An inbound marketing strategy can make a beautiful website. Are you a fan of duct cleaning brochures landed in your mailbox? What about the marketing emails that you’ve never signed up for that spams your inbox? And TV commercials in the middle of your favorite show? Unless it’s the NBA League Pass, or the SuperBowl, these marketing messages tend to be disliked or ignored rather than delightfully consumed.
Most people we know just wanted to fast forward past commercials on any recorded TV shows. I’m one of the least sophisticated TV consumer, I usually use commercials to brush my teeth, pack my lunch for work or clean the kitchen. I’m already on “unsubscribed” customer for RingDNA, Canva, and on Do-Not-Call-List AT&T Mobile. Non-remarketing ads (the banner or sidebar ads) on average only gets an average of 0.2% according to Double Click. These marketing strategies fall under the “Outbound Marketing Umbrella.”
The conversion rates in outbound are shockingly low compared to inbound marketing. The results are astounding when clients are more willing to engage with your brand and seeks you out.
Inbound marketing strategies are all about “pull” content. A recipe to create content that speaks to customers. Which person do you think would be more likely to buy a car? A. The person who received a mailer saying,”Buy this car!” or B. The person who searched for and found the exact make, model, style on his own? We all know the clear winner, in this case, it is inbound.
Imagine a popup ad (outbound) vs. a brochure you chose to download (inbound). Data clearly shows that consumers who choose to interact with your brand are naturally more likely to convert. Take a look at the conversion rate data by acquisition channel – inbound strategies have one of the highest rates, at 4%, that’s the second highest after direct referral.
Convinced that inbound marketing strategies will fuel your lead engagement and sales? Here are some strategies we use too for inbound marketing.
#1. SEO Best practices
Best way to rank on Google is writing compelling description and content for your website. A meta description can influence the click through rates as it draws readers to a website from a SERP. Keywords is an important part of search marketing. Google and all other search engines bold keywords in the description each time to match with the search queries. This bold text draws the attention of the readers. You should match the descriptions as close as possible to search terms.
Jetta 2016 search results written as ad copies.
Search engines may overrule the meta description specified in the HTML. This is unpredictable, but it often occurs when Google doesn’t think the existing description adequately answers a user’s query. It’s possible that Google identifies a snippet from the target page that better matches a search’s query.
#2. Content Marketing
Oftentimes marketers think of content as the only part for inbound marketing, and while not the only aspect, it’s a critical one. Having quality content and well-optimized SEO enables Google site crawlers to identify and index your site in the top search results. After all content writing and web structuring is the core part of search marketing.
When content comes to mind, we can’t be just keep producing content without the intent to educate, inspire, or entertain our readers. Without fresh and useful content there is no chance of keeping and converting your leads. Your content should come in multiple forms with the goal of helping your audience answer a question or solve a problem. Ultimately, content ties back to SEO, because if you can’t be found, your business is nonexistent. Creating fresh new content lets Google crawlers to visit your site more frequently.
#3. Landing Pages
Landing pages is designed with a single focus using CTA (Call-to-action) to convert leads into buyers. It is the best option to increase conversion and lower to cost of acquiring a lead or sale. Here’s where landing page lies in the sales funnel.
#4. Social Media
Now that you’ve created content, you are lounging on your beach chair enjoying a glass of margarita? Well, you’re certainly not going to get profitable results with that attitude. You should be attracting new and returning customers by sharing and promoting content on social media. To make sure content reaches to relvant people is where social marketing comes in. This is where you can segment your target and aim to market to individuals who want to see your content, and gain followers for your brand. A great way to publicize your organic traffic if you don’t have good rankings yet.
#5. Remarketing
Remarketing works well with inbound marketing. Once your lead has visited your site, expressed interest in your content, products or services, you need to keep them engaged. This is where remarketing comes in. When you have a site visitor, a cookie is used to track your site visitors and follow them around with ads to remind them to come back. Remarketing can be done in different ways. You can remarket to visitors who went on a certain page or a set of pages or even show an ad to a visitor with an “abandoned cart” to convince them to buy.
