As a local business, you should always be on the lookout for ways to draw in new business. Inbound marketing is a great way to actively find new customers through techniques that don’t intrusively market at them. Inbound marketing allows people to come across your business naturally.
Inbound marketing has many benefits, but the main one is that people who come across your marketing pieces are easier to convert as they are already looking for the services that your company provides. This is because inbound marketing pieces offer information or help to those who are actively searching for that information related to your product or services.
The Benefits of Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing refers to a combination of different marketing approaches such as social media, content marketing, search result rankings and lead generation. If done right, certain parts of your inbound marketing strategy can continue to generate more sales without any extra work – however, there will be a large amount of work upfront. For example, a great article that provides useful and informative content to potential clients may be shared through social media and ranked highly in search engine results. This means that new customers can constantly come across your business and continue to convert long after you’ve released it, creating new leads and more sales.
The other benefit of many inbound marketing techniques is that it’s measurable. As most inbound marketing techniques are based online, you can track incoming traffic, view shares, like and capture information that you can use for outbound marketing campaigns.
Inbound marketing also allows for a more target approach as it reaches an audience already interested in your industry, and if done right it means that your outbound marketing campaigns can also be much more targeted and likely to convert too.
The other benefit to inbound marketing is that it’s cost-effective. The strategies used for inbound marketing are often free, other than your time. This means that it’s ideal for new businesses or those with a small marketing budget. It’s suitable for any industry and along with other forms of marketing and outreach tactics, it is a way to successfully meet your business goals, whether that be to increase sales or increase brand awareness, etc.
The following are a few ways you can use inbound marketing to achieve your business goals.
Improve your website content
The simplest way to use inbound marketing to meet your business goals is to have a website with great content. This is a must have to ensure that customers can find your business and improve your chances of converting them. If they can’t find you then you don’t have a chance to sell to them.
First and foremost make sure your content is easy to read and has a clear message for those who visit the site. This content should stem from a mixture of what your business goals are and what your customers are searching for/need help with.
As you write your content, or if you get a content writer to do it, you have to consider the words you use. Make sure they are words that customers and search engine will use to find your website. You have to remember, that the words you use in your specific industry may not be the same your customers use when talking about your industry. They may not be familiar with the technical jargon and may not use the same terms as you when searching for information on your services. The simple way to do this is to ask your customers or do some keyword research through tools like Google Keyword Planner.
If you’re looking for extra content ideas here are a few to get you started:
- How to articles
- Case Studies
- Guides or tutorials about your products
- FAQs related to your industry
Creating great content helps to build trust with your visitors, which will also help to make it easier to convert them.
Converting traffic into leads and paying customers
After you’ve created great content you need to make sure that when customers find it that you make it as easy as possible to convert them into a sale or capture their information. Whatever your business goal may be, there is no point in having people visiting your site if it’s near impossible for them to take the next step.
Add a ‘Call to Action’ to your pages. A call to action is something that asks visitors to take that next step. It could be as simple as the line ‘Contact us now to get a quote on a plumbing services’. If your goal is to capture information for outbound marketing campaigns, including things like a contact form will increase the likelihood of capturing that information.
Social Media Sharing
Now that you have created your content and optimised it to convert, you need to get it out to your potential audience. Search engines may take some time to pick up your content without you completing all the background technical details. The quickest and easiest way is to share your website and specific pages, without paying, is through social media channels.
You don’t have to use every social media channel. Focus on those you feel will work best for your business. Create a company page and start sharing – but make sure you fully complete every part of you profile. It’ll be another way potential customers can get in touch and may also help to increase sales.
Join groups and forums that are talking about your industry and share your content with them. Ask friends and family to share it. Try to get it as many people as possible.
Paid Search Results
If you have the budget, it might also be worth using paid channels such as Google Adwords to help boost specific pages in search result immediately. It’s a great way to build quick exposure to a new website or lead generation page without having to wait for it to happen naturally.