Marketing strategies tend to come and go, but Inbound marketing has proved that it is here to stay.
Even after a decade in the marketing world, inbound marketing is perceived as a ‘revolutionary’ concept; viewed as a strategy that works, it delivers excellent results for companies who have taken the plunge and adopted inbound marketing into their marketing strategy.
However, like most strategies, inbound marketing is not exempt from being reviewed; and marketers should evaluate their tactics regularly to ensure they are producing the results you need.
At Napier, we understand what is required to ensure you implement a successful inbound marketing strategy; so, we thought it was only right to share the following 5 tips to ensure your inbound marketing is a success:
Keep Your Content Fresh
Content is the most important aspect of your inbound marketing strategy, but with time limits, and everyday pressures, it can be challenging to keep up with a content schedule. Often this means marketers fall into the habit of repeating posts, resulting in readers seeing the same content again and again.
It’s important to have variety in your content, and although writing new tip sheets, or whitepapers are good, not all content creation needs to be time consuming. A key way to keep your content fresh without spending lots of time, is repurposing content you already have.
Take an interesting and popular blog post. What’s stopping you from turning it into a SlideShare? Or repurposing it as a video? You’ll be surprised by the amount of great content you already have, which is ready and waiting to be re-purposed.
Position Yourself as the Industry Expert
It can be easy to forget that the people searching/reading your content are trying to solve a problem.
For inbound marketing to be a success, you need to create content that captures the attention of your leads, by pre-empting their questions and providing them with the answer to their problems.
You should always write content with your clients/potential clients in mind. What do they struggle with? What are the key problems they have faced in the past? By identifying these issues, and more importantly addressing them in your content, you are instantly positioning your company as the expert in the industry providing the answers the reader is looking for.
Make it Easy for Customers to Contact You
This may seem like an obvious tip, but it is often overlooked in making sure your website makes it easy for people to understand what it is you do and how to contact you.
For example, if your website is your primary source of inbound opportunities, getting in touch with a real person should always be one click away on any page of your website.
If a potential customer is on your website and struggles to find a way to contact you; whether this be via email, phone, or social engagement, you create the risk of losing a qualified lead within seconds.
To avoid this, make sure you have clear CTAs on all key pages of your website directing the visitor to your contact information. Or even better, make sure a clear email address and phone number is featured on every page of your website, by including this information on the footer of your pages.
Increase Inbound Visitors to your Site with SEO Strategies
Put yourself in your prospect shoes, they are requiring a solution to a problem and the first thing they will do is turn to Google.
It is vital that you are properly optimizing your website and content, to increase organic search traffic. By effectively leveraging search engine optimization, targeting high traffic keywords, and analysing data trends, you’re positioning your website and brand higher in the search engine results, increasing your online visibility to inbound visitors.
Don’t Forget to Nurture Your Leads
Often marketers are so focussed on using inbound tactics to attract people, they can forget one crucial element – nurturing your leads.
It is important to remember that once a lead fills in a form or downloads a piece of your content, you need to follow up through email or calling to qualify and nurture the lead.
With Marketo revealing that a massive 96% of visitors viewing your website aren’t ready to buy; lead nurturing is vital in helping your leads through each stage of the funnel, (whether this be through email marketing, lead scoring or list segmentation) until they are in a position to buy.
It can be a tough job to ensure your inbound marketing strategy is running smoothly and successfully; but by utilizing these top five tips, your company will be on the right path to inbound marketing success!