting.
Whatever it is that you want to achieve, set SMART goals. By SMART I mean have goals that are; Specific -- Set actual numbers that you want to attain and put a deadline to it.
Measurable -- a goal that cannot be measured cannot be achieved, track your goals, Attainable – While it’s true that goals should be challenging they should be realistic and attainable.
Realistic – Be real, be honest with yourself on the extent to which you can stretch to achieve your goals and time-bound – have a deadline for goals, be specific on when you want to achieve them.
Establish a Marketing Funnel
Map out your client’s journey, right from the time when s/he is a stranger all the way to when they become a lead, and finally a repeated buyer.
The objective should be to address Top of the Funnel (TOFU), Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) as well as Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU):
- TOFU – If your focus is to grow traffic to a website, tactics such as social media, blogging, and Search Engine Optimization will be helpful
- MOFU -- While blogs may increase traffic to your website, these prospects may not convert to sales. MOFU tactics such as webinars and eBooks will help you turn visitors into leads,
- BOFU – ideally, by the time a lead gets to the funnel bottom, they have already decided to buy, and maybe the only decision left to make is who to buy from. This a great opportunity for a marketer to jump to the sales pipeline through tactics like lead nurturing using email marketing or case studies.
Develop Call-to-Action (CTA's)
Call-to-action simply means, prompt your customers to act; such as view a webinar, subscribe to a newsletter, or even request a product demo.
An effective Call-to-action should efficiently direct your prospects to the landing page of your website, and prompt them to leave their contact information in return for a valuable marketing offer.
To improve traffic your conversion rate your content needs to grab their attention by creating several calls-to-action across your web presence and optimizing them.
Example (click to follow it through):
Creating an Effective Lead Magnet
Creating a lead magnet should be your first step in your customer value optimization process. The logic behind this concept is to trade information.
Offer an irresistible bribe (tremendous value for a product they would want) to entice prospects to live their contact details as you drive them further into your funnel simultaneously.
For instance, offer them a free download of an eBook, however, to enable downloads make it a requirement for the person to fill a form that will provide their contact information and more details about them.
In a big way, this gets them closer to being a potential lead ready to buy your products and services.
Driving Traffic
Basically, to drive people to your down your marketing funnel, in the first place there should be sufficient traffic to your website. However, be keen to ensure that your digital marketing efforts generate targeted traffic.
All I am trying to say is that visitor’s checking your website should be most likely be people looking for the products and services that you offer and then you increase your chances of converting leads to sales significantly.
The most practical way to drive to your website is by ensuring you post high-quality content on your blogs, have a keyword strategy as well as website optimization.
How quickly can I learn inbound marketing? This is a familiar question I am often asked by young entrepreneurs.
Well, there is no precise answer to these, however with the commitment you can get up to speed quickly.
Here are ten ways that will help you learn and then apply quickly:
- Read widely: Digital marketing is challenging to most people because they do not read extensively in their area of interest. Awaken your reading spirit, read across media options such as blogs, major emerging trends news sites, and social media. Increasing your knowledge input will greatly result in quality output.
- Explore a variety of online forms and content delivery: Register in various platforms, e.g., email newsletters, social media and mobile apps; observe how information is gathered to gain insights from it.
- Use online tools to find and track effective ways to improve your work. Endeavor to continuously test and use efficient new technology tools to keep your skills up to date.
- Assess how information and advertising are integrated across the platforms: Examine how this presentation contributes to organic search, social media, and branding. Remember the success of product packaging as well as branding squarely lies in the content.
- Finally, put this knowledge into practice. Participate actively in conversations across social media platforms; create content, share and respond to questions and comments. Determine which response channels work more effectively for generating traffic as well converting leads into sales.
- Create a buyer persona: Know your customer. Knowing your target audience will help you focus on creating quality content that attracts clients to your product as well as a company. It helps in the client transition from a stranger to a buyer, and eventually a promoter of your brand.
- Develop a Social Media Strategy: Since there is no strategy on social media that will fit all, the “inbound marketing made easy” strategy requires you to develop a plan that is unique and specific to the persona you created. While building a loyal following takes time, it is worth the hustle in the long run.
- Develop a Keyword Strategy: A keyword strategy is the only way to be sure that your clients will access your content. Consider doing keyword research and build your content around what your customers are searching for online.
- Create Content That Connects – Your target audience should easily relate to the content you build. For them to connect you should revolve around the different stages of your customer's journey.
- Be consistent– keep publishing your content regularly, measure results and remember to use the results in refining your marketing campaigns. If you are looking for a great buyer-centric inbound marketing strategy, please contact me here.
As more adept players get into the market, the competition gets stiffer, and more than often the deployment of a new solution is just a few clicks away.
To be precise, marketing technology is an ever-evolving space.
Make sure you pay attention to new tools, services, and ways to keep your business rocking and beat your competition.
