Your website is the virtual front door to your business and an integral part of your inbound marketing strategy. In many cases, it is the first experience people have with your brand. But when someone comes to your website, what type of first impression does it make?
When I ask the question “Will You Find Your Next Client — or Will They Find You?”, it is a direct challenge to business owners to define an inbound marketing strategy.
You finally have a powerful website and blog that you are proud to show off, with messages that clearly explain how you help your clients and the value you provide. Now you need to increase website traffic in order to gain visibility, grow your email list, sell your product or offer your services to the right audience.
Patience and consistency – virtues in many aspects of your life. These same qualities are important for marketing, and even more critical for your online efforts. Putting an inbound marketing plan in motion that attracts your ideal client is something that requires stamina and determination: Stamina to continue on course for the long term no matter who says you should change; Determination to make it work and see your business succeed.
There is a lot of content available on search engine optimization. It’s important to be effective at gaining visibility in search. But what if you were wildly successful in getting a lot of traffic but are unable to convert them into leads?
Having an inbound marketing strategy is the core to your online marketing efforts. Inbound marketing is the art of attracting our customers to us by providing valuable information, rather than pushing our products and services on them. Creating and sharing useful content helps the buyer move through the purchase process and makes your business more credible, trustworthy, and visible in the process.
Is your website pulling its weight? As the hub of your online marketing, your website is the most important component of your web presence. The primary goal of your inbound marketing activities should be lead generation – driving more traffic to your website and then converting the traffic into leads.
You are probably wondering “what’s in it for me” when it comes to inbound marketing. It seems like a lot of work. Does it really work for lead generation?
People spend most of their marketing efforts driving visitors to their websites. It’s absolutely an important task. But getting people to come to your website is just the first step. Once they arrive at your website, you need a strong website call to action to ensure your visitors don’t leave without establishing some type of connection with your company.
If you have created your content marketing strategy, you should know who you are targeting, with what content, on which channel and the timing of how often and when. Now you need to generate a regular stream of quality and relevant information across all of your content channels
We are an impatient society. We want immediate response to our requests. We get frustrated when we have to wait for anything, especially for websites to load. If your website speed does not meet the patience criteria of your visitors, they will hit the back button, sending a signal to Google that your website is not a quality user experience. That behavior over time could affect your search engine ranking.
Implementing an inbound marketing plan can have a major effect on the growth of your small business but it can also be a drain on an already overwhelmed small business owner. By following these five steps and outsourcing where it makes sense, you can create an inbound marketing system that gains visibility and drives traffic to your website.
Lead nurturing is what it sounds like: continually providing support and nourishment to leads (in this case acquired through your inbound marketing efforts) by anticipating their needs and sending them new, fantastic content that is interesting, educational and relevant.
Email marketing and marketing automation are terms that are used somewhat interchangeably, causing confusion for small businesses who are trying to decide which solution they need. This confusion stems from the fact that both solutions are based on using email as a primary way to communicate with your leads in the hope that some leads will convert into customers.
Search engine optimization plays a critical part in the success of your inbound marketing efforts by increasing the effectiveness of the other three pillars – content marketing, social media marketing and public relations – to drive targeted traffic to your website.