Inbound marketing is the act of organically attracting traffic to your website. How is this accomplished? It’s a bit trickier than outbound marketing because you are relying on the clues, signs, and indicators that you have so cleverly and carefully created to lead visitors to your website. So what is inbound marketing? Is there anything it can be compared to that will help us understand its concepts?
Inbound marketing is like dropping bread crumbs along a forest path that leads to a gingerbread house of surprises.
Inbound marketing is like playing hide and seek with every intention of being found.
Inbound marketing is like the process of engagement that couples go through that eventually lead to marriage.
What about outbound marketing? How does it compare to inbound?
Outbound vs. Inbound
Outbound marketing disturbs and interrupts while inbound charms and attracts. Without divulging into any statistical analysis, as a business owner, which approach would you prefer?
Outbound marketing uses tools such as telemarketing, trade shows, print ads, direct mail, cold calling, all with a limited reach. Inbound marketing, through the laws of attraction, includes SEO/SEM, social media, infographics, blogs, white papers, and videos. There is no limit to the reach of inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing, therefore, is the process of attraction whereas outbound marketing is the aggressive nature of a sales person knocking on doors, mailing out flyers, and making annoying phone calls, determined to never take no for an answer.
Inbound is Prime-Cut Marketing
Inbound marketing has become the chosen way to reach select target markets. However, if you want to steer traffic toward your website, you better have a website worth its power to attract. Like the movements of a symphony you have led your audience through the first three movements and now they are ready for the Grand Finale. Is the Grand Finale good to go? Let’s check in and see.
User-Friendly Websites
Websites that open like the pages in a book are user-friendly websites. Does your website have easy navigational capabilities? If visitors are unable to move around your website…well, do we need to say it? They are going to move on. If it takes longer than a few seconds to open, they are going elsewhere. Does your website have a professional appearance? Easy on the eyes, pleasant to look at? Does the opening content have a professional ring to it? Is your website search engine friendly? Now, understand, that is a topic that could be explored in greater depth than what we are going to do in the scope of this article. But enough to say that keywords, great content, and a steady flow of new visitors should be a great start to become search engine friendly. Is your site mobile friendly? More than half of all internet buying is now performed on a mobile device. If your site is not mobile friendly, you are losing nearly half of your potential business. Finally, it is imperative that your website is easy to update because a frequently updated website is a search engine friendly website.
Content Creation, Social Media, SEO
If you want to increase traffic and thereby conversions by way of your inbound marketing efforts than what are some of the ways to do this? Think content marketing, social media, and SEO. Your content marketing should include at a minimum, a weekly blog. Your blog should be dynamic, passionate, full of vigor with no self-promotion. Your blog posts can be posted to your social media accounts. Be sure your blog includes backlinks to your site. Click here to find out how. Become an authority on everything your brand encompasses. On social media, people are going to make comments and ask questions so you want to be prepared as much as possible. SEO ties all your content together with the strategic use and placement of keywords in your text. A word of caution: Overuse of keywords is a Google no-no and will alert search engines that will penalize your search engine ranking.
The paradigm shift from outbound to inbound is firmly in place. The marketing choice is yours to make.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
