Inbound marketing has changed the equation. Now, a business sits in its place, presents itself well, and expects the audience to come to it.
Traditionally, marketing has been outbound in which the business will reach out to an audience and invite the people to become its customers.
However, inbound marketing pulls the customers in. It has enormous benefits as it saves your audience any interruption or imposition. Moreover, it leads to the creation of a more organic and long-lasting customer base for you.
The idea is quite simple: A flower (a business) blooms and the butterflies (customers) come. Inbound marketing adds value to every stage of a customer’s decision making.
Inbound Marketers commonly use several strategies. These include designing the website well, optimizing the search engine, using effective keywords, and providing education and information to the audience to build long-lasting trust.
Inbound marketing is a business practice in which, instead of interrupting people with ads, a business tries to pull them inward. In other words, instead of calling upon your addressee to become your customer, you stand there and let the customer find you.
”‘I know I am wasting half of my marketing budget, but I don’t know which half.’ With inbound marketing, this saying is no longer true.”
-Inbound Marketing: Get Found…, by Brian Halligan and Dharm
“The outbound marketing era is over. The coming 50 years belong to inbound marketing.”
(Inbound Marketing: Get Found)
Following are some of the strategies that you want to try:
According to this approach, the reader should feel attracted to your content within the first half second of looking at it.
Indeed, it is essential to grab the attention of the audience.
One way to do this is by using the VAT method.
Having analyzed the patterns of audience engagement, Jonah shortlisted three factors that shape the attractiveness of content:
It is a simple method in which an automated program notifies a reader whenever you upload new content to your website. It is an answer to the following question:
Logically, your website must be organic and living, and it should not be static and disinteresting.
Another approach to utilize in this regard is the megaphone versus hub approach. Following is an explanation:
According to this approach, you must determine whether your website is a hub of activity or just a megaphone calling upon people to buy your products.
Being just a megaphone is tedious and might not engage your audience. It would help to make your website a hub of information and content where your audience can come and stay.
It is an optimization technique that focuses on creating content in such a way that it anticipates the keywords that a potential client will supposedly put in the search bar of his search engine.
It is one of the most lucrative inbound marketing techniques.
The content creators ensure that it is their website whose link shows up on the top of the result list in a search engine. It becomes possible by the optimizer’s successful anticipation of the keyword, or a phrase put in the search bar by the audience.
It can drive an influx of traffic.
“Search Engine Optimization is more than just bringing more traffic.”
The top level of the funnel is the primary stage at which customers search for general information on a given product.
The middle of the funnel is related to products, services, and related solutions that a customer can need.
At the bottom of the funnel he compares different businesses offering the same product.
For search engine optimization, each of the three stages will require content created in anticipation of the specific keywords of that stage.
Hence, search engine optimization is a science and an art that can be highly rewarding if you do it correctly. The following quote sums it up:
“Customer mindset has changed, so should yours.”
-The Fast Track Inbound Marketing Roadmap
So, you can use numbers to have a significant effect on inbound marketing.
This approach is related to hiring specific professionals to bring you inbound marketing success. Following is an explanation:
Bounce rate is the number of people who did not go beyond the first page of your website compared to the total number of visitors it saw. Google calls it the zero moment of truth. So, try to win this moment.
Having well-placed and engaging CTAs can also affect the engagement and affiliation a visitor feels with the website.
Your audience will feel more attached to your presentation if you use more local keywords.
Similarly, it is a good Search Engine Optimization technique because you anticipate your audience will use common keywords in their language.
Customers click around 45% of follow-up emails. The closing stage is when a client, having visited your website and put some items in the cart, no longer engages with your business.
You should send emails to remind them to complete the transaction. A sale is not always a simple process of visiting your website, buying something, and leaving. It is a long process of decision-making that you should expedite for your client by acting as a guide.
According to a survey, around 45% of people first go to a store and feel a product physically before ordering it online. It can also be the other way around. Similarly, it would help if you realized that a customer would be looking at your products from multiple channels.
Likewise, it would help if you approached him from multiple paths.
“You will win in your market only when you understand what works today.”
Similarly, you should integrate content with the product; otherwise, a customer will feel he is buying something from a bot. People are not comfortable buying from bots; instead, they are more accustomed to doing business with human beings.
“Marketers can either adapt or face extinction.”
