If you’re not yet familiar with the term ‘Inbound Marketing’, then you’re probably spending way too much money trying to acquire and convert new leads and customers.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound Marketing is the process of earning the interest of visitors and customers rather than buying it. Unlike paid advertising, the cost of distribution of Inbound Marketing tends to zero since visitors and customers share your content because they believe it’s worth sharing. It’s earned attention. [Inbound.Org]
To begin Inbound Marketing, all you need is a website. To increase the effectiveness and reach of your Inbound Marketing efforts, your website should ideally be fully customised, unique and designed to be mobile friendly.
Alright, let’s begin the first step of your Inbound Marketing strategy.
1. Traffic Generation
So, you have a website, that’s great! Now, how do you get people to visit your website? Enter ‘traffic generation’.
There are numerous ways to generate traffic but in relation to inbound marketing, your traffic generation strategy should be comprised of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO is the process of getting as much traffic from the “free/organic” listings on search engines (such as Google, Yahoo and Bing) through on and off page optimisation tactics.
SEO is based on optimising your website’s content and meta-tags with relevant and unique keyphrases and content to deliver the most relevant information to visitors. The more relevant your website is, the more likely people will link others to it (kind of like an online ‘word of mouth’), increasing your ‘authority’ for your industry which over time can result in your business soaring up towards the first position in search engine results.
TIP: Content is highly important for SEO, with many companies implementing blogs as a way to continually add fresh, relevant content to their website.
BONUS: Localising your website isn’t just great for local customers – it’s great for SEO!
63 percent of shopping occasions begin online – Thinkwithgoogle, 2018
2. Lead Generation
You now have traffic coming to your website, but the next question is, ‘how do I start converting all these visitors into leads?’
Lead generation is simpler than you might think. You just need to have an offer that relates strongly to your website visitors are looking for.
For example, if someone is looking in Google for an ‘emergency plumber in Sydney’ and click through to your website, you need to make sure that you can offer them just that! Visitors don’t want to get through to your website only to find that it will be a week before you can fix their plumbing.
Or you might offer a paid online analytics service but instead of scaring visitors off by asking them to commit to a 12 month contract, a simple 14 day trial of the software might be all they need to convince them that your product is for them. To get the trial, all visitors need to do is fill out a form with some basic information about them e.g. name, email address etc. Even if they don’t convert into a customer straight after the trial, you at least have a new lead with contact details that you can begin marketing to.
81% of businesses have reported their blog as useful or critical to generating leads. – HubSpot
3. Lead Conversion
New leads are great, but the next step in how to convert these leads into buyers. The best way to convert your leads is through a strategy called ‘lead nurturing’.
Lead nurturing is drip emailing that helps you automate the process of driving leads further along the buying cycle [HubSpot Academy].
An example of how you might do this could include sending an email once a week with some free information, or an email stating a 5% discount off your entire product/service range. Emails such as these need to be highly relevant and not too sales oriented, otherwise you risk losing this lead to the unsubscribe button.
79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. – MarketingSherpa
4. Analyse, Measure and Repeat
After completing the above 3 steps, it’s now time to evaluate how your inbound marketing strategy is performing.
SEO: Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy that requires consistent attention so don’t expect too much too soon and always be looking for new ways to add content and relevancy to your website.
Lead Generation: Are your offers compelling enough to your visitors? If you are generating a good amount of website traffic but haven’t got many bites, then chances are your offers aren’t strong enough. Try changing your offer or the way it is presented on your website. There is no definite solution to increasing lead generation; it is simply a matter of testing, testing, testing! If you’re looking to improve your lead generation, then why not check out our affordable Behavioural Analytics and A/B Testing services.
Lead Conversion: If your leads are not signing up to be your customer, try changing your approach. This is once again, a matter of testing so try testing elements such as ‘email subject line’ ‘email offer’ or even the layout of your emails.
44% of companies use split testing software. – SEOgadget
Resource Tips
A great way to get some website statistics is from Google Analytics. Here, you can get easy access to data such as the number of website visitors you get, where these visitors are coming from e.g. Google, social media and even if they are using a mobile phone!
If you’d like to know more about inbound marketing, get in touch with us by registering for a FREE consultation.
