If you have heard the buzz about inbound marketing, you are probably considering changing your strategy to embrace this new, innovative form of marketing. To execute an effective campaign, inbound marketing can offer your business successful techniques that are critical for your growth.
To do so adequately, your business must create a well-rounded inbound marketing approach that consists of not just one or two or even three aspects of inbound marketing but rather six essentials.
To guarantee the best results of full optimization, we have narrowed down the six must-haves and the reasons why your inbound marketing plan needs these things.
#1: A Call to Action is Needed for Conversions
Call to action buttons are one of the critical parts of your website. A great CTA button can direct users to be more educated on a topic, improve conversion rates and fulfill your objectives.
Many users will leave your site if there is no call to action on the page they land on or if the call to action offers a generic, poorly placed ‘Click Here’. Set a goal to have a CTA that is relevant to the topic you are speaking of and can contribute additional useful information.
A good starting point for CTA’s is on your blog posts. To fully capitalize on your blogs, each post should have a call to action at the end, whether it is to a landing page or a free download. By simply including a CTA, those blog readers can convert to quantifiable leads who can later become your customers.
#2: Social Media Marketing to Connect with Your Audience
Unsurprisingly, social media is a huge part of inbound marketing. Social media marketing is another essential of your inbound marketing approach because it is how you engage and connect with your audience. Since virtually every business has a social media account now, not having one is like trying to run a restaurant without a building.
With millions of users already out there, social media platforms make it very easy to engage with your target audiences. Use social media to your advantage by attracting readers and returning visitors. With great content and a community of followers, you are one step closer to building a trusting relationship with your prospects.
Connecting with your audience is easy if you are producing personalized content that optimizes SEO, answers prospects questions and draws insight into your business. Remember to use social monitoring to see how your audience is engaging with your company and what posts are generating the most interaction and responses. This type of information will give you an honest idea of how viewers feel about your content and direct you to producing what they want to see.
#3: Blog Posts Deliver Valuable Information and Drive Search Engine Traffic
Every day, there are over 1 billion searches performed on the Internet by users searching for answers to their pressing questions, solutions to their problems, entertainment, their favorite brands and more. You can’t afford to not write blog posts of your own that can be found online through the search engines. Blog posts are necessary for attracting visitors to your website, giving them a reason to stay, and converting them.
To blog successfully, utilize valuable keywords to optimize your blog and answer questions your buyer persona’s are searching for online. Write educational content that builds trust with your persona’s by letting them know that you are knowledgeable in your industry.
Not only do blog posts educate your prospects, each time you write a post, it is one more indexed page on your website and one more opportunity to appear in someone’s search. Keep in mind that for this to be effective, you must blog consistently and use those CTA’s we described earlier.
#4: Email Marketing to Stay in Touch
Social media marketing is not enough for engaging with your audience. Some posts may never be seen by some of your followers because they are not all on at the same time or are distracted by other things. Email marketing, on the other hand, is much more personal than social media since the person reading it usually feels like it was directed at them.
Email marketing can reach out to those individuals who may be too shy about replying on social media. Responding to your emails may be much easier and more personalized for them. These prospects can also avoid the constant clutter that is seen on some social media platforms such as IMs and notifications.
Composing and sending effective emails can attract users to come to your website and what what you have to offer. By highlighting your expertise in an email, newsletter or simply a welcome email, a prospect will understand the value your brand can offer them. The tips and information you use in an email can build trust and guide readers to your other content with CTA’s.
#5: Landing Pages for Effective Generation Efforts
Landing pages are truly the heart and soul of your lead generation efforts. A landing page is crucial for inbound marketing because it is where you send readers who are interested in your offer. A good landing page will target your audience and allow visitors to download your content offers. These content offers can include ebooks, whitepapers or webinars. By offering a great value to your visitors, a higher percentage of them can convert into leads.
On the landing page, they will read about the features, benefits and additional details of your offer. From there, they will make the decision on whether or not to make a purchase. Keep in mind that if this is a free download, they will want to claim it.
Landing pages are an easy way to generate leads by moving them to a targeted page. They can also collect demographic information about your prospects, understand where those prospects are most engaged and offers insight into which of your marketing offers are most effective.
#6: Search Engine Optimization for Organic Traffic
You’re missing out on a lot of traffic potential if you rely only on social media and paid ads for traffic. Organic traffic from the search engines is an important piece of a healthy inbound marketing plan. In order to attain organic traffic, you need to search engine optimize your website and blog posts.
In order to succeed in search engine optimization, you must utilize your keywords. By optimizing your most value keywords, people who are actively looks for solutions that your company solves, can easily find your content.
Make sure that you are fully aware of who your target audience is and what they would be searching for online. Understanding those personas can help you use keywords that those individuals would search for and compose content that those persons would be interested in reading.
What are the consequences of not incorporating each of these elements?
A well-rounded inbound marketing approach must include a call to action, social media marketing, blog posts, email marketing, landing pages, and search engine optimization. It’s a lot to juggle, but every piece of the puzzle plays an important role whether that’s for attracting, converting, or delighting customers. You need to incorporate all aspects of inbound marketing for best results. Solely focusing on one or two elements is not as effective.
Why?
Because each of these elements is rooted in the inbound marketing methodology and only succeeds if it is well managed and utilizes each resource. Missing one of these elements can eliminate the chance you have at attracting a lead or nurturing one you already have. If you want data driven results with proven techniques, you must put in 110% of your effort at optimizing each of these essential components. The consequence of not incorporating each of these elements is a decline in your potential prospects, fewer followers in your social media community and a reduced chance of appearing in search engine results (basically a marketers real life nightmare).
