Developing an inbound marketing strategy is imperative to marketing success. In fact, 46% of marketers and CEO’s surveyed by DM News stated that the lack of an adequate inbound marketing strategy was one of the biggest factors in business-related failures. Fortunately, developing competitive and effective inbound marketing strategies is an attainable goal for businesses of all sizes. Simply follow these 6 tips to get started:
1) Create a Free Guide
Inbound marketing is all about content and one of the best ways to get people to visit your site is to offer them something valuable, useful and high quality. A free guide is a great way to do this. You can compile a free guide in your area of expertise by using past blog posts or even a re-formatted section of an eBook. AudienceBloom’s The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online is a great example of what a free guide should look and feel like.
When your free guide offers ample value, it can be a major source of organic traffic for your blog or site. In order to ensure that your guide is up to snuff, don’t skimp on word count (a few thousand words is ideal) and ensure that it provides plenty of unique, high-quality information that delves into a subject your audience finds interesting. Developing free resources for your customers has the potential to deliver a huge ROI and can easily boost increase your monthly views.
2) Embed an Email Popup
To get the most out of your site’s views, embed an email popup. A healthy email list is one of the most important foundations for building a successful business and a well-placed and well-appointed email popup is a great way to go about collecting emails and gaining subscribers.
There are many types of email popup and it’s up to you to decide which will work best for your company. Regardless of which format you choose to use, be sure to boost your popup’s power by writing great subject lines and gathering the correct information from your readers.
3) Optimize for Keywords
This one is an oldie but a goodie. Although inbound marketing is a hot topic right now, some of the fundamentals haven’t changed. Keywords are still important and one of the best ways to launch your campaign is to pick a keyword or two and optimize your content for them. After all, SEO is the pillar that supports the practice of inbound marketing and, without SEO; it’s virtually impossible to gain traffic.
Keywords help you target your content to your audience’s interests as well as making your site easier for search engines to find and rank. Instead of focusing on trying to rank in Google’s top position for head terms or trying to rank for dozens of keywords all at once, choose a few that are unique and important and focus on ranking for them. In addition to helping you boost your search rankings, this also helps you create targeted, interesting content.
4) Grow Your Personal Brand
When it comes to marketing, you can’t underestimate the importance of a personal brand. This is especially true for startups and new companies. In today’s marketing environment, there are dozens of up-and-coming entrepreneurs that are fantastic at marketing themselves and their companies as innovative leaders in the field.
Take Joel Gascoigne and Jayson DeMers, for example. Because a business takes so much time and energy from the individual who started it, it’s virtually impossible to separate your individual brand from your company brand. That said, it’s worth your time and effort to ensure that your individual brand is as strong as it can possibly be.
5) Engage on Social Media
If you want to gain traction in your niche, get thee to social media. Social media, especially sites like Twitter, Facebook and Quora, are ideal for building expertise and branding yourself as an authority in your field. To effectively use social media to launch your campaigns, use your platforms of choice to ask and answer questions.
Offer Q&A sessions for your audience and provide plenty of surveys to gain important customer information. Doing this opens a conversation between your company and your customers and provides for better market research and increased customer engagement.
6) Start Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is an effective inbound marketing tactic that almost nobody uses. Too many marketers believe that guest blogging is troublesome or a waste of time when, in truth, it’s an easy way to gain more readers and build connections. To start guest blogging, do some research into popular blogs related to your niche and then begin crafting your perfect pitch. By writing content for other sites and encouraging other bloggers to do the same for yours, you stand to drive hundreds or even thousands of new monthly viewers to your site.
Inbound marketing is all about creating great content and interacting with customers. These 6 strategies can help you boost your views, reach new audiences, launch a campaign and promote high-quality reader engagement all without breaking a sweat. To learn more about the best practices in inbound marketing, contact Bigfoot Media today.
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