There are other, less expensive ways to reach prospective clients.
Inbound marketing is an approach that focuses on drawing customers in, rather than actively seeking them out.
This means that businesses that practice inbound marketing focus on attracting customers through content and engagement. In comparison to paid advertising, inbound marketing relies heavily on organic search engine optimization (SEO) and is much more cost-effective.
Here are some different inbound marketing ideas that you can use to help improve your inbound marketing strategy and get more results quickly.
1. Develop a loyalty program
Loyalty programs are a great way to build trust with potential customers in your target market. AdvocateHub, a B2B referral software program, allows you to create a loyalty program to help you capture customer excitement and use it to improve your lead generation and sales efforts.
Connect with an audience by rewarding them for actions like creating content, writing reviews, participating in forums and commenting on blogs, and providing testimonials and case studies.
When you share testimonial content with others, you create more traction for your business and brand and open up new opportunities for engagement. The people who give testimonials earn points and badges and become more recognizable in the community, where they can take advantage of a variety of benefits.
2. Beyond adwords, utilize social paid ads
Pay for it. Paid advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be effective at gaining new, targeted leads who are interested in your product or service. Paid social ads align with an inbound strategy, since you are still creating content that people want to see. The only difference is that you now have to pay for it.
Since you’re still creating content that people will love, a paid social ad strategy should align with your inbound strategy. It’s important to create attention-grabbing ads with engaging headlines, as well as targeting specific audiences. You can also fine-tune your ads for relevancy.
There are four different types of social paid advertising you can do on Twitter- Promoted Tweets, Followers (Promoted Account), Apps, and Videos (app installs or engagements, video views on Twitter).
If you want people to view a blog post or visit a webpage, then Promoted Tweets are the way to go. If you’re looking to increase brand awareness by getting people to follow your account, then Promoted Accounts may be your best option.
LinkedIn offers two types of advertising: an Ad, which looks like a standard banner ad with a picture and short text, and a Sponsored Update. There are two different Sponsored Updates: a Direct Sponsored Content post that appears in users’ feeds but not on your own LinkedIn page, and a standard Sponsored Post, which appears on your own page that’s boosted with money and also appears in users’ feeds.
3. Utilize retargeting campaigns
Retargeting ads are served to people who have already visited your website or who are a contact in your database. These ads are a form of paid display advertising, like Google Adwords Display ads.
Retargeting involves placing ads on different websites in order to anonymously track people who have visited your site. This is done by using cookies. For example, if somebody reads a blog post on your site but does not convert, you can place ads on Facebook, Twitter and Google to try and get that person to view another blog post on your site about the same topic.
Approximately 98% of your website’s visitors will not convert on their first visit. Retargeting allows you to focus your efforts on this group of people and encourages them to return to your site and convert.
You can improve the relevancy of your retargeting campaign and make the most of your budget by showing the right ads to the right people. To do this, target your ads using demographic, geographic and contextual variables, and bear in mind your buyer personas. Find out what works and get rid of any ads that are not useful.
4. Use paid content distribution
If you’re looking to increase traffic to your site, Outbrain and Taboola are great content marketing platforms to use. They provide display links to your content on some of the internet’s largest content publishers, such as CNN.com, Slate, and ESPN. You can set a budget and pay per click, similar to Google Adwords.
Behavioral targeting is a way to increase engagement on your website by delivering interesting content to readers. This is done by recommending articles, slideshows, blog posts, photos, or videos that are related to what the reader is already interested in.
You can use content discovery platforms to target specific websites that your personas are likely to visit. This will help you convert more leads at the top of the sales funnel.
5. Run a contest
Recently, the IMPACT team created a two-week Shortstack contest for their client, Stag Arms, in order to increase traffic to their website and collect leads through strategic conversion opportunities. This is an effective way to build your lead base and increase conversions and revenue.
Stag Arms collected 53,945 submissions in a contest, yielding 21,456 new contacts which added to their lead database, totaling 192,880 contacts; an increase of 13.9% from the previous month. The increase in website traffic was 43.25% during the month the campaign was run.
6. Increase conversion with exit intent popovers
An exit-intent popup is a message that appears just before a visitor leaves your site. It’s a last-ditch effort to get a business conversion.
The use of exit-intent popups can save 10 to 15% of lost visitors, according to Brian Massey. These popups appear when the visitor is leaving the site or switching to another window, and are non-interruptive, meaning they don’t block the content while the visitor is browsing.
7. Strategize a marketing workflow
You should not start creating content for your inbound marketing campaign until you have first strategized your workflow. You need to define your goals and plan your marketing strategies based on what you’re looking to achieve.
Here are Hubspot’s steps for creating a strategic marketing workflow.
Attract
If you want people to visit your website or social media network, you need to create content that is valuable to them. This could include blog posts, videos, or other materials.
Engage
To create a lasting connection with your visitors, try to capture information about them. This can be done by having them fill out sign-up forms or landing pages, for example.
Delight
Give your audience reliable information and things that are meaningful to them to keep them as customers and turn them into promoters. You can do this by keeping in touch with them often through emails or social media.
8. Create detailed buyer personas
To begin your inbound marketing strategy, you need to create content that is irresistible to your prospective customers. However, to make this content relevant to your audience, you first need to understand more about them. Conducting in-depth research and analysis to identify prospects who are most likely to make a purchase from you is crucial.
Use social media Insights
To create a buyer persona, look at your existing social media channels to get an idea of who your target audience is. Review platform insights to learn more about the people who are engaging with your content. With platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, this process has become quite easy.
Create a survey
If you have customers or an email list, try doing surveys to get more information about them. Ask about their needs, problems, expectations, etc. Doing this can give you a better understanding of your ideal customers as well as what specific pain points they have. Having this information can be helpful in terms of creating content that addresses those pain points.
Direct customer interaction
Make sure to get feedback from your customers, either in person or remotely. Ask them about their experience with your business, and what their struggles are. This information can help you create content that is more relevant to your audience.
Usage of non-intrusive chatbots
If you have a website that is up and running, you can use chatbots to get feedback from customers in real time. This information can be used to help improve your services and create content that is more targeted and focused.
9. Lead with a content marketing strategy
After you have defined your target audience, you need to create a content marketing strategy that will deliver valuable content to them and drive engagement.
Blogging
You can either start a blog on your own website, or on a public blogging site. Once you set up a blog, try to include content that would be valuable and informative for your target audience. Try to base your content around what your business offers, and what your customers might need.
Video marketing
Not everyone enjoys reading long blog posts in the fast-paced digital era. Videos are now much easier to consume and can be a good way to get your audience hooked onto your brand.
Social media marketing
By creating content that is useful to your target audience, you can build a strong customer base through social media.
The key to social media marketing success is identifying which platform your audience uses most.
Content repurposing
Think about how you can use your inbound marketing content in different ways. Your customers will prefer content that is credible and in a visual form, such as images and videos, rather than just plain text. You can try taking your top blog posts and turn them into infographics or video tutorials.
Content curation for better inbound marketing
Inbound marketing strategy should include content curation. Content curation is finding existing relevant content and making it more appealing to your prospective customers. This is different from content marketing, which involves creating content from scratch.
10. Distribute and promote content
Content distribution is key to inbound marketing success. Your business’ online presence will suffer if you don’t take care to distribute your content well.
SEO
SEO is important for making your website visible to search engines and your target audience. Ranking is a key factor in SEO.
Pay-per-click (PPC)
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on getting customers to come to you, rather than you going to them. One way to do this is through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. PPC is often considered to be an outbound marketing tactic because it is paid advertising.
Social media
Social media platforms provide an essential way to distribute content. By connecting people through various features such as messaging, video, and audio chats, social media platforms promote inbound marketing.
11. Build an intuitive website
An inbound marketing strategy depends on having a website that is easy to use and navigate. Without a well-designed website, all of your other marketing efforts may be for nothing. Your website is like your business’s online home, and it should be full of helpful information for your visitors. It is also the first point of contact between you and your potential customers, so it is important to make a good impression.
Strengthen relationships with a customer-first approach
Inbound marketing is a customer-centric approach to generating leads for businesses. It focuses on creating content that appeals to the customer base, building trust in the brand, and converting customers into long-term, repeat customers.