If you're looking to stay ahead of your competitors and attract more clients, then inbound marketing is precisely what your firm needs. Business is increasingly about meaningful engagement and earning the trust of your potential buyer. In the past marketing, platforms gauged their techniques towards intrusive mass advertising and email blasts when on the hunt for possible prospects. Now it's almost second nature to revert telemarketing, print ads, and other costly tactics that push unwanted messages through your mailboxes.
Today, it’s not about forcing your product on people but making your brand convenient to find when your customer is ready. How do you achieve this?
Start by pulling in qualified prospects who are already in search for solutions. Once you have your qualified audience, provide educational and equipping content to help them make informed purchase decisions that ultimately brings them back for more.
Of course, there is more to inbound marketing than just attracting your customers your customers to your brand and driving them to your site.
Understand Your Buyer Personas- In a nutshell, your buyer personas are simply your ideal customer, the “qualified prospects” that you want to pull into your site. The idea is to understand both the demographics (location, age, gender, income, education, etc.) and psychographic characteristics of your ideal client. When you know your target audience, you can then focus your efforts on providing solutions to their questions and problems. Lastly, it is useful to consider where your target audience lies in the buying cycle and alter your marketing style to accommodate all people in all stages.
Implement A Strong Content Marketing Strategy- The goal is to be helpful and captivating all in one package. Since there is such a wide net of information presented digitally in a multitude of forms, staying on top of your personas mind can be challenging. Keep your customers coming back with relevant, interesting, and valuable content. Make your content unique and individualized to cut through all the noise and make a lasting impact, but don’t discourage your readers with a plethora of information, keep it sweet and to the point. Some examples of highly compelling shareable content, blogs, infographics, images, eBooks, videos or how-to-guides.
Use Target Keywords and Optimize Your Sites Pages- People actively search on-line to find valuable information or solutions to their problems. The average person enters a string of words or phrases related to the topic into the search bar. What happens next? A list of search engine results is produced onto a computer screen, and odds are the user will never scroll past the first page. That is why it is so important for your business to rank on the first page. The only way to make it to the "A-list" is through high-quality, relevant content, search engine optimization, keyword targeting, and of course PPC advertising. Since you are already aware of what your ideal customer is searching for you can concentrate on those keywords. Making your site pages easily available and visible will increase your chances of people finding you and seeking solutions within your brand.
Become a Regular User of Social Media- The Internet is not only changing the way people do business it’s also changing the way people communicate. Major social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were once strictly bound to entertainment purposes such as the latest gossip trends and newest fashion statements. More than ever people are using these social faucets for a variety of purposes including business professionals. Social media is an excellent marketing platform allowing businesses to engage and create genuine, lasting relationships with an ideal audience. All that relevant content you created can be easily shared on social profiles. Plus, nothing is more credible than your friend’s information and word of mouth, people are more likely to purchase a product or service if a friend recommended it.
Use Personalized CTA’s and Follow Up With Leads- Now that your visitors are on your site you need to tell them where to go next. Placing clear, visible call to actions around your sites pages does just that. The calls to action lead people to fill out forms with basic information such as email, name, phone number, and address, etc. But you can’t expect people to give up their information without anything in return. In exchange for information, they receive a piece of valuable content focused on their needs. When customizing your CTA’s use action words that will entice people to click, words like download now or click here are good examples. Better yet, Hubspot found personalized calls-to-action convert 42% more visitors than basic calls-to-action. Marketing tools make it possible to cater to the experience of your site visitor; developing images, buttons, and product options that are specifically tailored to the interests, pages viewed, or items that have been purchased earlier by your persona. Wait for it doesn’t end there! There are a handful of automated marketing services that can help your personas further down the buying cycle. Individuals receive carefully timed and targeted follow up emails containing additional relevant content nurturing them closer to their buying solution and your business services.
It is essential to your practice to identify and cater to individuals in all stages of the buying cycle, a strategy known as lead nurturing. Always be aware of who is engaging in your content and visiting your site, after all, the people with an already sparked interest are the ones that present a greater possibility to close into lasting customers.
We specialize in digital marketing strategies that work. Contact our expert marketing specialists to schedule a free marketing consultation and start generating more leads to you company with Inbound Marketing!